Electronics

My main project has been paused while I waited for a shipment of components. Who knew I would need an XNOR gate IC?

Rescuing vintage microcontrollers from their decades-long purgatory in a drawer.

DIY rebuild project for the Tektronix PS503A dual tracking power supply.

Do you need 16 bytes of ROM that you can program with a soldering iron? Well, you’re in luck!

I’ve been working on Ben Eater’s breadboard 6502 computer project for a little while. The pins on the EEPROM sometimes get bent when I pry it out of the breadboard to reprogram it. I was afraid that they’d break eventually, so I looked into getting a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket to put on the board, which should be gentler on the EEPROM’s pins. Ran into a few problems though:

I built two circuits as similarly as possible 1) quad ua741 and dual NE5532. FFT on my Rigol scope showing peaks at 1k and 15k as set/expected (2 channels from Seesil generator are mixed with 1k signal at 80% of 15k signal amplitude) with this I believe I created a tool to do AM with my cheap Seesil generator and can also mix two audio signals.

Hobbyist/DIY guy in a garage. I use Linux. I have briefly tested Eagle and a couple circuit design apps but didn't like anything about any of them, did not spend sufficient time with them either, though. Eagle is going away? Any recommended apps for designing pcb and/or services? I am also open to more artisinal methods. What direction should I point my momentum? Not afraid to try things out but also not wanting to waste time. I have been breadboarding for a minute, learned to solder, benn making some pcb gadgets and think I am ready. Thank you. (Pic is audio mixer with two NE5532 and LM386)

Source: https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Vibration-Motors_Lian-Xin-Technology-XDMD-YB200-08_C47118014.html

This is an update to this post about the typical applications of the first op-amp by philbrick: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1l1whsq/in_the_50s_george_philbrick_introduced_and/

The SCD4x sensor from Sensirion measures CO₂, temperature, and humidity, and communicates these values via I²C.

I was reading up on the life expectancy of different building materials when I came across this gem.

Binner Makes Workshop Parts Organization Easy

You can do all sorts of nifty things when you're designing silicon. Including this abomination.

FR2 is the brownish material that many cheap circuit boards are made of. It's a mixture of phenolic resin and paper. Apparently it's quite useful to make gears out of:

Two different sizes shown. Each has two inductors (grey bits) stuck to a capacitor (middle) with some metal end caps acting as terminals. There is a third terminal underneath the capacitor. Grid in background is 1mm, pics stolen from LCSC.

This is UV sensitive solder mask resin, applied as thin as possible using a silk screen mesh. Afterwards it's heated at about 90C for 10 minutes. This makes it more sensitive to UV light by evaporating most of the solvent.

The thickness of the board beneath it gives deceptive scale. It's about 50mm tall and the toroid is 85mm in diameter.

A open source home automation mobile robot arm!

4 bit adder. Took me a few evenings this week to put together. Im quite happy that it worked first try without any bugs. Constructive criticism is encouraged.

This was my first try developing my own pcb with the toner transfer method. I did this project many years back but it works perfectly to this day.

We maintain a small fleet of RTK GPS systems (Emlid Reach RS+ units or similar). But sometimes they sit too long on the shelf and parasitic drain kicks in. The manufacturer recommends recharging every three months, but ooops, this one went too long. If the batteries are too low, the battery management system (BMS) won't charge the batteries at all when you attach the USB charger cable. In this case, the batteries were testing at 0.9V rather than the desired 3.4V.

Instrument is a Geonics EM16 VLF receiver, using in the mineral exploration industry to find buried linear conductors.

I got my hands on some really weird EL panels and did a little dive into how they work. I still have no idea where to get more but I think they may be DIY-able.

Built out my ploopy mouse today, it's been sitting on my shelf for a while. I got the self-assembly kit, had to solder on one through hole component.

A shortwave radio receiver from scratch using only cheap and easily available components, i.e. standard transistors, op-amps and 74xx logic chips. No typical radio parts – no coils, no variable capacitors, no exotic diodes.

Are you an engineer working on designing complex modern chips or System On Chips (SOCs) at the Register Transfer Level (RTL)? Have you ever been in one of the following frustrating situations?

Other side:

I picked this little scope up from the Seapac swap meet a week and a half ago for $3. It turns out that all it needed was some contact cleaner to get it working again.

A banger video about applying sintered traces to 3d printed models... BUT more interesting then that is the use of ChatGPT to "exfiltrate" unpublished formulas for the cooper plating solution.

This decade old electric cooler box gave up the ghost around 2 years ago, with the indoor outlet plug no longer working. The independent 12v input was still operational, so I kept it with the intention of *eventually* fixing it...

I've been in need of a bench supply for a while, up to this point I've been using little buck/boost boards with a multimeter to get the voltage I want when working on a project. The limitations of that started to show though, so I was after a more ideal solution.

Would anyone like to chime in. I recently made an MOT spot welder for 18650 nickel strips. I can reliably weld 0.2mm nickel. Although I do need a slit if I'm doing nickel <--> nickel (stacking for more amps).

Not my post/video. Link to mastodon.social post which then links to YouTube video.

As solder bump pitches shrink, several issues arise. Reduced bump height and surface area for bonding make it increasingly difficult to establish reliable electrical connections, necessitating precise manufacturing processes to avoid errors. Critical co-planarity and surface roughness become paramount, as even minor irregularities can compromise successful bonding.

Although you are probably not aware of them, dozens of electronic control units (ECUs) — printed circuit boards (PCBs) in metal or plastic housings — exist in your car to control and monitor the operation and safety of your vehicle’s many control systems. These units must work for the lifetime of your car, during which time they are subjected to many heating and cooling cycles. The most obvious cycle occurs when you start your car after it has cooled at night. It heats up as the car runs and then cools again when you shut it off. That’s one “ambient” temperature cycle.

Compared with traditional monolithic devices, the design and manufacturing process for chiplets is significantly different. The scrap costs associated with manufacturing traditional monolithic semiconductor devices is basically linear, including single chip cost, packaging, and assembly costs.

Many volume applications use FPGA because they need in-field reconfigurability (changing standards, changing algorithms, etc) but they want to improve their system’s competitiveness (power, size, cost). FPGAs are bulky, expensive and power hungry. Integrating eFPGA can greatly improve the economics while maintaining full reconfigurability and performance.

Topics covered in this informative video: potentiometer, electrical engineering, basic electronics, what is a resistor, resistors in series, variable resistor, power electronics, current limiting, Carbon film, carbon composite, Metal film, Potentiometer, Thermistor, RTD, LDR, Light dependant resistor, SMD, rheostat and much much more.

Using Intel CPU JTAG to dump the secret bootrom in Microsoft's original Xbox. Disclaimer: not my blog.