This video starts in the live stream area before we go to the bench to do the usual teardown and Analysis because I felt it good to actually show this device in operation. It is a Guinness Nitro surge unit and I've been trying to get hold of one for a while. Thank you to Pat and Ireland for sending me one and some of these huge cans of Guinness to actually test it with. These are actually 558 milliliter Cans Really unusually big, but the reason for that is because they are designed to give you a full pint of Guinness So here's the idea.

the device in here Clips over the top of the can and it surges it with ultrasonic energy. As far as I can see, it's rechargeable. It's got a little charging ports at the back and a button to start it and the procedure of pouring yourself a pint of fine Guinness is to open the Guinness and this should be well chilled beforehand and left to settle for a good length of time. and then the important top there lines up with this little port in the unit and you clip it on and it's got an O-ring that seals.

When you're ready to pour, you get your glass held at a 45 degree angle, you push the button on the back once and the harp and top lights up and it is now surging and you hold it above the level and if you watch the liquid come out, you'll see it surges white every so often, but it surges pale creamy every so often. and what it's actually doing is it's liberating the nitrogen that's used to give Guinness That's distinctive texture and after a certain number of pulses it will actually stop doing that. It's a controlled amount of air nucleation. You can actually hear a slight fizzing noise in the process.

Once you get up to a certain height, you let the Guinness settle and you can see the clouds of bubbles surging down to the bottom of the glass here and it's forming its head and top. and the final stage of the poor. If I had the patience to wait for that would be to just gently pour in the last bit and it has stopped surging now and this will just lift it up and give you your creamy head on top. Let me demonstrate the creamy head by getting all of them stashed.

Um, creamy head. Lovely. It works very well and by liberating the gas the nitrogen into the liquid because nitrogen is much finer bubbles, it gives it that nice deep velvety texture as they say. But that's not what we're here for.

We're not here for the velvety texture. We're here to open this and see what's inside. So let's do that right now. one moment.

please. It is time to explore this a lot deeper. So here is the principle of operation. As far as I can see.

the unit has a detachable spout, you clip the cannon and there is a silicon Rubber seal here that forms a well liquid. Tight Seal However, to let air flow in as the Guinness flows out through this port and the nozzle, there are a couple of external holes here that when you tip it up, air gets in here and it lets it flow out. As it flows out, it passes. I Can't see anything yet, but it passes.

An ultrasonic transducer is what I would think it is that causes nucleation of the nitrogen and causes it to come out of their suspension in the liquid. The unit apparently has Nicom Metal Hydride cells Triple E Michel metal hydrate cells Not changeable because it is ultrasonically welded shut. I'm going to use the Dremel to open this. So thanks to Pat for sending not just one but two, he sent a used one so that I could basically take this one apart without guilt but use keep using the other one for experiments including will it uh, will it surge? Calm down drinks as well.

So I'm going to pause momentarily while I cut this open with a Dremel It's the only way I think I'm going to get in, but I'm Some gases are that it probably uses a boost circuit. The circuit you're not expecting to be too complex. a boost circuit microcontroller, and then the little Drive inductor that drives a piezoelectric device. but it'll be interesting how that's mounted in here.

but there's only one way to find out. I'll Dremel it open. We can take a look inside one moment, please. The did is done.

Let's explore. I Have to say not the easiest thing to open I'm very glad that Pat sent an old one as well as a new one because it is very destructive opening it, particularly because everything has been taken apart. However, here is the process: I Think that the gold bed is a separate piece and there's two sections going on, but they are totally ultrasonically welded on so they don't come off easily. I dremeled around the top line here.

Nothing happened. So I dremeled further up and a band of plastic came off from an outer shell. or should I say an inner shell? Then I dremeled even higher at the top and the top came off. And that's the point with a bit of force that I got access to the interior.

so this whole lot is cupped over the top and then bonded on for watchproofing. The top itself has the Harp logo with a diffused Optical eight gate light guide going up to it powered by a red and white combined. LED I Didn't realize that uh Guinness is part of the Diageo group? Interesting. Diageo are an enormous Uh liquor company so let's go to the Circuit Mobility Here's I'll show you the case.

first. the USB port here has if I take the circuit board out, has a bit of sealant on the inside as a separate module for that. Just probably part of the waterproofing. And the button here is a very unusually types of friction fit in a hole.

It's got a little plastic pin goes through and uh pushes against the button, but it actually feels not stiff, but it just feels like it Glides through smoothly so that must be part of the waterproofing. There's no obvious Rubber seal as such that I can see just a very close friction fit. Quite impressive engineering. The ultrasonic energy is imparted into the base.

