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Kasan posted:I too am an EET student. One of the college magazine things stated that the "average" starting pay for an EET (2 year graduate) was $56k per year. (based on national averages and job studies by the department of labor (2011 figures))  For EET? A good tech who isn't a lazy sack of union/redneck poo poo is worth a ton, but didn't think it was that much.We don't have techs at our place right now, but at my old company, there were two goddamned wizards who could solder anything in existence. The other four techs napped all the time and got annoyed when you asked them to do work, and were pretty racist, so that sucked.
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Dec 21, 2012 16:42
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Not salary related, but we love the tech at work. Makes our lives ten times easier, and improves our development time since prototyping is much quicker. EEWeb's weekly comic makes me think all techs are nothing more than solder bitches when they start out  edit (to avoid double post): movax posted:
By contrast the starting salary for an Electrical/Electronics Engineer with a BA was $86k, and a masters or engineering degree was over $120k. Pretty staunch difference what two years of schooling can make. Kasan fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Dec 21, 2012 |
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Dec 21, 2012 16:43
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Kasan posted:EEWeb's weekly comic makes me think all techs are nothing more than solder bitches when they start out I don't think you should believe those figures at all.
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Dec 21, 2012 21:27
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Kire posted:I don't think you should believe those figures at all. Well, considering they're listed as a national average, I'd assume the real figures could fluctuate ±25% easily. Like I said, I know $20/hr is the starting wage out here for recent graduates with no OTJ experience ($41,600/yr before taxes) with regular pay increases. (by contrast, the reps said that prior experience and regular employment (instead of apprenticeship program) usually starts at $30/hr with a cap at $36.) Another company out here I know starts off higher, but its a government contractor and requires all the hoo-haa that comes with it. (Of course, chicks dig it when you tell them you have a government security clearance. 'Yeah baby, I may smell like ozone but I've got a secret clearance.') Content Edit: I'm taking the plunge into microcontrollers and having some trouble finding readable information about the different flavors of assembly. Is there a good resource for PIC, Atmel and Maxium (8051 specifically)? I've been burning my monthly samples from various suppliers/manufacturers and have a sizable amount of ICs to start making blue smoke with. Also, does anybody have an experience or success making your own USB sound card? Texas Instruments has a couple chips out apparently that are dual channel 16bit ADCs w/ built in USB that doesn't require any driver programming in windows (and supposedly linux). They're more expensive than an inexpensive pair of speakers, but I like the idea of DIY. Kasan fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Dec 21, 2012 |
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Dec 21, 2012 21:49
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±25% might be conservative. I'm in software, but I know that if I were to move from where I am to, say, California, I'd expect roughly a twofold increase in compensation for the exact same job. That is, 200% my current wages.
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Dec 21, 2012 21:58
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Not salary related, but we love the tech at work. Makes our lives ten times easier, and improves our development time since prototyping is much quicker. Jesus christ yes. While I taught myself electronics by building all my own poo poo, after a while I got tired of building stuff. The techs in our lab are all pretty skilled at building prototypes, troubleshooting (and repairing) damaged pre-production and production hardware, and generally giving me more time to work on my stuff.
