I tried finding Hidden Gems on AliExpress AGAIN! (Part 17)

Because if we look inside them, we can find a SIM Card since these things need a Data connection to make communication happen which is something I have never heard of before. But that is the beauty of AliExpress because there you can always find the weirdest, newest and sometimes super useful products. And in case you are completely confused right now; let me tell you that AliExpress is a Chinese Online store where I for example got these Walkie Talkies from. But since you never exactly know whether the products from there are truly useful and thus a hidden gem or simply garbage; I created this video series. And today I will once again have a closer look at 7 completely different products in order to ultimately tell you whether you should check them out or stay away from them. Let's get started! Are you tired of flexible heaters that never quite fit? Well, there is a solution from my sponsor JLCPCB. They now offer custom flexible heaters exactly to your specs including power rating, irregular shapes, cutouts, inner holes and even your target temperature. You can choose between Polymide or Silicon Rubber material which always gets a strict appearance inspection as well as resistance testing before shipping which by the way happens as fast as 72 hours after ordering. And if you are unsure about the design process, then they even offer free circuit design meaning there is nothing stopping you from making your own awesome heater PCB. So if you are ready to try it, then follow my link in the video description and get 3 Polymide heaters for $1 or 3 Silicon Heaters for $3. Let's start with the Walkie Talkies that you can get for around 24€ a piece. On the packaging side we can read PoC which stands for Push to Talk over Cellular and that basically explains that you can only use this with the cellular network. But why do that when everyone has a perfectly fine smartphone nowadays? Well, let me show you after unpacking my 2 Walkie Talkies. The first thing that stands out is the housing because it seems very durable meaning this thing can take a beating without a problem. The internal battery is also quite big and considering how much power this thing needs while in use; it can last for days. And lastly to establish communication, you only have to push one button which all things considered makes such PoC walkie talkies suitable for many different job sites I would say. To test them, I firstly charged them up while having a look at a mandatory bonus product which are these two SIM Cards that offer 2GB of data for 30 days for around 18€. According to the product description, they should work in Germany and I always wondered whether such easy to get SIM Cards really do work. So let's find out by putting both cards into my Walkie Talkies and after turning them on, we pretty much immediately got a data connection; awesome. And you can even charge up the SIM Cards again online; but I wouldn't call these prices cheap. But anyway, next I started the Zello App on the Walkie Talkies that manages the connections and I had to register there which was a nightmare with the display quality and the input buttons. Eventually though after around 15 minutes, both devices were online and at this point it was very easy to use. And as a bonus you can also connect Bluetooth headsets and use GPS meaning all in all I would recommend both products if you are in need for something like this. Next I got these 3 USB PD boards here that you can get for around 1€ each. Most interesting are these two here that come with a barrel jack input since I got a lot of useless random power supplies lying around that come with these connectors. So by simply plugging a 24V supply into one of these board, we basically turned this useless

power supply into a USB-C PD power source that according to my tests can provide all Power Delivery voltages as well as an adjustable voltage between 3. 3V and 21V, fantastic. That is pretty sweet and not only useful for your DIY projects; but tons of other electronic devices since USB-C PD is super versatile nowadays. This is all possible due to this XPM52C IC here that according to its data sheet is a Buck Converter that implements some popular USB standards. But of course since it is essentially a buck converter, it can only step down a voltage meaning if you supply 12V in; you can only get under 12V out. Next I of course tested all promised electrical features like the ripple voltage which seemed fine, the output current was limited to just below 4A also good, the measured efficiencies were also all in spec and the IC didn't get super hot while doing all of that meaning in conclusion I would highly recommend these boards. Moving on to this Smart Ring here that you can get for around 18€; not that expensive. I got interested in it because I am pretty much always wearing a smart watch that monitors my steps, heart rate as well as my workout sessions and I really love having this data. So I was simply curious whether a ring could do this task as well since on the product page, it claims to be able to exactly do these jobs along with some nice bonuses. And after unpacking everything, I got to say that the quality of the ring was better than I expected; it doesn't look half bad and seems pretty rigid. But before putting it on permanently, I firstly charged it up using the included station which actually comes with an internal battery. So while that was charging, I downloaded the App for this thing and of course had to register. On the bright side though, pairing with the ring worked pretty smooth and the user interface is pretty intuitive to use. And the first thing I tried out was the bonus feature aka gesture interactions meaning by double tapping my ring, I can either take a picture or scroll through videos which worked pretty well most of the time. Next I measured my hear rate and in comparison to my expensive smartwatch; it seems to be around the same value, nice. So for the next 2 days I simply kept the ring on and I got to say it was pretty comfortable to wear even while doing workouts and needless to say; it is waterproof and especially useful when it comes to sleep tracking because it is way lighter than a smart watch. Pretty good results so far; but sadly the step counting feature did not really work at all and the touch button of my ring apparently was defective meaning I could not utilize the integrated display. But besides that, this ring really did surprise me in a positive way. However since I mostly care about step tracking; I personally have to give it the thumbs down even though I think this thing could be a hidden gem if you do not care about that. And that brings us to the fourth product which is this Mini UPS that you can get for around 55€. In case you are wondering; UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply and as the name would suggest, you can plug your devices into this thing and if mains power cuts out for some reason, the UPS with its internal battery steps in and supplies the power for your devices meaning they are save from power outages. This can be handy for your internet router, alarm system or similar. In my case the UPS can only supply 5V, 9V, 12V, 15V and 24V meaning only devices with such an input are supported and not something like your full size computer. So to test it, I firstly grabbed myself a 12V 2A power supply and plugged that into the input of the UPS. On the display we can now not only see that the internal battery gets charged up; but also that it is partly defective. Thankfully though we can still change the output voltages which after measuring all of them, seem to be correct. And in this case the output comes supposedly directly from the input and not the batteries

