today's festivities are accompanied by little brown jugs Black Lager they describe it as
having a light roast malt flavor dark color and herbal and malt aroma the clean crisp finish
do you remember these wireless microphones that I got in a mailbag a few weeks back
you know the ones that I discovered after I bought them are actually illegal to use in Canada and
actually anywhere in North America because of the frequency that they operate on so wireless
microphones operating in this frequency range in the lower 600 megahertz have been illegal in North
America for about two years and it was announced about five years before that that it was coming
unfortunately this seller didn't get the message and I failed the check before I ordered them so
here we go on the upside the seller after I contacted him and linked him to the industry
Canada web page I said and the FCC webpage he agreed to refund me and told me to dispose of
these locally which I shall do in the form of a tear down so this set came with two transmitters
one receiver and apparently both transmitters can transmit to this one at the same time which
is kind of cool it came with a four pin uh 3.5 millimeter cable uh three pin to four pin
and two charging cables these are kind of cool I haven't encountered this kind of charging cables
before they are one USB 8 dual USB C there's two of those and there's three of these things so
that works out well but these guys themselves as I said operate in illegal frequencies
so here I've got my Spectrum analyzer software running with my SDR connected
up to my tablet when I power this guy on it comes up in the 638 megahertz range
that's well within the forbidden zone but this other one seems to want to be at around 613.5
see that so this guy if it stays put I think is actually legal
well this may not be such a bad thing after all okay cool
so I am going to set this one aside and not destroy it during the teardown
this one however that seems to want to be at the higher frequency that is going to be our victim
and if I can figure out how to open it up in a reversible manner then we'll also take
a look inside the receiver let me just clear the deck here so let's
see how we get into this thing I'm not seeing any screw holes anywhere
nothing hiding under the clip it's a fairly good spring on that clip I'm going to USBC and a little
LED on the bottom here got a microphone input an auxiliary input and built-in microphone there
power button set button volume plus and minus that set button push it at the same time as
hmm what does it say okay so you push set button at the same time as you're powering it on and that
tells the receiver what channel or to lock onto it I guess okay and apparently using the set button
will also cause it to change frequencies but if I have to repair them each time I turn them on and
I don't know if I do but if I do then there is a potential for them to wander off into danger zone
so that still seems kind of risky to me anyway let's grab a spudger I
guess since I can't see any screws and scratch the scratch the plastic cool
can I get in around oh hey I can get in underneath there that's neat but what happens
with that solid adhesive is that it was it really just stuck onto the face of those chips and the
lip around the edge of the case oh that's not very secure okay anyway what can we see inside here
we have a microphone right up there just a standard little electric microphone capsule
got a couple of chips uh some transistors or other three terminal devices the push buttons over there
one B two a b I'm not sure what that is
but uh well we'll figure it out later let's dive a little bit deeper foreign
if I decide this isn't safe to use if I can't be assured that it's going to
stay on the channels that I put it on then at the very least I guess I can salvage the uh
the battery out of it why won't you lift
it's going to be a little bit careful because there is a battery underneath there
it's probably lithium ion oh okay this pops up so so there we have just the little push
buttons on the side and they make contact with these little tactile switches okay
two connectors there we have an antenna we have the battery or cell yeah it feels nice and firm
not puffy at all but it is glued down or taped down or stuck down so we can't see how big it is
and it does have some little divots in it that's been pushing up against the case so
that's a little concerning grab a non-conductive spudger and just gently
gently ah okay well programming header on this side and the battery is a 400 milliamp hour 3.7
volt 1.48 watt hour lithium ion battery all right there is a little protection board on the end of
that battery that's nice so a boat all that's left to look at is these two chips on this side
and I suppose I could trace the wiring so there is the antenna
lead up there there is a little matching circuit there Crystal mean chip qt-0641
okay so that looks like it connects up to the RF stuff in that corner
like it only really find one website that had any reference to these things at all
and I have to use a janky translation but it looks like it is some sort of an USB audio uh RF
kind of a chip with an anode digital converter in it and all kinds of stuff like that
if this thing is translating correctly then there's this guy which is completely anonymous
since that was so easy to take apart let's dive into the receiver and see
just how different it is I'm gonna guess it has the same chips and everything in it
um or maybe a complimentary chip we'll see so I went in just in right there yeah and that's
