Random candle-imitating flicker is a good start, but if we can use PWM as well…
MAKE IT SO!
Recent Comments
Arduino
Blogroll
KiCad
Links
My 2µF
Weller WMRP RT3 — teardown
As I told you in the previous post, the tip has had it. The plating has eroded away, which makes the tip unusable. Sadly there’s no way to replace just the tip, the perfectly healthy heater has to be trashed as well. So I decided to have a look inside!
As you can see, there’s not much in there. All the magic happens inside the small steel tube. The heater / temp-sensor still work by the way! But now it is quite useless and I have to order a replacement right away. When the thing is on and has reached 300°C, you can touch the tube inside the body without getting burned. It barely gets warm. The heating element is indeed at the very end of the tube, right inside the soldering tip. Makes sense. The temp-sensor is in there as well.
Collateral damage:
The 3mm end-mill was damaged some more. It wasn’t in perfect shape to begin with, but now a piece close to its tip broke off. After milling away quite a lot of material, the vice lost its grip on the body and the thing started to rattle. I immediately stopped the mill, but the damage was already done. Now I have a reason to get a few new tiny end-mills as well. The 1mm spear-drill survived the slot-cutting just fine.
I burnt a couple of fingers on my left hand. I ‘forgot’ that I had just powered the iron and mindlessly picked it up – of course I touched the business end of it.
Soldering iron tip erosion — Weller WMRP RT3
I’ve been having difficulty soldering properly with well-established settings for quite some time now. I’ve had to set the temperature to 400°C – just to get borderline decent operation. I measured the temperature as well and it was fine.
Looking at the tip closely revealed significant erosion, hence lack of physical contact with the PCB and miserable heat transfer.
Small project #5 — Pentax s5z LED ring for macro shots
My trusty Pentax S5z still works reliably. I’ve had it for 8 years now. It doesn’t shoot HD videos and it requires a couple of replacement batteries now and then, but it makes quite nice macro shots (with the help of an additional lens, which is the magnifier lens in one of my Swiss-Army-Knives).
One problem with macro shots is how to get sufficient light to the object. This LED ring will slip over the extended objective and I hope it will brighten things up quite a bit.
Want one? Check out tindie.com.
Posted in Electronics.
Tagged AVR, camera, digital, illumination, LED, light, macro, Pentax, S5z
Comments Off
Small project #3 — IR controlled MOSFET with PWM
Want one? Check out tindie.com
This little thing is a variation of a previous project, but now with a majority of the parts in SMD packages. Needles to say it is also a lot smaller. The 2nd biggest difference is the added logic-level MOSFET that can be used a plain low-side switch, but also supports PWM. When I made this board I was thinking about remote controlling 12V LED strips, not the addressable kind, but the simple mono-colour ones that run all the LEDs in parallel. Fortunately, most of the code can be reused.
Small project #2 — MBI5030 starter board
Want one? Check out tindie.com.
Macroblock MBI5030, 16-ch constant current LED driver with PWM, SPI-like interface, requires external grayscale clock. Known-good source: Kingelectronics, latest datasheets.
Find the bug!
I ordered a couple of parts from MicrochipDirect. The overall experience was very positive: rather quick delivery, very reasonable shipping costs (considering it was sent by courier).
Oh, I forgot to name the part ;-) MCP1804
Have a look at the invoice and find the bug.
Posted in Electronics.
Tagged bug, invoice, MCP1804, Microchip, MicrochipDirect, parts, SMD, SOT23-5
3 Comments
Wiggler — How long can you stand it?
The next revision is a bit smaller, just 25×23 mm, and contains an indicator LED.
It’s only got 2 frames. Staring at it long enough makes it look better I think. Quite fascinating how much interpolation is done in the brain.
Digging deeper — MRIed
Today I’ll post about something not directly related to my electronics projects.
I’m an avid biker, the pedal driven thing, not the one for lazy folk – or at least I used to be. For quite some time I’ve been plagued with a sharp and insidious pain in my right knee. It doesn’t strike every time I stress my right knee, but when it does… you just don’t want to have something like that. It has become a safety issue as well. Just imagine you NEED to accelerate and push as hard as you can and suddenly your right leg buckles due to pain. You could very easily tip over in mid action and break your neck. No good at all.
Posted in Dear Diary.
Tagged B-field, flux density, frequency, health, knee, magnetic, medicine, MRI, resonancy, science, shim, technology, tomography
Comments Off
Happy New Year 2013
Created with xscreensaver / fireworkx
GOTO 1
Got a new Kindle and no WLAN support on your router?
What’s the motivation? You CAN transfer e-books to the Kindle via USB cable, BUT that leaves a lot to be desired. Browsing the Amazon Kindle store is a very nice feature that I wouldn’t want to miss anymore. There are quite a lot of FREE e-books, mostly older stuff with expired copyrights, that are worth reading. Quite often you can also download free samples of books – a good way to decide if you want to make a purchase or not. The whole process is very streamlined if WiFi is available.
Here’s one way to solve it if you have a linux machine with free USB ports. This is nothing new, but as I’ve just been through all of this, I might as well write it down here. I think the involved tools deserve another mentioning. As there are many (too many?) flavours of linux distributions out there, I won’t give en-detail instruction on every single step. I will only give pointers on what to do.
Posted in Electronics., Server., Software.
Tagged access point, amazon, bridged, hostapd, Kindle, linux, network, usb stick, WLAN
2 Comments
WaveAce 224 — Refunded !
Thanks again to everybody who was involved: eevblog and LeCroy’s current CEO Mr. Reslewic. A special thank-you goes to Hilary Lustig (also with LeCroy) for getting the machinery started.
I’m glad LeCroy have handled it that way.
This finally concludes the series of posts and videos about the LeCroy WaveAce 224 digital oscilloscope.
Picked up and gone!
Today I received a call by DHL, which confirmed the pickup day and time.
The WaveAce 224 was successfully picked up today at 12:09 and is now on its way to LeCroy Switzerland.
Posted in Electronics.
Tagged DHL, express, lecroy, pickup, return, shipment, WaveAce 224
Comments Off
I’m back — Why is buying a new graphics card so difficult?
My good old Nvidia 7600GT started crapping out. It has crashed my computer several times, leaving semi-permanent artifacts on the screen. I discovered that the heatsink doesn’t touch some of the RAM chips, which might explain just that. Why it started to act up NOW I don’t know. It isn’t particularly warm this ‘summer’.
Dummy load V1.00 completed
Now I’ve finally got all the parts and the new circuit boards as well. The remaining 4 boards and 5 full DIY kits are available for fellow electronics addicts. You’ll find all the stuff on the projects page.
Packaging was pretty unpleasant. Too many tiny SMD parts to sort through. I think I will stick to PCB-only offers in the future – maybe PCB + awfully hard to get parts.
I received an email today…
The sender was the current CEO of LeCroy, Thomas H. Reslewic.
I’m glad they have finally taken action. I was offered a full refund. I hope they will also look into all the WaveAce 224 issues I’ve documented so far – and have them fixed!
I won’t be making any new WaveAce 224 related videos. Our ways will part pretty soon and I’ll be looking for a suitable replacement – which will take a while. Of course this time I will subject any candidate to a rigorous in-person close examination before I hand over the money.
Time to move on.
WaveAce 224 — Mini rant #12: Boot-screen update + DATA
I made the effort to measure and evaluate some data. The boot splash time is definitely dependent on the timebase setting. Happy happy joy joy!
If you or someone else left the scope with a particularly large timebase value, you might be waiting for up to 10 minutes – unless you finally decide to press a button. Still this is madness!
