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Platystemon posted:I think you hold the ENTER button for a second to start setting the temperature and that holding the other button fucks everything up, but I’m going by muscle memory here. I have a hard time remembering myself if I haven’t used that model in a while. Yeah, it is. I know that because it's completely counterintuitive UI design -- because 90% of the time the reason you change the temperature is to give it a little boost for some big heat-sinky part, so what do you want to do? Raise it UP. Obviously you do that by pressing UP, right? And it doesn't even like, blink "CAL" for a second before you start to adjust the temperature setpoint, either. You just get the exact same blinking 3-digit readout as when you adjust the temperature for real, but with a dot in the bottom this time! Obviously who could confuse those modes?? I've taken to just telling the students DO NOT ADJUST THE IRONS, YOUR SOLDERING ISN'T WORKING BECAUSE OF SOME REASON OTHER THAN TEMPERATURE and that works for most people, but there's always some smartass who thinks they know better and that's why I always zero the irons out before I use one. Also since I'm ranting I'm gonna rant about the people I find using the 888s to burn holes through plastic when not only do we have the proper tools (drill presses, punches, loving CNC mills, etc) but there are also lovely burnt-up Radio Shack irons RIGHT THERE for any garbage woodburning you need to do. Jesus loving Christ
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Feb 16, 2017 06:42
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Sagebrush posted:I've taken to just telling the students DO NOT ADJUST THE IRONS, YOUR SOLDERING ISN'T WORKING BECAUSE OF SOME REASON OTHER THAN TEMPERATURE and that works for most people, but there's always some smartass who thinks they know better and that's why I always zero the irons out before I use one. There’s a way to set a password on the FX‐888D so that it’s impossible to enter adjust mode without entering the password. I recommend that.
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Feb 16, 2017 06:52
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taqueso posted:Anyone got tips on using solder braid more effectively? I seem to have a hard time heating through the braid and getting solder to flow. Sometimes I end up soldering the braid to the pins. This is with lead-free solder and some (I think/hope) quality techspray braid with fairly active flux. I use some generic braid and a flux pen. Soak down the braid and the joint, lay the braid over the joint and apply the iron to the braid. If there is a lot of solder, I slide the braid as it is soaking up the solder. For cleaning through hole joints you're probably better off with one of those spring loaded solder suckers. Acid Reflux posted:dab the tip into your Hakko tip cleaner (if you don't have one of these, you're missing out on some goddamn magic) Agreed 100%. After using one, there is no way I'd go back to using a wet sponge. Skunkduster fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 14:36
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Here is my first big arduino project in progress that I've been working on as a side project at work. It is basically a battery tester that goes through four states: drain the battery to 6.7V, charge it for 4 hours, drain it to 6.7V and record the time it takes to drain, charge it again. I built it on a breadboard and got it working, then tried build a hardwired prototype and everything went to hell. A relay that is supposed to click on start wasn't clicking and I was getting garbage on the LCD. I had a few wires in the wrong place and thought I fried the arduino, so I spent a couple hours swapping that out (using jumper wires where I could - screw hardwiring everything). It still didn't work, so I swapped out the LCD next and it kind of worked, but the contrast bias wasn't working very well. I went to measure the bias voltage to see if it swept from 0-5V and realized I had soldered the bias wire to the ground side of the pot instead of the wiper  I finally got it all calibrated and working correctly last night, but there were a couple times I just wanted to give up. If it was a personal project, I probably would have given up, but the company had a couple hundred invested in this so far and the boss wouldn't have been to happy with me if I just said fuckitall.
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Feb 16, 2017 15:00
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gently caress you for getting paid for doing this is all I have to say about that
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Feb 16, 2017 21:41
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That tip cleaner's just a brass sponge right?
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Feb 18, 2017 20:45
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yup.
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Feb 18, 2017 21:54
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cakesmith handyman posted:That tip cleaner's just a brass sponge right?
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Feb 19, 2017 00:16
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I'd like to build my own jumper wires. The male ones are easy enough (solder a header pin to a wire and put heat shrink on) but I'd also like to make the square insulated female pins. I have a crimper, but have no idea what the part numbers are for the female crimp pins or insulating collars. Does anybody know where I can get them, or even better, a link to them on Digikey?
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Feb 19, 2017 13:34
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Good, because it's 30 quid over here but generic ones are 5.
