Two-Minute-Teardown on karl

#TwoMinuteTeardown: USB-C charged AAA battery

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: USB-C charged AAA battery

First, these things have existed for quite a few years now but people still seem to be discovering them. If you are one of todays lucky 10,000 people to find out about them, you’re welcome. I hope these can change your mind about rechargeable batteries; they’re good, now!

One of mine started failing with intermittent output voltage so I decided to take it apart and see what was inside.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Corporate Systems Engineering SSHAAC00-S041911

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Corporate Systems Engineering SSHAAC00-S041911

Electric utilities can employ “load shed” devices throughout their grid to manage load. These devices are usually found on air conditioners, water heaters, pool pumps and other large electrical loads. Typically they’ll offer you a small financial incentive to allow the utility to cycle your device off for short periods of time during peak demand events.

The Corporate Systems Engineering SSHAAC00-S041911 is one such device.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Multiple LED Controllers

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Bit of a change in format; instead of one massive post for all the misc. 11-11 teardowns, I’m grouping them. This post is the “LED Controller” group. I managed to snag the following on Ali Express:

To continue from last year’s trend, I waned to celebrate that all three of these LED controllers have:

#TwoMinuteTeardown: SLZB-MRW10

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: SMLIGHT SLZB-MRW10

To make a very long story short, I need to move away from my very old 802.15.4 radios plugged into a very old Raspberry Pi for my smart home setup. After some research, the SMLIGHT SLZB-MRW10 is new, uses modern radios and ships with firmware that makes it trivial to move packet processing into compute distributed on the other end of the network.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

Disregard note below about 1.0.5

To make a long story short, I allocated a few hours to build a tool that can read/write the SFP module’s EEPROM. I then wired this up to a logic analyzer and compared the read/write operations to what the SFP Wizard does when it tries to unlock a module.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Hamgeek YK-1000H NTP

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: Hamgeek YK-1000H NTP

Curiosity got the better of me when browsing AliExpress and I spotted this GPS NTP server for under $100 USD.

I needed a cart-stuffer anyways so I ordered one as a backup for my existing GPS/NTP server.

While waiting, I took a look around to see if there was any additional information about who makes this / if there was a custom firmware or similar. Nope, there there is not a ton of information about the YK-1000H online.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Duogalia AM70 Optical Fiber Multi-Meter

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: Duogalia A-M70 Optical Fiber Multi-Meter

While diagnosing a flakey fiber link, i ran into a situation where a basic “flashing red” visual fault finder was not sufficient. I needed to actually measure the optical power levels on both ends of the link to ensure that the fiber was not damaged and that the SFPs were operating within spec.

This was the cheapest tool that could be delivered quickly. The issue was found and fixed so now let’s have a look inside.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Petkit Eversweet Solo 2

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two Minute Teardown: Petkit Eversweet Solo 2

I am doing research for an upcoming project and was curious about how other people have solved a similar problem. This happens to be the cheapest option that was available at the time.

I am primarily interested in the pump; the integrated “low water” sensor and the UV-C sterilization are very nice features that would check off a lot of boxes for me… Unfortunately this pump it lacks both the flow rate and the head that I need for my project.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Wozniak WPX-0001 Qi Tester

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Qi wireless power tester

The Qi standard for transmitting power is ~ 15 years old and has been ubiquitous for at least a decade now. And yet, I have only recently seen any testing equipment for it.

The Wozniak WPX-0001A is a simple tester that can measure the output level and protocol of Qi chargers.

'standard tools create wonderful things' ❤️.

Please ignore the super shiny reflections...

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Panel Mount Liquid Level Indicator

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Generic liquid level meter teardown

I ordered this part years ago for a project I eventually canceled.

I can’t use it for anything, and it’s just taking up space, so I’m going to open it up before I recycle it.

The Ali Express listing is a 404 so I don’t have a link to share or really any information about it.

The main thing to take away is that it’s meant to interface with a liquid level sensor. It will display the level of liquid in a tank and - optionally - trigger a few relays based on the level.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Home Assistant Voice - Preview Edition

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Home Assistant Voice: Preview Edition teardown

This is a quick #TwoMinuteTeardown post for the recently released Home Assistant Voice Node - Preview edition.

Normally, I’d be doing a full teardown, but this is a little different; the Home Assistant team has done a lot of the work out in the open. With just a quick Google, you can find official:

teardown instructions here.
source code here.
3D printable case files.
Instructions for adding custom devices here.

I am grateful for such a well-documented and open project. Truly, by hackers for hackers!

AliExpress 11.11 Sale Teardowns (2024 edition)

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

11-11 day teardowns (2024 edition)

I guess this is becoming a tradition now?

During China’s Single’s Day sale on AliExpress, I bought various gadgets - both for projects and out of curiosity. Rather than write separate posts, here’s a collection of mini teardowns showing what’s inside each item.

Previous years:

2023

Tuya Zigbee 3.5 Inch Smart Wall Switch

non-affiliate link

I’m always looking for a better scene controller/switch/Home Assistant interface. I was curious about which chip they used for the full graphics display and was hoping for an easily hackable Android device. Unfortunately, no such luck with this.

AKASO DL12 Dashcam Teardown

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

AKASO DL12 Dashcam Teardown

If the double yellow lines are in the middle of your rear-view mirror, you're doing it wrong.

This was my dashcam for a while until the front camera stopped working. It was a good dashcam while it lasted but there are better options now… so let’s take it apart!

Arizer XQ2 Teardown

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Arizer XQ2 Teardown

A friend of mine reached out and asked me about automating some aspects of their aroma therapy treatment.

Note

I was not given permission to share the specifics of their medical condition or the larger treatment plan so this post is going to deal with just the technical aspects of the device.

The device they’re using for aromatherapy is the Arizer XQ2 and we agreed that integration with their existing Home Assistant setup would be ideal.

Altinex TE460-137 Teardown

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Altinex TE460-137 Teardown

It is surprisingly hard to find a device that can dump details about the various protocols and negotiated standards for a HDMI connection. For how ubiquitous HDMI is, you’d think that there would be a lot of devices that can do this. There are LOADS of devices that can snoop USB and Ethernet, but HDMI is a bit of a different beast, apparently.

After a bit of searching, I found the Altinex TE460-137 could do exactly what I wanted.

AliExpress 11.11 Sale Teardowns

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

11-11 day teardowns

Single’s Day is a big deal in China and AliExpress has a big sale in celebration.

In addition to project supplies, I found quite a few items that can only be classified as “ohh, that looks interesting and I need another $11 in the cart to unlock free shipping…” items.

I was planing on doing a series of posts covering some of the stuff I bought but nothing on it’s own was really “worth” a full post so instead of a bunch of short “Two Minute Teardown” posts, I decided to just roll everything into this massive post.

Inside of the Pulse-Eight HDMI CEC Injector.

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Inside the Pulse-Eight HDMI CEC Injector

To make a long store short, Google recently pushed a few updates to my TV that made it slow as all hell and frustratingly unusable. I finally got fed up with the laggy UI and dug out an old mini PC and installed LibreELEC on it.

Everything worked perfectly except for the lack of CEC support on the mini PC.

This is a common enough problem that there’s a few different devices out there that can add CEC support to a device that doesn’t have it. I chose the Pulse-Eight HDMI CEC Injector because it’s natively supported by LibreELEC.