He's created a kit that a farmer can fit to their existing spray boom; spray heads are only activated when the system sees a weed, which cuts herbicide use and costs dramatically.
For farm use, the hat is hard to destroy and easy to repair: inputs are clamped, it handles reverse polarity everything and ESD everywhere. It aims to be self-documenting and easy to understand.
It includes a PCA9685 PWM controller for PWM up to 2A/channel, because I figured this might be good for LED control. I don't recommend trying to PWM a spray solenoid; you will be having a bad day.
Life lessons: wall wart power supplies don't last forever. Check that the output matches the label before you use a salvaged one for an electronics project.
Hmm, I've used #Electrodragon for many years. A smaller Asia/Pacific #electronics parts shop w a boutique feel. Small circuits, parts, modules, some used stuff, but fun all around.
They've been very good, and tho' a bit low on documentation I can usually get everything I acquire there working, tho' sometimes with a bit of effort.
A recent order isn't moving at all. Makes me worry they might be at the end of their run? Will try a query to see. Fingers crossed.
Glad to say that reaching out to the #maker supply folks at #Electrodragon received a prompt response.
My order was apparently dispatched already, just the admin work was a bit slow. Hope they're continuing to be the great source they've been for parts and gizmos for several years.
Throwing out all the old stuff. 709 and 741 opamps bought before they knew about static electricity. But in ceramic and metal cases! You just don't see that kind of thing any more. Not for a really, really long time.
@ericphelps Static, I remember it well. We'd spray fabric softener on the radio station carpet back in the 70’s, because touching automation equipment with any kind of static buildup would cause it to reboot, jump, freeze, or some other calamity.
That and "massaging the chips" because they were all in sockets (re: static) and their legs/contact got corroded due to the giant furnace of a power supply under the CPU boards.
Time to take a stab at this thing. The LM338k regulator has finally failed on this WhiteStar platform driver board. I wish there was a switching PSU replacement for it like there is for the LM323K used in WPC games.
The regulator is at the upper left corner with a huge heat sink. It runs quite hot!
@root42 From what I own, only one platform uses it and it has one of them. It produces 5v, 5A in these games and drives everything from the CPU to external devices that run on 5 volts.
On Friday, I had pan-fried, left over, macaroni cheese for dinner. The START / STOP buttons on my microowave have stopped working, so I couldn't reheat it.
I'm trying to fix the buttons now. They are on a flat plastic panel and seem to have contacts that get better contact when pressed, and I think that they now longer "spring" open again.
@volcan01010 Keypads like this are terrible, you're likely to break it even trying to separate the layers. If it's the front foil that has become distorted maybe glueing on an extra piece of a similar material could help it spring back? The only proper fix I can imagine is replacing the whole thing with either a part from another device of the same model or a custom PCB. A custom PCB to replace that thing would probably end up costing around 20$.
I learned some days ago how #moisture gets trapped inside #sealed enclosures used for #electronics when exposed to daily cycles of heat and cold.
The cold creates lower pressure inside. If that overpowers the seals, then outside air gets sucked in, carrying moisture. This extra moisture can condense inside and accumulate at the bottom.
In the next warm part of the cycle, if some air is expelled because of the higher pressure, that moisture is not carried out because it is in a liquid state.🧵
Repeat this a lot of times, and you will get the electronic circuit diving inside the enclosure 😂
I want to measure how the humidity and pressure fluctuate inside an enclosure that I'm prototyping for an industrial composting temperature sensor, so I assembled a quick hack with an Adafruit ESP32 Feather V2 running SensorWatcher that will report that every 10 minutes. The sensors are an HTU31D for humidity and a BMP388 for pressure.🧵
I bought a Razer headset on a whim while in the electronics store earlier. I don't think I will do that again. To get the fuil features I paid for I had to register and give more private details than I had to give for working in one of the biggest banks of Europe.
Why does an electronics company want those kind of details from me. Why do they want me to give all that to use what I already paid for?
If you're interested in #electronics and #software, you should follow us here in the Fediverse :-)
We try to share our new developments, discoveries and mistakes with you and look forward to a lively exchange!
From time to time we will also draw your attention to new blog posts on blog.zero-iee.com. If you don't want to miss anything, you've come to the right place! :-)
I'm looking for recommendations for things to help introduce someone to the world of electronics, both instructional materials and hands-on activities like kit building. I've run into a few people now who are really interested after learning about some project, like console modding or repair, and would love to increase their knowledge.
@sad_electronics I don't have any experience with M.2 specifically, but for PCIe 4x it was trivial to insert into the slot because the slot has a chamfered lead-in anyway, and with DDR3 DIMM it was a little trickier than normal but worked fine. based on how M.2 works mechanically I think it would be ok? the contacts themselves should center the board pretty well.
@sad_electronics I've used a bunch of non-chamfered boards for edge connectors, and I think it's fine for a few insertions. The specs on these connectors are often rather loose anyway. I've once managed to stuff a 1.2mm PCB into a nominally 1.0mm SFP+ socket.
We at ZERO GmbH have completed our first prototype to display our own content in vehicle on-board systems. The touch function of the display can also be used to write ZERO in the most beautiful font ✍️ 😅
So...why all this? With the help of our AMPS platform, our customer can easily show new designs or functions in a vehicle and bring them to life - without having to access the series components directly.
And "easily" really means "easily":
Connect computer viaHDMI => switch on via button or CAN => be happy 🥳
@proedie I mean, that would be super easy to do these days, with all the information that's out there. The whole retro computer thing is orders of magnitude more popular today than it was in 2013.