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Feb 19, 2017 14:45
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SkunkDuster posted:I'd like to build my own jumper wires. The male ones are easy enough (solder a header pin to a wire and put heat shrink on) but I'd also like to make the square insulated female pins. I have a crimper, but have no idea what the part numbers are for the female crimp pins or insulating collars. Does anybody know where I can get them, or even better, a link to them on Digikey? I couldn't find the singles on Digikey, but what you're looking for is called a Dupont connector. I did find some generic stuff on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/SUNKEE-100pcs-Dupont-Connector-Housing/dp/B00CGXNFBK (housings) https://www.amazon.com/SUNKEE-Dupont-Jumper-Female-Connector/dp/B00CGWVFWW (contacts) I've been tempted to make these myself in the past, but I've found that unless you need some super custom length, it's easier to buy a pre-made ribbon cable and just peel off individual ones as needed. I'll admit to not really wanting to assemble fiddly little crimp connectors at home though, because that's kind of what I do for a living.  cakesmith handyman posted:Good, because it's 30 quid over here but generic ones are 5. Acid Reflux fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 15:25
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Acid Reflux posted:I couldn't find the singles on Digikey, but what you're looking for is called a Dupont connector. I did find some generic stuff on Amazon: Perfect thanks! I also hate crimping little fiddly connectors, but I'm doing it for work so I can't complain too much. There is no way in hell these can be worse than the tiny two part Amp coax pins I occasionally have to crimp at work. Those are the worst.
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Feb 19, 2017 16:29
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You're very welcome, hope they're not complete garbage. The worst thing I've had to deal with in recent months was Quadrax connectors, as part of an in-flight WiFi system installation. Thankfully one of the newer and slightly less jaded guys volunteered to do most of them. I don't know who designed them, but I'd like to kick him in the groin repeatedly until he apologizes. And then maybe some more after that. They were the size 19 style ones in this data sheet. Absolute chaos in a tidy little package.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:07
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coyo7e posted:find someone who can create housings and stuff for you, etc. Radio Shack still has enclosures in the US, if you care to pay for them. You can find a ton of enclosures on AliExpress that you can drill out to fit whatever buttons you want. Often enough those sellers will also cut out what you want, if you're talking about putting a small LCD screen, or something in your project.
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Feb 22, 2017 08:21
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SkunkDuster posted:Here is my first big arduino project in progress that I've been working on as a side project at work. ,,, I had a few wires in the wrong place and thought I fried the arduino, so I spent a couple hours swapping that out (using jumper wires where I could - screw hardwiring everything). ... (I like to color-code the wiring, which is difficult if you are buying the rainbow-flat-cable jumpers) I thought it was a really great idea until after a couple of incidents where I accidentally pulled out wires I didn't mean to, and then I stopped using this method totally. What I do now for the hobby stuff I build is I put .1" screw terminals on all the boards and then just use regular stranded or solid wire to join them. If you tin the wire tips you can leave a little blob of solder on the end, which helps the screw terminal hold on even better. They cost a bit (the .1" terminals cost more than the .2" ones) but the overall cost difference is still not huge, and the screw terminals work much better overall. I buy most of my electronics parts on Aliexpress. A lot of the sellers on Amazon are China-based now (so you get the same shipping times) and Amazon doesn't warn you about that. And Aliexpress has lower seller fees and a better buyer's refund policy. Also your multimeter is not a $500 Fluke. Now you must strip naked and go live in a cave for a year. :>|
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Feb 23, 2017 15:21
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I'm thinking about making an arduino-controlled glockenspiel, but I know next to nothing about midi. And while I know what an optoisolator does and how it works, I'm not sure why they're needed instead of say, a diode, beyond isolating from ground hum (which won't matter because the output is a relay to hit notes, not a speaker?) Basically I want: SD card with.mid -> arduino -> relays and stepper motor (position) and solenoid (strike a note) The ability to control a drum and cymbals or just generally other instruments would be great too, I assume there are standard channels for instrument assignment (even if they aren't 100% adhered to by midi makers) Are there any good resources you can suggest for getting started with arduino processing midi in into controlled output? There is of course a sea of information online but the fact that there's so much is why I'm asking if anyone's got any recommendations of where to start I don't mind if this is a "solved problem" and the answer is "this library, this code" or equally if "yeah arduino does midi but nothing like this, try taking some of this and some of that and seeing if you can mash it together"
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Feb 24, 2017 07:36
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Ok, well, in order: - I don't know why optoisolators have come up immediately, but they're usually used when you need to transfer a signal and absolutely cannot have an electrical connection for some reason (generally safety, extremely incompatible electrical systems, or both -- for instance if you want to do solid-state control of wall power). It's a totally different functionality from a diode, which is usually used to prevent the flow of current in one direction or to "drop" a little bit of voltage for various reasons. I can't think of a really critical reason your project might need optoisolators -- I think they're part of the MIDI hardware spec, but you're not going to be messing with that unless you plan to connect a MIDI keyboard directly to the Arduino. - the most difficult part of your project is (IMO) going to be building the MIDI parser, the bit of code that reads the file in order and sends the correct events at the correct times to the rest of your code. The bits that trigger the actuators are going to be relatively simple. - playing different instruments is just a matter of choosing the right actuator and connecting it appropriately to the Arduino. Solenoids will give you a much more powerful impact and they can operate faster than servos, but servos are easier to wire up. - I'd google "arduino MIDI library" and see what comes up, cause no, there's no native functionality for that but I'm sure someone has done a project exactly like yours before.