working again here keep those separate oh it's got more different her chips in it
I guess that makes sense I suppose we'll see what's on the other side but I'm going to guess
that it's probably just the battery again and the connectors but there's only one way to find out
yep battery and connectors and an antenna and nothing else okay
so what is these little chippy chips here
so that one is a kt0651 which sounds very much like it should be the complement to the uh six
four one on that board doesn't it there's actually two of them so those without looking them up I'm
going to guess that those are the two RF chips the two receiver chips and the 641 on the transmitter
board is actually the RF part there this the transmitter what else do we have pt24c128a
so the same chip yeah that looks Morgan ft yeah ft okay
there's two of those as well maybe audio chips guessing I don't know I'll look them
up in a second and then there's this guy esmt not sure who that manufacturer is Ed 22650
no idea any guesses only one way to find out and that's to go to the computer and look
so the other two chips on the receiver are both to wear serial eproms I guess that makes a certain
amount of sense although initially I thought they were some sort of an audio interface but it seems
like those other chips do ninety percent of that stuff all on their own so there we go ah so that
final chip on the receiver is the audio chip okay so it must take audio from the two RF uh chips and
the amplify and processor that I assume the only question I have is is it being used for
the monitoring headphone output or to drive the line level that goes out to your recording device
yeah their specs show going into a 16 ohm load so that's definitely being used as
headphone amplifier okay so it seems that that is the majority of what we need to know about
these things I am going to throw them back together and let's just see how it sounds
that's always a useful thing and since I think I can trust the other one to operate
on a frequency that's not going to get me in trouble with you know industry Canada or my
actual employer for interfering with the world then I think I should be safe to do that test
is back together and I'll be right to back a little Sony pocket digital recorder here on
the microphone input and we will see what we get now I can't guarantee that that's going to
be good but well I guess we'll just have to find out turn the receiver on turn the transmitter on
we have RF flights and they both change this thing before when I didn't know the receiver turned on
it's RF light was staying blue now it's turned red so I think if I record here instead of hold
this kind of in the general direction of my head hopefully we should get some recorded audio on
here and if we are getting recorded audio on here that's what you will be listening to right now
okay so if this is now working properly the way I think it is you should be listening to the
wireless microphone connected directly into my Samsung that I'm using for a camera here
which is sort of how this thing is designed to be used I've got the microphone pretty much
spaced the same distance from my mouth as my my phone is where I'm normally doing these videos
I'm also listening to the receiver through headphones and it sounds
I call it a little brittle or something like that but the other thing
there's tons of handling noise on this thing
which is really really annoying and not at all performance not happy with that
but now I'm going to connect this
and put it up close to where I would normally wear this microphone and in my earphones that
sounds better actually that's odd and of course I don't have the handling noise from this thing
either so that might be a win just use a lav mic instead of using this slav mic because wow is that
ever sensitive so that was interesting um if I can trust this thing to stay on a friendly frequency
on a friendly Channel then life should be good but I don't like all that handling noise that is just
ridiculous so I suppose if I can use it with a headset mic or with a clip-on lav mic or something
if I can get one that's a little bit less shoddy than what I've got so the problem isn't that I'm
mechanically touching the microphone capsule it's that the microphone capsule is hearing any contact
with this thing with this case so I don't know how you'd go about remedying that quite honestly
maybe wrap the entire body pack completely in foam or cloth or something so that it can't be rubbed
or contacted I don't know not super impressed with that I wonder how the rode microphones
get around that because as I mentioned in the in the mailbag video where these things first
showed up these things are basically just trying to look like a clone of a
of a road with a road go-to I think it's called something like that uh microphone
which is a several hundred dollar microphone in that this set was I think less than 50 bucks so
I don't know um is it worth the money no and if you live in North America don't buy
it if you live anywhere else before buying any wireless microphone always check what
frequencies it runs on and one frequencies are illegal in your country I may just use this as
a source of a couple of cells since the guy did refund it I don't know um what do you think I'm
hoping that you heard demos of this in here properly I'm not super impressed with what
I was hearing through my monitoring headphones but uh yeah it actually did sound better when
I was using the headset microphone instead of when I was using the built-in microphone
um anyway questions or comments down below thanks for watching as always I will talk to you later