Shopping on Aliexpress - personal shopping experience in the Chinese online store

Online shopping now does not surprise anyone. Everything is very simple: just select and order the goods, pay in any way possible and patiently wait for it to be sent by mail. One of these stores, of course, can be considered Chinese Aliexpress. Here, buyers are attracted to a lot: a variety of goods, low prices, a system of discounts on goods, free delivery and a huge number of sellers. Therefore, the same product can be bought at different prices.

Before becoming a full customer, you must register. The registration procedure is quite simple and free. We won’t write about it here, since a lot of detail has been written about this on the Internet, in addition, there are enough videos on this topic on YouTube.

The author of the article would like to talk about his generally poor shopping experience, share his impressions of goods and services. Something was of good quality, something was not very good, something was sent quickly, something was slow, but it was always sent. Except for one case, but this story will be later.

First purchases

For some reason, the very first purchases were LED lamps of different styles and different capacities. It turned out that these lamps are offered at a price much lower than what you can buy in Russian electrical goods stores. It would seem, what's the difference, because the power of the lamps is the same, which means they shine the same.

Not really. For example, a 5-watt lamp of the Navigator company, purchased in a domestic store, shines brightly above the desk, you can read a newspaper or a book without any problems.

A lamp of the same power, even similar in appearance to a navigation one, shines just enough to not collide with a desk. The figure below shows just such a 5-watt lamp, bought on Aliexpress.

From this picture you can choose lamps with a power of 3 ... 9W, with a base E14, the color of the glow is white, cool white and warm white. This parameter is often called color temperature.

It was such a lamp that was screwed into the hallway as emergency lighting. Naturally, no one turned it off even during the day, they say, will not hit much. Enough of her for two months. Subsequent disassembly showed that one of the LEDs burned out. If desired, it can be replaced, but this is quite problematic: the soldering is performed by refractory lead-free solder, and the reverse side of the board with foil, which is used as a heat sink. Warming such a board with a soldering iron is not easy.

Other lamps bought there were no better.

Even when used as a desktop, it turns out a small illuminated area, not to say a patch of dim light. Although the description promises high brightness. Another example of a not very bright lamp is shown in the figure. This is a corn lamp.

Despite the fact that 69 LEDs of frame size 5050 shine immediately in the lamp, high brightness from them is also not observed. Therefore, a better application than lighting the landing for this lamp was not found, the benefit was bought only one. Contrary to expectations that it would not be necessary to climb the ceiling for a long time and screw in the bulbs, this lamp lasted no more than two months.

Other lamps, ordered by colleagues at work, were no better. Some quickly burned out, others also did not shine very brightly. In general, LED lamps were not the most successful purchase.

But, as they say, the wedge light did not converge on these dim lamps. Now I’ll talk about other purchases, more successful. Although a problem happened once here, the goods weren’t sent, it just didn’t reach the destination. And it was like that.

Who ate a hamster?

Now, probably, everyone knows such a toy as a talking hamster: you say a phrase, he bounces, dances and repeats this phrase. The toy was ordered for a child, they say, let him learn to speak.

When tracking the goods using the tracking code, it was possible to understand that the hamster had already been sent and, it seems, had reached Novosibirsk, that is, it had already crossed the Russian border. It remains only to wait until it reaches the address indicated in the parcel. But the wait was delayed, the hamster did not come. Likely in the Siberian open spaces it was bitten by wolves.

It was possible, or rather, it was necessary to open a dispute with the seller, then at least the money would be returned. But for some reason, most likely due to his own laziness, this was not done, and the hamster disappeared without a trace. I had to write out another one, which was sent quickly enough. As Pushkin wrote: “From now on, ignoramus, science ...” But such a case was so far the only one, and did not even stop from new purchases.

Power for electronic devices

If wolves feed on hamsters, then batteries are most often used to power electronic devices. As an example of such orders, you can recall the battery for a mobile phone, ordered at the request of one friend. It’s just that this battery turned out to be somewhat cheaper than the same in domestic online stores.