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Feb 24, 2017 08:02
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I started with optoisolators because every midi control circuit with arduino seems to have them, and as you say I can't think of a reason why they're on every design, even the ones that aren't getting the arduino to send midi rather than receive it. I was just saying, if it was to make sure signals only went one way, then surely a diode would suffice. It's the first question because that was originally going to be my only question, but figured what the hell and asked the rest. The midi parser is definitely the bit I'll struggle with, and where I'm really looking for help. I can do elecronics but I had never coded really, which is why I bought the arduino Playing different instruments as you say is a matter of geting the right actuator to hit the right thing, but that brings us back to parsing midi. I don't know how midi sends multiple instruments along the same cable (I'm guessing 8-bit headers or whatever they're called since midi has I think 127 channels that are used for different instruments) It's probably worth saying too that I am not concerned with volume other musical dynamics, beyond >play note and >stop playing note. Even the latter isn't important for percussion, which is why that's what I'm starting with. There are midi libraries, or at least one, that I'm going to look into, but at first glance it seems to be for turning button presses into midi input through the serial connection to a PC, when I want the other way round. (Sidenote: from searching it seems the vast majority of midi arduino stuff seems to be geared towards getting midi into your PC) It's the turning midi input into output signals that I don't know how to do. And yeah, I am googling about it too, not just expecting the thread to figure out my project for me, just if anyone knew off the top of their head and could steer me clear of dead-ends. Edits for typos, phoneposting on public transport is always fun Edit 2: I'm not very far into it, but the youtube channel Notes and Volts has a playlist called Midi for the Arduino that seems to be exactly what I was looking for, if anyone else is interested in this type of thing simplefish fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 08:28
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The optoisolator electrically separates the transmitter and receiver, and is part of the MIDI spec as a measure to prevent ground loops (audible noise) in the circuit. It may be less critical in these Moderne Tymes where things are generally more digital than analog, but I couldn't say for sure. I know I've seen Arduino circuits that use a transistor instead.
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Feb 24, 2017 13:19
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It can't hurt to have a few kV isolation when hotplugging things into your midi controller. The 'modern tymes' equivalent is a digital isolator. Instead of an LED and photo-transistor, it modulates a signal passed between the coils of a transformer. http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/technical-articles/MS-2234.pdf
taqueso fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 17:27
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I'm seeing these USB-C noise cancelling headphones and the electronics look itty bitty, their solution probably has some fancy custom DSP, but it can't be that hard to read a waveform, then inject the inverse waveform into the audio stream? I don't get how these guys are getting $200 for what should be pretty simple technology. The Arduino is probably woefully underpowered for this task, but Ti probably has some off the shelf DSP that's up to the task that you can program via i2c?
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Mar 3, 2017 03:17
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Hadlock posted:I'm seeing these USB-C noise cancelling headphones and the electronics look itty bitty, their solution probably has some fancy custom DSP, but it can't be that hard to read a waveform, then inject the inverse waveform into the audio stream? I don't get how these guys are getting $200 for what should be pretty simple technology. If you find something please report back. There is a lot of bullshit pricing in audio tech, so you might be on to something.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:05
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Is the Humble Book Bundle wrt Arduino any good? Worth getting?