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Dec 21, 2012 22:50
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Kasan posted:I'm taking the plunge into microcontrollers and having some trouble finding readable information about the different flavors of assembly. Is there a good resource for PIC, Atmel and Maxium (8051 specifically)? I've been burning my monthly samples from various suppliers/manufacturers and have a sizable amount of ICs to start making blue smoke with. I know free samples seem really great, and I got thousands of different free samples when I was a student, but for starting with microcontrollers, nothing can beat some sort of dev board or training board. Usually something with a socket for a specific mcu (or multiple different sockets), a bank of LEDs, an LED or LCD display, a number of buttons, spare i/o headers, built in power supply and a space for a breadboard. Alternatively, something bare bones like an arduino, but permanently mounted on a plate with a breadboard. It's such a time saver to always have a huge selection of i/o hardware available, especially when it's not something you will build on a bread and inevitably disassemble before you need it again. As for assembly, there are tons of text books on embedded systems to get you started with that. Most texts will either choose a single microcontroller, a few different devices (with code for each), or an entire (but extremely similar) line of them. Really, they'll all be pretty much the same. Different versions of ASM will have more or less instructions, different addressing modes, etc...Any good text will give you a pretty broad overview and will cover the instructions that everyone uses, as well as the processor-specific variations that can make certain specific tasks slightly easier. quote:Also, does anybody have an experience or success making your own USB sound card? Texas Instruments has a couple chips out apparently that are dual channel 16bit ADCs w/ built in USB that doesn't require any driver programming in windows (and supposedly linux). They're more expensive than an inexpensive pair of speakers, but I like the idea of DIY. I looked at what TI has, and it's kind of dumb--it's just a monolithic USB DAC without anything special. It's not really a sound card, since it lacks the ability to do any sort of additional processing by itself. I mean, the very first ones probably didn't either, but still! If you want to make an actual "sound card", your best bet is looking into DSPs. For instance, this will do that out of the box: http://www.ti.com/tool/tmdx5535ezdsp DSP programming requires more background than microcontrollers, but I think TI has some learning material available.
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Dec 21, 2012 23:03
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I've looked at building a combined USB DAC + analog amplifier and ti's DAC selection seemed like a good place to start. The end result I had in mind didn't need any DSP functionality. I've used that DSP Dev board as well and it seems like overkill for this task. Plus, it doesn't Just Work when plugged into the USB bus.
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Dec 22, 2012 00:39
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If you're looking at AF, wouldn't a cheapo USB sound device fit the bill?
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Dec 22, 2012 02:31
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I got this neat geiger counter kit for christmas and managed to put it together in just under two hours. I'm quite satisfied with it as it worked the first time I turned it on, and now it's happily clicking away in the corner. Anyway, I'm going back over the circuit to try to understand exactly how it works, and I've gotten most of it (the detector circuit, the microcontroller, etc) but I have no idea how the high voltage supply works. Here's the schematic: A 555 timer, inductor, two transistors and a bunch of resistors, capacitors and diodes? Huh? What does the 555 even have to do with anything, I thought that was just for making signals, timing, switching etc? Sorry if this is kinda a basic question but I've never encountered a HV supply quite like this in my electronics hobbying before 
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Dec 27, 2012 00:17
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Your image isn't showing up for me, but could it possibly be the PWM driver for a switching power supply?
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Dec 27, 2012 00:20
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:A 555 timer, inductor, two transistors and a bunch of resistors, capacitors and diodes? Huh? What does the 555 even have to do with anything, I thought that was just for making signals, timing, switching etc? Sorry if this is kinda a basic question but I've never encountered a HV supply quite like this in my electronics hobbying before http://www.ledsales.com.au/kits/nixie_supply.pdf Here is a similar circuit with an explanation. The 555 is being used as a controller for the switching supply. Not really what it's designed for, and probably not as efficient or accurate as a dedicated IC, but it works. EDIT: Here is a description of the circuit that one was based off of: https://sites.google.com/site/diygeigercounter/circuit-description Delta-Wye fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Dec 27, 2012 |
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Dec 27, 2012 00:24
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Delta-Wye posted:http://www.ledsales.com.au/kits/nixie_supply.pdf Ah thanks, that makes sense.
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Dec 27, 2012 00:39
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I use a Yamaha SR-50 amplifier for my computer audio, and it has served me well for many years. However, the speaker protection circuit has been cutting in and out at random recently. You can tell because, apart from sound stopping, you can hear the relay click on or off when it happens. I opened it up and there were no obvious problems to an electronics noob. That is, no swelled caps, no dodgy-looking solder joints etc. I wiggled the relay a little to see if it was secure and all seemed well. Putting the amp back together now and it's not made any sound since. I made it worse. I'd like to swap the relay out as a simple test as it's something I can do myself. If that fails I'll send it to a repair shop. The part, however, seems hard to come by here in Australia, and US suppliers want $50-$100 for freight for a $5 part! Can someone who knows anything about this sort of thing suggest a replacement I might be able to source locally? Here's what I know: Printed on the original: Matsushita JR2aD –DC24V ADJ39016 2a 125V AC, 30V DC It's about 27mm long and 12 wide and about 15mm high, using a lovely ruler that was handy. Suggested replacement from Googling and reading forums: Omron G2RL-2A-DC24 I tried RS Components but couldn't find anything quite close enough. I don't know what values in that relay I can have be higher or lower and still work okay. Thanks.