The product turned out to be quite cheap and of high quality, it has been working reliably for several months now. When the battery was bought, the dollar was lower, the battery cost about two hundred with something rubles. At the time of writing, all prices are higher than they were at the time of purchase.

After that, lithium-ion batteries for the flashlight were purchased. Sent fast enough, the quality is good.

Although three batteries are shown in the picture, only two are sent, as indicated in the product header.

How to charge batteries

But batteries are only good when charged. Lithium-ion batteries are not as easy to charge as nickel-cadmium or lead, they have their own rather complicated charge algorithm. You can, of course, assemble the charger from widespread parts, but it is better to order a ready-made board on Aliexpress. At the same time, the low price of such a device, only $ 1.08, is surprising.

With small dimensions, the board turned out to be not only a charger, but also a battery discharge limiter. In fact, this is a charge controller - a battery discharge. The battery itself is connected to the contacts marked on the board as B +, B-. Next to these contacts are contacts with the designations + and -, to which the load is connected.

When working on load, the controller monitors the degree of battery discharge and turns it off at a certain value. Therefore, a very deep discharge does not occur, which is harmful to the battery.

On the right side of the figure is a micro USB connector that many cell phone chargers are equipped with. Just plug and play! Right next to the connector are + and - contacts. With their help, you can apply input voltage without using a connector, or simply connect several such handkerchiefs in parallel. The charging process is controlled by two LEDs: while charging, the red LED lights up, when charging is complete, the blue one lights up. Everything is convenient and clear.

On delivery, the board is configured for a charging current of 1A, which is quite suitable for 18650 batteries (diameter 18, height 65 mm). If the power source is not designed for a current of 1A or it is supposed to charge batteries of other standard sizes, for example 14500, then you will have to slightly reduce the charging current. This is done by changing the value of the resistor R3 located on the edge of the board.

Charge current setting on board 03962A

It should be noted that such a board with protection is not always needed. You can limit yourself only to battery power. For this purpose, a charge-only board is sold on Aliexpress. It is smaller in size and somewhat cheaper.

Still was bought DC-DC converter board: when connected to a constant voltage source of 1.2 ... 5V, a constant voltage of 5V with an output current of up to 800mA is obtained at the converter output.

It is possible to use as a "square battery", which is now almost impossible to buy, and sometimes it is necessary. In addition, a very low price attracts.

Studies of the device showed that if a voltage of more than 5 V or higher is applied to the input, the input voltage will simply appear at the output. Therefore, raising the input voltage above 5 V is completely unacceptable.

But, apparently, this is not the record holder for low prices. Aliexpress e-mails its offers of various goods. Here is one of the products at a very low price. This is a ready-made two-channel sound amplifier class D with a power of 3W / channel. For a total of 156 rubles, immediately sold 10 pieces on one board. It is enough just to break off one at a time. You can buy, of course, but only then where to put them?

 

You can see in what wide range the price of this amplifier fluctuates. As it was said somewhere, they say, it all depends on the arrogance of the seller. And apparently, this is actually the case, there is a very wide spread in this impudence.

The case is quite illustrative, so you should not rush to buy the first thing that caught my eye. Light bulbs, toys, small electronic scarves with ready-made circuits.

There were also purchases of small computer devices.

Small computer devices

The first purchase of this series was a WI-FI receiver for a desktop computer, instead of the damaged D-LINK receiver. It was not only the low price that affected it: the D-LINK receiver was not very stable from the very beginning. In the next room, just one wall from the router at a distance of no more than 5 m, the Internet connection was not very stable. In addition, this receiver was hot, as if from birth it was sick.

D-LINK was replaced by the RALINK receiver.

