So, see the picture? Got it? I’m such a dumbass sometimes.
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia article on DIP. Bonus to anyone that can tell me who thought of, and why, the pins are counter-clockwise vs clockwise.
Nobody leavz...
By staze
So, see the picture? Got it? I’m such a dumbass sometimes.
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia article on DIP. Bonus to anyone that can tell me who thought of, and why, the pins are counter-clockwise vs clockwise.
By staze
For a few years now, I’ve really wanted to monitor my water usage at the house, and like most American homes (or at least, every one I’ve seen), my analog water meter sits in the ground out by the street, making measurement a bit difficult. But, what little information is out there indicates that it should be doable with a Hall Effect Sensor (something that can “see” the spinning magnet within the meter, and output pulses). Then it’s just a matter of recording those pulses, and sending them back to my computer… enter the wild world of Arduino programming, and the wonder that is eBay and the inexpensive Chinese Arduino clones. But truthfully, what pushed me over to the idea of doing some Arduino projects (other than the really inexpensive Chinese options), was building a simple LED cube to stick in my office at work. 100x LED’s are only $4.75 or so from China, an Arduino Pro Mini knockoff is less than $3 (or just an DIP ATMega328p is about the same)… really just depends on how you want to set it all up. Anyway, I’ll try to have a new post about that a bit later. As well as one on how my water meter project is coming… the biggest issue with that is power. I either have to run some cat5 out to the meter to provide power, and return signal (I guess phone wire would work as well), or I need to have the unit run off batteries, and send the data back wirelessly (Xbee?). And obviously, if battery powered, I’m not going to want to go out and replace the batteries every week, so ideally 6months+ of runtime would be ideal… which may not be possible since the Hall Effect Sensor indicates it wants to draw about 4mA. =/
Anyway, these are the things I’m trying to work on in my “free time” (see previous posts about small child in the house). So yes, I’m showing up to this party a bit late, but maybe I had to do some analog work before I “graduated” to digital. I just wish I had learned C at some point in my learning programming before now.
But, a few things I’m working on project wise are:
So, all of that should keep me busy for a while… =)
By staze
Since getting into Electronics work, I’ve had my office organized like the picture on the left. And this worked just fine when all I had was a Fluke handheld meter, a bench power supply, and a scope. Maybe also the Function Generator. But when I added several bench multimeters, and stuff was getting shifted around, suddenly I couldn’t reach the desk work area with standard probe leads (5F), or the far right part with scope probes. So, for weeks now, I’ve been contemplating re-organizing to allow for easier use of my gear.
Then, the other day, I was watching a video by Ian Johnston, and I noticed he had his scope right above the desktop, which gave me the idea to put the scope above the monitor, move my server and drobo elsewhere, and then put all the rest of my testgear above the desk as well. At the same time, I was finally going to move my Airport Extreme into the linen closet in the center of the house to provide even coverage everywhere (and hopefully resolve the dead-spot in the dining room).
Two days later, with some extensive cleaning, and re-organizing, the picture at the right is the result. Obviously some serious cleaning has taken place between the two, but the general layout is the key change. And having just worked on a new project at the desk, I can say the new layout works MUCH better. I am able to run leads from the power supply to the desk (even the left side of the ESD mat), run a lead from the frequency counter (which has a 6′ lead), DMM leads, and a scope probe all to the same circuit and still have room to use the computer, which is advantageous since I’m working on a GPS Disciplined Oscillator that I needed to provide power, get serial output, check voltages, and check frequency output. So really, the new layout is great. Also, moving stuff off the shelf to the left let me purchase a modern Akro-Mills shelving unit to move nearly all my components to. I plan to buy another and wall mount them both, but I need to find the space for them both first. Sadly, the unit doesn’t quite fit between the shelving uprights. =/