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Dec 27, 2012 00:48
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The trigger voltage will need to be the same, the rest are fairly flexible in the upwards direction. I suppose the current draw of the coil can be the same or lower. Should be cheap to find a replacement, IMO the hardest part will be mechanical compatibility.
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Dec 27, 2012 01:34
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Hi all. I am starting to learn the super ultra basics of electronics after becoming frustrated with not being able to repair or build my own simple guitar effects pedals. I know how to read a schematic, albeit fairly basically, and am about to order some kits online from BYOC/GGG to tinker with. My goal is to start from a simple signal buffer, to more complex dirt/functional pedals, then maybe one day to building my own little practice amps. A bit of electronics knowledge never hurts during the unending search for tone as well. What kind of soldering iron would you experienced guys recommend someone get as a beginner? I understand small electronics jobs can get frustrating without a good temperature control and would like to steer clear of any terrible ones in order to make the learning process as streamlined as possible.
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Dec 27, 2012 06:24
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niff posted:Hi all. I am starting to learn the super ultra basics of electronics after becoming frustrated with not being able to repair or build my own simple guitar effects pedals. I know how to read a schematic, albeit fairly basically, and am about to order some kits online from BYOC/GGG to tinker with. My goal is to start from a simple signal buffer, to more complex dirt/functional pedals, then maybe one day to building my own little practice amps. A bit of electronics knowledge never hurts during the unending search for tone as well. Hako FX-888
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Dec 27, 2012 06:44
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SnoPuppy posted:Hako FX-888 This looks good, although pricey in NZ/Australia. If that is the standard price for soldering stations here, though, then I guess that's what I may have to do!
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Dec 27, 2012 07:40
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niff posted:This looks good, although pricey in NZ/Australia. If that is the standard price for soldering stations here, though, then I guess that's what I may have to do! http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WLC100-40-Watt-Soldering-Station/dp/B000AS28UC/ This Weller WLC100 is about half the price on amazon as the Hako and I've been using it for a while for all sorts of stuff (including small SMD stuff). It sounds like most of what you're going to be doing will be through-hole stuff and it will do that just fine if you can find it for an agreeable price.
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Dec 27, 2012 08:33
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Delta-Wye posted:http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WLC100-40-Watt-Soldering-Station/dp/B000AS28UC/ I have a Weller WPCPT and its been a reliable workhorse. I'm not sure why it's more expensive than these others now, it was cheaper when I bought it but that was about 12 years ago. Take it as a weller endorsement I guess...
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Dec 27, 2012 08:54
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Delta-Wye posted:http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WLC100-40-Watt-Soldering-Station/dp/B000AS28UC/ I got this one for Christmas and it works great. My dad has almost the same model which he bought twenty years ago and it still works fine even though he's assembled countless projects with it (though he replaced the tips a few times I think)
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Dec 27, 2012 09:41
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Double post, sorry 
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Dec 27, 2012 09:42
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movax posted:The trigger voltage will need to be the same, the rest are fairly flexible in the upwards direction. I suppose the current draw of the coil can be the same or lower. Thanks for the info. The trigger voltage in this case is 24VDC? I don't know a thing about relays.
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Dec 27, 2012 10:29
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:(though he replaced the tips a few times I think) Extending Tip Life
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Dec 28, 2012 01:55
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I'm thinking about building a multi-station USB charger with micro-USB connectors. I've sourced some durable-looking PC mount connectors from Digi-Key and I've been looking at the pinout/specs for USB...do I need to do anything other than provide constant, regulated 5V? I'll be charging stuff like cell phones or accessories that have their own batteries and charging circuitry built-in.