There's a little Platinum here and on that Platinum was this ultrasonic transducer literally just glued on with the wires coming off it. and that's the bit that uh energizes the the nucleation of the nitrogen from the Guinness Let's take a look at the circuit board. Oh, batteries. uh, a couple of Tripoli nickel metal hydrates.

As alluded to in the instructions, it says Triple A 730 probably 730 milliamp hour I'm guessing they've used these for a stable voltage of about 2.4 volts across the complete discharge and their ability to supply high current. Also, maybe to avoid the problems associated with Lithium cells and their bad reputation for bursting the flames and products, let's bring in the circuit board. so I'll Zoom down this just a little bit, but it is quite a big picture. The back of the circuit board has the two cells on it and uh, that's more or less it.

just it's got the pads. It's got a large ground plane and the pads for the connection of things like the USB power in and the output to the transducer. The other side of the circuit board is much more interesting. We have the button that signals up to the processor.

We have a little 3.6 volt regulator that boosts the 2.4 volts from the nickel metal hydride cells up through this inductor to 3.6 volts. We have the charge circuitry which is very simple. It doesn't have to be too complex or nickel metal hydride cells and the processor has some support components. Lots of positions to monitor the voltage presence of USB and stuff like that.

And then it's got two lines that go over to a dual mosfet package that switches the Transformers just to primary windings and it's got the Uh higher voltage secondary winding that goes through inductor and then has a capacitor and a resistor. Quite high value resistor in parallel with the ultrasonic transducer. Seems so simple when I describe it like that. the Transformer I'm not sure why the Transformer had this little pad on top I Think it may possibly have touched the topic case? Not sure, but as you can see in the picture, it was good.

down with the sticky glue to actually hold it in place, as was this inductor. So all the big components I mean it's a well-designed product. It is definitely well designed. Let's bring in the schematic and explore it.

Social Zoom Down This and it's divided into two sections here. the power supply and then the Uh. I'll show you the processor side about the transducer. So the USB Supply comes in and there are these resistors are rough measured values because they're such tiny resistors.

they're those horrible Ultra minute resistors. Loads of space in circuit board. but they choose these tiny resistors and which have the no no markings on them. It just makes it a bit harder to trace.

I Shouldn't confess to that or people have put me in everything. but there is a voltage divider and a capacitor and then it's the USB active which goes over to the processor. And what that means is that when you plug in the USB to power this to charge it, the processor knows that USB has been plugged in if the batteries were completely flat. Uh, when you first got it and you plugged it in.

What would happen is that this potential divider here would provide a gate signal. a base signal should say to this Npm transistor and that would pull down the Gate of this mosfet. The mosfet would then allow current to flow through this diode and this fixed value 12 Ohm resistor into the Nicometer anhydride cell and the processor can override that. If it wants to turn this off, it has a connection going over to the processor that it can pull out so it can, uh, basically say charge shut off.

That's what I think that is. The Nicomender hydride cells have a resistor and a capacitor for decoupling, and then that signal also goes out to the processor. So presumably that's a analog input and it can monitor the voltage across the two nickel metal hydride cells. Now, it's worth mentioning when you're charging a metal Hydrate cells, they can be trickle charged on an ongoing basis.

Normally the way you'd charge them is you'd look for negative Delta V The voltage gradually increases and then it suddenly dips down again as the electrolyte bubbles form the plates. It's not like lithium cells that you know. You get a nice decisive voltage that tells you whether it's charged or discharged and there's no decisive end of charge. State It's often done by temperature time or looking flat, either the voltage stomping at a certain level, not increasing any further or dropping slightly.

It's always a bit tricky, and often these charges will just basically go on a Time basis. and it's possible that processor, if it doesn't really monitor the voltage too much, it may just, uh. Basically, just as a last resort, use a time limit before it shuts the charging off and shows that the charging is complete. One of the advantages of nickel metal hydride? a huge advantage.

and I think the reason they've used them here is they've got a very stable voltage over the fuel discharge. Initially, they'll charge up to about 1.5 volts each, but that will quickly drop back to about 1.2 volts and then it will remain that at that level for almost the full discharge. and in this application, that is quite important. So that's giving a nice solid 2.4 volts.

which doesn't seem much, but it has been boosted in the next bit the circuitry as it's been boosted here because uh, this is a little uh Bush Regulator 2188d boosts up to well, your choice of voltages. This one was set for 3.6 volts. Uh, little 22 micro Henry inductor and loads of coupling capacitors. I've abbreviated it I've not shown all the decoupling capacitors.

They're everywhere as you'd expect. Anthony Ellsworth mentioned in power Supply Not really. Let's go to the exciting spicy bit. the processor.