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Mar 4, 2017 09:12
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Splode posted:If you find something please report back. There is a lot of bullshit pricing in audio tech, so you might be on to something. AMS have a range of active noise cancellation chips in the couple of dollar per unit range, but I can't speak to their effectiveness. When a friend of mine received an evaluation board for a casual prototype, the board was missing some components and AMS did not respond to queries about what was missing. Didn't leave the best impression.
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Mar 4, 2017 10:19
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I'm very, very new to this and would like some more info on how best to learn coding for arduino. Should I learn c++ or something first?
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Mar 4, 2017 10:35
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Buy an Arduino starter kit and follow the free tutorials.
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Mar 4, 2017 10:40
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cakesmith handyman posted:Buy an Arduino starter kit and follow the free tutorials. I have, but it doesn't seem like I can learn to write from scratch from this
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Mar 4, 2017 10:54
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a7m2 posted:Is the Humble Book Bundle wrt Arduino any good? Worth getting? I mean if you can't be asked to even link to the bundle then
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Mar 4, 2017 12:13
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bad posts ahead!!! posted:I have, but it doesn't seem like I can learn to write from scratch from this Steal code from tutorials and slowly try and work out what each line does and why. Learning C may be more helpful than C++ depending on your educational background and how your brain works.
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Mar 4, 2017 12:55
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bad posts ahead!!! posted:I have, but it doesn't seem like I can learn to write from scratch from this What do you want to achieve? How have you historically learnt a new skill best? Personally I learn best practically so a starter kit and tutorials works best for me. I setup the board and compile the tutorial code, reading through and trying to understand what it's trying to achieve. I then edit the code to make it do something slightly different, sometimes it works, sometimes not, but every time I fix it I learn something. As I progress I can make bigger changes and eventually I want to make a set of simple robot controllers for my kids lego, a word clock etc and I'm relearning all the electronics I sort of learnt 15 years ago then never used.
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Mar 4, 2017 14:48
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coyo7e posted:I never heard of this bundle, don't know how to get included in chances for upcoming bundles, and everyone is excepted to just know that poo poo off the top of their fedora Sorry I don't really understand what you're saying. Are you asking me to link the bundle? https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-arduino-and-raspberry-pi
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Mar 4, 2017 16:12
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ITT: people using a browser without highlight→context menu→Google function
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Mar 4, 2017 16:13
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bad posts ahead!!! posted:I have, but it doesn't seem like I can learn to write from scratch from this Which starter kit did you buy? I teach Arduino stuff to artists and designers (i.e. not computer science people or math people) and I find that nearly anyone can pick up the basics of blinking LEDs and making squealy noises with a light sensor within a couple of classes. If you have a good starter book, like the one that comes with the official kit or the Sparkfun kit, following those exercises should get you going. Also, get the Humble Bundle linked above https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-arduino-and-raspberry-pi As noted I'm a pro at this and I still bought all 21 of those books because they look great and I'm sure there's something to learn in all of them.
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Mar 4, 2017 19:08
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Thanks Sagebrush, you've convinced me to get all of them too.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:49
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bad posts ahead!!! posted:I have, but it doesn't seem like I can learn to write from scratch from this Find a canned project that you're interested in, and follow the code. Stepping a motor is logically equivalent to blinking an LED fast, usually.
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Mar 7, 2017 00:40
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What are some examples of arduino projects that have well structured, well written code, ideally making use of different libraries and interfacing with different hardware components (i.e. sensors, 7 segment displays, relays)? I'm embarking on project and would like some good examples to emulate/reference. Articles/books on the best practices for this sort of thing would be appreciated, too.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:19
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rawrr posted:What are some examples of arduino projects that have well structured, well written code, ideally making use of different libraries and interfacing with different hardware components (i.e. sensors, 7 segment displays, relays)? Depending on how much code you want to go through, the Marlin firmware for the RepRap is a pretty good example of using sensors, moving motors, and printing stuff to LCD screens. If that's not something you want to read, Adafruit has a ton of projects in their learn system that are structured well, commented well, and are useful examples of how libraries work.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:49
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I'd start with the Adafruit stuff 100%. Marlin is full of hacks and macros and non-Arduino C code and overall it's tens of thousands of lines of spaghetti logic wrapped up in a gigantic switch/case statement. I wouldn't wish that on any beginner.
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Mar 9, 2017 07:36
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Sagebrush posted:spaghetti logic wrapped up in a gigantic switch/case statement. This is the best summary of that code I have ever seen.
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Mar 9, 2017 08:51
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Sagebrush posted:I'd start with the Adafruit stuff 100%.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:11
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