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Dec 28, 2012 17:53
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Gromit posted:Thanks for the info. The trigger voltage in this case is 24VDC? I don't know a thing about relays. Yep, it runs off 24V at some current draw, so you'll want to match that as closely as possible (a lower current draw is fine).
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Dec 28, 2012 18:12
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Powdered Toast Man posted:I'm thinking about building a multi-station USB charger with micro-USB connectors. I've sourced some durable-looking PC mount connectors from Digi-Key and I've been looking at the pinout/specs for USB...do I need to do anything other than provide constant, regulated 5V? I'll be charging stuff like cell phones or accessories that have their own batteries and charging circuitry built-in. I did something like this once, and yeah basically you just need a good steady 5V and ground and most things will just suck as much juice as they can. You might want to be careful in this regard as having many devices connected will suck a surprisingly high amount of current. The USB spec is only supposed to go up to 500 mA but some things can take as much as 5 loving amps when charging if they just try to suck up whatever is available, according to Wikipedia.
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Dec 28, 2012 18:43
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Charging an iPhone or similar device can take between 0.5A, 1A for an iPhone and something like 2A for an iPad and you need to provide resistors to the D lines to indicate how much current it is allowed to draw. The values and wiring is available many places online, test it on a breadboard with a current meter first. This is a little neat since it lets the charger tell the device exactly how much current is allowed. Charging phones with micro-USB power you short D+- together and they try to draw something like 1A, I think there may be a way of indicating even more current being allowed by putting a resistor between the lines. 1A is the standard charger size for phones though. I recommend using one or more switch mode converters though, I'd figure 1A per outlet, but maybe provide an iPad outlet with dedicated 2A. For high fidelity, switch mode pre-regulator and linear regulator on the output, good quality caps and inductors to filter the power. Power quality is important for smart-phones since noisy power interferes with touch screens making them unreliable. So I'd suggest 12V input and some voltage step-down modules with switch mode converters for about 2-3A output, 6-8V, pi LC-filter into a 7805 (or a better LDO version, for lower power dissipation) powering two ports. With good converters you could probably get away with dropping the 7805 and just passive filtering on the output though.
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Dec 28, 2012 19:26
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:I did something like this once, and yeah basically you just need a good steady 5V and ground and most things will just suck as much juice as they can. You might want to be careful in this regard as having many devices connected will suck a surprisingly high amount of current. The USB spec is only supposed to go up to 500 mA but some things can take as much as 5 loving amps when charging if they just try to suck up whatever is available, according to Wikipedia. Yeah, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note and it needs a 2.1A charger to charge effectively. "Normal" USB wall chargers are about 1A these days, it seems. I plan to put in sufficient protection for each individual connector, and the power supply section will be beefy. longview posted:Power quality is important for smart-phones since noisy power interferes with touch screens making them unreliable.  Holy poo poo, you just explained the mystery of why the touchscreen on my phone acts weird when I have it plugged in to a cheap rear end Chinese charger.
Powdered Toast Man fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Dec 28, 2012 |
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Dec 28, 2012 19:38
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Powdered Toast Man posted:
Yeah, it takes some surprisingly complicated filtering algorithms to make newer capacitive touchscreens work with good chargers, let alone crappy ones. This is generally a major design challenge that is planned for in development of newer phones and tablets.
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Dec 28, 2012 19:46
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Double-regulating and an LC filter is a bit overkill, though. The solution is to use a slightly-less cheap-rear end Taiwanese charger (or DC/DC converter if you're building your own). For iDevices, Apple puts resistor voltage dividers on the D+ and D- lines. There's information around the net, lots of people have reverse engineered it for just this purpose. It's pretty simple to do, I built a charger (and audio line out adapter) for mine. If you don't care about iPads you can just short D+ and D- together (although it occurs to me I'm not sure how other tablets sense charge current, or if they bother, and I'm not sure if the new connector changes anything).