At the time of purchase, this device cost about $ 10. The picture shows a screenshot later, when the dollar soared again. Such a cheapness of the device is due to the fact that it is sold without software, without a driver. At the same time, the description says that the driver disk is not included for fear that it might be broken during transfer. And a link is given where these drivers can be downloaded. True, I had to download drivers in a completely different place, but it worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, this “good” was short-lived. When using the antenna on an old laptop without WIFI, as shown in Figure 11, the receiver simply had a broken USB connector. I wanted to order three more such devices, but the seller had only one available. Therefore, smaller receivers were ordered. Can breaking them be a little harder?

There is also a link to download drivers, on which everything was downloaded from the first attempt, nothing had to be searched.

How to use an old keyboard

Another valuable purchase should be considered an adapter for connecting an old PS / 2 keyboard to a laptop's USB port. Maybe someone will ask, they say, why, if USB keyboards are sold, if not wireless? Here we can only say that the old keyboards are much better than the new wireless, and even more so standard laptop keyboards. The adapter works without drivers on XP and WIN7. There is also a connector for connecting a PS / 2 mouse, but this option has not been tried.

At this price, this adapter can be bought even if it is not really needed. Inside the box, located in the middle of the cord, of course, is a microcontroller. Therefore, trying to create something like this at home simply will not work. Those who have a job with typing in large volumes and have almost become addicted to this very old keyboard will appreciate this adapter just fine.

Restoring an old laptop

Here, perhaps, it's time to return to that old laptop, which was mentioned above.I got this laptop for free, that is, for nothing: the owner said that he was faulty, maybe he would go for spare parts? And even if you can repair it, leave it to yourself, it will work as a typewriter.

Inspection of the device showed that the hard drive is faulty. To fix the malfunction, an 80GB HDD was ordered. A large volume was simply not required, and the price seemed quite affordable.

The disc was sent quickly enough, as usual in a soft bag, inside of which there was such a bundle.

And inside this convolution, the hard drive itself is in an antistatic package. Everything came safe and sound. As promised in the product description, the disc turned out to be completely new: the release date is November 2012.

It would seem that just insert the disk into the laptop and install the OS. But it was not there. An attempt to install multiple editions of WIN XP failed. And the thing was that on the laptop (Acer Travel Mate 2350) there was a preinstalled WIN XP Home Edition SP2 OS, the distribution of which was in the closed section of the hard drive, which had become unusable.

As a result of searches on the Internet, it turned out that many faced this problem. As a result, you need to download the torrent, and already use it to get the system recovery disk.

Recovery CD Acer TravelMate 2350 and 4050 Winds XP Home Edition x32 SP2 [2004, RUS].

Judging by this record, laptops of these models were produced in 2004, and maybe even earlier. Currently, it seems to be junk, but for surfing the Internet, working with office programs, viewing photos and movies, it is much better than modern netbooks with a screen diagonal of 10 ... 11 inches.

This is a recovery disc (only 3 CDs), which is recommended to be created immediately when buying a laptop. Many thanks to anyone who guessed to put this disc on a torrent. Installing the OS turned out to be easier with these disks. I would hope that this link is useful to someone else.

After installing Windows XP Home Edition x32 SP2, it would be nice to upgrade it to SP3.

How to use an old hard drive

Recently, the following picture has been observed: instead of a morally or physically obsolete stationary computer, a laptop is most often bought. At the same time, there remains a hard drive, often of a sufficiently large volume. To use it as an external hard drive, you can buy such an adapter on Aliexpress.

The adapter allows you to connect to USB hard drives of any form factor: 2.5 "or 3.5". 2.5 ”hard drives are powered by a USB port, while 3.5” format drives require an additional power source.

Such adapters are available with an external power source, but, unfortunately, this source often fails. Therefore, it is better to use a computer power supply.

Here, in fact, all my purchases, so far there is nothing more to tell. I would like to believe that this article will help someone solve the question of what to buy, how to buy, and whether it should be done at all.

Boris Aladyshkin