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Today I’m going to reviewing two types of Pomona test lead holders.

A representative from Farnell contacted me and asked if I wanted to review some products. I said, “Sure, free supplies for my lab!” Actually, I found out that anybody can sign up for their product “Road Test” program at Element14.com but not everyone is selected. Farnell is a European company and known as Element14 in Asia and Newark in America (online catalog). But they also have a nice online community site at Element14.com/Community where you can get to their “Store” for your region.

For the “Road Test” I chose to review some different test lead management hangers made by Pomona. I have quite the mess of jumpers, patch cables, DMM probes and oscilloscope probes hanging on my peg board behind my lab bench. That is not a good way to store these and they are very difficult to access on peg board.

I selected two sizes with two different mounting options for this review. The Pomona model 1508 with 14 slots at 0.21in (5.33mm) opening is great for jumpers, patch cable and test leads. The 1508 model needs to mount using screws.

<photo 1508>

I also got the Pomona model 4408M with 8 slots at 0.32in (8.13mm) opening with magnet mounting. The 4408M is nice for oscilloscope probes and larger items.

<photo 4408M>

I was quite disappointed to find that you lose two slots for the magnet mount because they just bend the outside prongs down and add stick on magnets. This magnetic option drops a model 4408 with 10 slots to a 4408M with only 8 slots. If I had known that I would have got the model 4408 and just added my own magnetic plate. The photo for 4408M at Neward.com is curretly wrong and shows the model 2708 without bent prongs.
The magnetic option was not strong enough for the thin metal in my garage door anyway so I bent the two extra prongs up and used the screw mounts.

You can fabricate your own test lead hangers but at these prices it just makes sense to buy.
1508 is $17.53 USD (at the time of writing this it is on sale for $12.46)
4408 is $14.65 USD  (at the time of writing this it is on sale for $10.43)
4408M with magnet mount is $32.13 USD  (at the time of writing this it is on sale for $23.46)

Here are the after shots of my lab. WOW these hangers sure helped clean things up and I have already found it much easier to find and select items.

I even found some lost jumpers and micro hooks. I thought they were gone forever but were just under the pile of cables hanging on my peg board. I will not be losing track of such items anymore!

I guess I will have to get one more 1508 because I have so many jumper cables. I may even get their biggest hanger model 2708 with 9 slots at 0.45in (11.43mm) opening for my PC power cords and wall warts.

Thanks for visiting.

G35 LED Christmas Light Review and Teardown

In this write up & video I review the “GE Color Effects” G35 multi colored LED Christmas lights 50 count. I will cover product details, hanging hints and show a teardown and give some links to great hacks at the end.

UPDATE 11/30/2012: My new video “G35 LED Christmas Lights – A Simple Parallel Sync Hack“

UPDATE: new links to other hackers at the end of this post!!!

You get to pick from 14 sequence patterns using a wireless controller.  Hacking these lights using Arduino is already very popular so I will be linking to some good hack posts below. In a later video I will be trying some of the known hacks and some of my own.

Link to the GE product page for these lights

In the box you get the below:

40.8 feet of lights
50 lights spaced at 10 inches
50 rain gutter clips, 50 base clips
Radio controller with 14 light patters

CLICK TO READ ALL —>: (more…)

Short episode showing what turned out to be a simple fix to get a 5 disk Sony CD player running like new.  One more product saved from the landfill!

Didn’t anyone ever tell you to make sure your optics were clean? Buddy boy!

12VoltVids also posted a really good general service video of 5 disk changers. It addresses tray alignment and other faults. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXwF_1DxtA
His website is: http://www3.telus.net/atv_video/