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Dec 28, 2012 19:48
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longview posted:Charging an iPhone or similar device can take between 0.5A, 1A for an iPhone and something like 2A for an iPad and you need to provide resistors to the D lines to indicate how much current it is allowed to draw. The values and wiring is available many places online, test it on a breadboard with a current meter first. If you bumped the input voltage a bit (a non-problem pretty much as we're using those switcher converters) to 16-18V, you could use a common laptop power adapter for input. Might simplify. After Wozniak posted his insane octopus charger rig I seriously considered building something like this and mailing it to him, because that poo poo was shameful.
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Dec 28, 2012 20:47
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This discussion reminds me of something i was thinkking about recently. I have a Lenovo laptop that I sometimes use to charge my galaxy nexus. Ive considered trying to make a fast charge cable by shorting the data pins on the device side, and paralleling two or three of the laptop USB ports for power. I wonder though if these ports are already in parallel and capable of outputting the full current on their own. Or if there are actually individual 5v power circuits on each port. Is it likely that the indivudual ports have built in current limiting for protection? I wonder if the port would fry itself if shorted.
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Dec 28, 2012 21:03
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peepsalot posted:I wonder if the port would fry itself if shorted. This is the most likely outcome imo
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Dec 28, 2012 22:02
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Jonny 290 posted:If you bumped the input voltage a bit (a non-problem pretty much as we're using those switcher converters) to 16-18V, you could use a common laptop power adapter for input. Might simplify. Please do. He might send you a signed Segway.
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Dec 28, 2012 22:36
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Jonny 290 posted:If you bumped the input voltage a bit (a non-problem pretty much as we're using those switcher converters) to 16-18V, you could use a common laptop power adapter for input. Might simplify. Yeah anything from 9-30V would work with the modules I've used, at that level it's just about calculating in terms of power in vs. power out, 12V 2A and 24V 1A is basically the same.
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Dec 28, 2012 22:49
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peepsalot posted:This discussion reminds me of something i was thinkking about recently. I have a Lenovo laptop that I sometimes use to charge my galaxy nexus. Ive considered trying to make a fast charge cable by shorting the data pins on the device side, and paralleling two or three of the laptop USB ports for power. I wonder though if these ports are already in parallel and capable of outputting the full current on their own. Or if there are actually individual 5v power circuits on each port. Is it likely that the indivudual ports have built in current limiting for protection? I wonder if the port would fry itself if shorted. There is usually a USB power switch IC or similar for the ports, and their over current outputs are usually routed to the EC or straight to the chipset so it can notify the OS / take action when an OC condition happens. The EC is more common on mobile platforms, I think.
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Dec 28, 2012 22:56
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Well, I've always wanted to make my own switching regulator circuit. There's something beautiful about them (like the tiny Apple cube chargers). Could probably get a cheap surplus DC-DC converter, though.
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Dec 29, 2012 02:09
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I don't know if this warrants its own thread, so here goes: I want to build a gift for my SO, whose voice is pretty high pitched. My own voice is much lower, thus I think I can separate the frequencies and choose those that only she achieves. I have plenty of programming skills and I'm willing to spend some money on this. The main idea is building a transparent object with a LED inside that lights up whenever she's speaking. Now, I have a basic idea of how to program this, but I don't know what's available in terms of hardware that I can use. I think buying an FPGA is overkill (and too big for my purposes). Anything else I can use? Is an Arduino capable of doing something like this? I was thinking of building a MatLab script that analyses the sound input and outputs 0 or 1 wether the sounds it picks up are in a certain frequency and power. Now what I don't know is how to pick up the sounds and translate them into samples. All I've ever used are waveform generators, programmed for a certain wave. Any tips on what I should look into? Just some guidelines would be cool, I'll then buy the gear and put it all together myself. Thanks in advance!
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Dec 31, 2012 01:49
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orange sky posted:I don't know if this warrants its own thread, so here goes: You can't just do some kind of band-pass filtering to filter out low frequencies and only accept high frequencies, then feed that to an amplifier and some kind of logic that would only trigger on sufficiently "strong" signals? I mean if you want this to be really accurate and only respond to specifically her voice that would take some fancy programming, but if you just want it to respond to a certain range of frequencies and not others that's somewhat easy to do even without a microcontroller, I believe.
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Dec 31, 2012 02:27
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