Not sure what it is. the power goes in, it's a 14 pin processor and the peregrism and pin two and a pin 6 is a zero volt rail. Um, also worth mentioning, these pins three and five are connected to I'll just write in here. Three and five are connected to these simple I Didn't see the reconnect anything else.

did the 10K resistible look of it going down to capacitor and going to an input? Maybe for our internal voltage reference or oscillator? perhaps? I'm not really sure. Um, that's pin two and that was pin one, two, three four five, six. For the zero volt rail, there is a button input and that button has a little tiny capacitor across it just for uh, Probably because it's quite a long track. it's just to stop it being triggered accidentally by external interference.

So there's a little capacitor across that. So you get a decisive button. press the two LEDs There's a 95 Ohm resistor and one and a 100 Neutron resistor another. I'm going to guess that 95 is for the white LED which is a higher voltage um than the red LED which probably is the 180 which has a so the white one has a much lower voltage drop, so it's a lower value resistor.

That is a guess. The Transformer has three windings, it has two low impedance findings that are basically the verge of being able to measure on a standard meter. and it's got the higher winding which was six ohms I'd put these in at one Ohms uh. Each of the mosfets driving that in the Dual mosfet packages are 10K per day resistor and a 300 ohm uh gate resistor from the processor.

so that's I'll write that there as well 10K and 300 ohm. they will be alternating Microsoft forwards a frequency set by the processor. There's no real obvious means to provide feedback for Resonance of the Piezo so I'm guessing it's locked in the process and there is no crystals. So that does almost make me think that part of this is a load circuit for internal oscillator.

but I'm not sure. However, when it's uh operating, it goes and bursts. it just clicks on. and the duration of that is probably just because of it ran continually.

The dissipation from the piezoelectric transducer, which is this bit over here, would be quite high if it was running continually, but also it would turn your entire pint of Guinness into foam and that's not desirable. The output, and this is where it's the black Heart of Resonance has a 2200 micro Henry inductor that's this inductor here and then a capacitor after a fairly high voltage. I'd Gas 5.6 Nano Farad is what I measured in circuit and 100K resistor across it and then the piezoelectric transducer. The appears-electric transducer is chunkier than I was expecting and it's very nice.

Quite an interesting thing. Let me just, uh, bring in the next exhibit. Next exhibit please I Have to zoom back out for this. I Opened the piezoelectric transducer.

I Was actually just expecting a little Piezo disc in here, but in reality there is one. but it's in this little container and I can pull these out because I mean the whole lot's been pulled out to contain bits of cork bits of foam. It contained a little bit of circuit board material, it contained a little bit of metal, and this spring also randomly appeared in the bench. I'm not sure if that came from that or not, but there is a little tiny spring possibly involved in the mix at the bottom of this aluminum cup.

the bit that actually goes on and it looks like a proper decent transducer is the piezoelectric disc. with uh, possibly one connection onto the aluminum Cup and the other connection this very fine wire going on to the top then resist piece of foam. um I don't know if that why I went came through middle of the phone that may have done I wonder if they heat it and just stuff it through I'm not really sure how to do that. then there's a piece of cork I think the reason for the cork is to provide rigidity up top.

it may actually sit down in all. Edge I Don't see a ledge as such. Uh then was the a metal contact which may meet contact with the side of the coffin there for the back of the transducer and then a tiny little bit of circuit board material and as you can see from the goop, very hard to remove good very soft silicone. All that is put in place with the Silicon on the tops.

You end up with the sealed module with the bars coming out and uh, ultimately there's a void in here filled with foam and then the transducer on the bottom that excites the Guinness into nitrogen exhilaration. So what would the Chinese version look like? The Chinese version would cut every corner. It would use a lithium cell. It would use a standard little tiny Piezo disc just glued on in there and it probably wouldn't do a very good job of the of the nitrogenation as the Chinese products often do.

They tend to skimp in all the things that mattered. Um, it would also not be waterproof, watered, and this looks like it's done a really serious job of keeping the water out. This is this is a professional design. It's very good.

It's very neat. Um, but the Chinese coffee would be all about short and not about performance. Uh, wonder how that would work because you know the train is just coffee. Everything.

They'll They'll make an effort to copy this, but they won't. Uh, they won't spend money on the luxury components like the transformer in here. They'll probably just use an inductor that size with a tap off it just to go through the motions of ultrasonic energy. But uh, that is it.

It's quite a neat design. It's quite a chunky device and well, it works. As the nitrogenated Guinness flows through, it does release the nitrogen by forming that ultrasonic nucleation and uh, just causes surges of the foam as you saw at the beginning of the video. So it's a pretty neat device.

Very interesting and most impressive. Well, for Guinness I, wouldn't expect anything else. It is really well built.