as this super easy to grasp diagram from the product description tells you and since we do not bother the batteries in this case, they last around 10 years longer; their claim not mine. To find out whether this is really true though, I took the whole UPS apart and put my multimeter in between the battery connection. And yes they told the truth because the battery gets charged up with around 500mA which does not change even when we draw some current on the output. And while I was already doing some electrical test; I also measured the voltage ripple which seemed ok; the overall efficiency looked good and the build quality of the UPS itself with all of its ICs as well as the battery with BMS protection circuit also looked pretty good. At this point I also realized that one display pin was not properly soldered into place and thus I was quickly able to repair my display. And last but not least I of course also tested how quickly the UPS switches from mains power to battery backup power and let's just say that even my oscilloscope didn't catch any downtime, fantastic. So all in all there is really nothing to complain about this UPS and thus I would certainly recommend it if you are looking for one Let's move on to product number 5 which is this BLE UART USB Module that you can get for around 3€; super cheap. I got interested in it because I often times have to use some kind of USB to Serial Adapter like one of these in order to talk to a microcontroller or similar. Basically put if you ever used the Arduino Serial Monitor, you have been using some kind of USB to Serial Adapter. But anyway; the big problem for me is that all my Serial boards have a USB input and my workbench is quite a bit away from my main computer meaning I have to run a long USB extension cable to be able to work on my main PC. And that is where this little board build around the CH9143 IC could help since this IC can do communication between BLE, UART and USB. So let me plug this generic Bluetooth dongle into my PC, hook up the power, transmit and receive pins up to my microcontroller board and let's do some testing. On the PC side, I quickly found the board, connected to it using the pin 0000 and realized that the board immediately disconnected; well that sucks. Eventually though I found out that you need an additional piece of software which is a bit scary because it comes in Chinese; but it pretty much connected automatically and thus we got another Serial Port which we can use like any other one in the Arduino IDE meaning the board works perfectly fine. And as a bonus you can use this board as well to communicate with BLE devices and thus all in all I would highly recommend it. And just like that we come to the last product which is this powerbank shell that you can get for only 4€ which is impossible to open without a screwdriver and some force. But anyway; the idea here is that when you have spare 18650 lithium cells lying around, you can simply put them in there and thus turn them into a powerful powerbank; but oh boy please don't do that. I mean if we power it with 1 cell then it does work. You get an output voltage of 5V, you can draw 2A or 1A like claimed, the output voltage looks OK, this thing does not get hot, you can charge up the batteries and you get a nice display which I doubt is truly precise. That is all not the problem; the problem is that this thing simply wants you to put 8 lithium ion cells in parallel without mentioning anywhere on the product page how dangerous this can be. You see, when your cells feature a voltage difference than such a parallel connection can lead to huge damaging currents and I also feel like shorting these bus bars is way too easy. So yeah; due to safety concerns this thing gets a thumbs down. And with that being said; we are done here and this time there were truly some hidden Gems that some viewers out there will probably enjoy. And if you ever find something useful on AliExpress then feel free to post it on my Discord Server because the next episode will definitely come.

As always thanks for watching; don't forget to like, share, subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.