Cable Ferrite Beads

USB Ferrite Cable
Snap on Ferrite Core
Snap on Ferrite Core

Most of you would have seen these thick cylindrical parts embedded in USB/Power/HDMI cables around your home, right next to the ports. These are ferrite cores. Basically made of a ferrite material and consists of 2 halves clamping together around a cable. It forms an inductor and is used to suppress high-frequency noise in a cable. You will mostly find it in good-quality branded cables. This becomes important in consumer electronic cables to prevent radiated emissions, to and from the devices it connects.

There are snap-on cores of different dimensions(Hence different impedance to the high-frequency signals). These become very useful for EMI engineers to suppress cable noise and pass the electronic certification. You try on different snap-on cores(sometimes looping the cable inside the core a couple of times) and whichever helps you pass the test goes in the final product(Just the ferrite core part gets embedded in the cable). Saves you a ton of time(and money) while testing in the EMI test labs.

If you liked the post, Share it with your friends!

Mosquito Bat Teardown

Mosquito Killer Bat Teardown
Mosquito Killer Bat Teardown
Mosquito Killer Bat Teardown

This is probably one cheap electronic device that is common in most Indian homes. Mostly stops working completely in a year’s time. Consists of an AC input section with a capacitive dropper and indicator LED followed by a 4-diode bridge rectifier that feeds directly to the battery. There are different battery options mostly 4V. I seem to have a 2.4V(2 Cell Rechargeable 2.4V 600mAh) one. There is no protection for charge current manipulation here(to save a few cents there). Probably the reason why these batteries don’t last more than a few recharge cycles.

This is followed by the high voltage section with a feedback transformer driving a transistor followed by a slightly weird voltage multiplier section to generate a high voltage which gets stored at a large capacitor at the end. Some units come with a discharge resistor to discharge that capacitor(So that there are no accidental zaps). This high voltage section is connected to 2 metal outer grids and 1 inner metal grid in the bat. When a mosquito comes in contact with the inner and outer grids, this capacitor energy is discharged across the insect to burn it to create the classic pop sound.

The most common thing which goes bad in these devices is the output capacitor(you can test to see if there is a very small spark across the terminals) or like in my case here, the battery loses its retaining capacity. You can test by charging it fully on AC, then with a metal part(insulating the section you hold) discharging the grids, you will hear a classic pop initially then it will go down in sound after 3-4 tries as the battery discharges fast. Replace the battery in that case. 

If you liked the post, Share it with your friends!
1 104 105 106 107 108 118