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Shame Boy posted:Anyone got any suggestions for making keyed holes in my aluminum case for mounting switches n' stuff? I could probably ask in the metalworking thread but I figured I'd start here since y'all have probably encountered this exact thing before. CNC with 2-flute HSS flat end mill if you end up making them in quantity.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:49
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On the other hand, this could be your ticket to "needing" a plasma cutter 
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Jun 23, 2021 17:22
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ante posted:Shouldn't be too much work to print it off, gluestick it onto your panel as a reference, and then dremel out the parts that you don't want. TacoHavoc posted:That looks like six drill holes (four corners plus top and bottom) and then a Dremel job to me. Oh I completely forgot that Dremels exist and I have one, duh  petit choux posted:A problem I can relate to since I've been trying to build some nice enclosures for projects lately, and I've had an obsession with using this solid aluminum case that I've had for years. I've been going out of my way to find and purchase adapters that let me use round holes for things like micro USB and network cable jacks, just to be as neat as possible. I was half considering making some kinda adapter plate I could 3D print to hold it, though then that would make grounding everything more difficult...
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Jun 23, 2021 17:38
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Shame Boy posted:I'm just gonna have to drill a smaller hole and file it out to the final dimensions aren't I ante posted:Shouldn't be too much work to print it off, gluestick it onto your panel as a reference, and then dremel out the parts that you don't want. Do this. Center drill to just shy of final dimensions with a step drill, then dremel or file to size. Keep it slow and check fit and alignment often. It goes faster than you think. I think you can also find keyed washers so you drill two holes, one to your base diameter and one to fit the key tab. Then your switch goes through the washer and the key tab keeps it from spinning. Alternatively, you can forget about the keying and use star washers to lock the thing down. If it's not a chunky rotary switch, you're probably good for light-duty work. None of this applies if you need environmental sealing. edit: D-washer or double-D washer is your search term. I found these which may be helpful. babyeatingpsychopath fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:41
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TacoHavoc posted:instances in designs with potentiometers where the power dissapation in the pot isn't properly considered, so you can get damaging current levels at low resistance ranges In my head I was picturing the standard variable resistor element schematic that's set up like a voltage divider, which would make the current going through both resistors constant independent of the resistance reading. I feel like I'm missing something here when I remember that you mentioned "low resistance ranges". Is my mental model incorrect? Or maybe you meant when the total resistance of the pot itself is too small?
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Jun 23, 2021 19:43
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a bit late for the Prime Day savings on both, but is the Siglent SDS1202X-E still considered a good oscilloscope? ditto for the Siglent SDG1062X as a function generator Cojawfee posted:I usually search on digikey because their search tool makes more sense to me. Then I look for the parts on Mouser because they are in Texas and their free shipping gets me the parts the next day.  this is good information to know
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Jun 23, 2021 19:46
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Cory Parsnipson posted:In my head I was picturing the standard variable resistor element schematic that's set up like a voltage divider, which would make the current going through both resistors constant independent of the resistance reading. I feel like I'm missing something here when I remember that you mentioned "low resistance ranges". Is my mental model incorrect? Or maybe you meant when the total resistance of the pot itself is too small? Say you take a pot that goes 10 ohms to 1k, and you're using the wiper as the midpoint of the voltage divider. A key point is that the power rating through the wiper is usually "full resistance" and drops as the measured resistance decreases. It makes sense when you think about it, if you idealize a pot as a long resistor with a wiper moving across it. If you're only using half the resistance track, the power rating will only be about half since you've reduced your dissipation area. Usually not an issue because you're feeding a micro pin or something else with high impedance, so the current through the wiper is negligible. Now take that same setup, set the resistance towards the low end, and instead of a micro pin, drive a capacitive load (potentially high inrush) or a lower impedance load with a relatively high current draw off the wiper. In these cases, you could potentially overwhelm the potentiometer's ability to dissapate power and you'll get failure, even though you look at the data sheet and think you're under the printed power rating. This is all very idealized (the derating usually isn't linear, for example) but it's something I learned the hard way on a product design that isn't always immediately apparent.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:06
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TacoHavoc posted:Say you take a pot that goes 10 ohms to 1k, and you're using the wiper as the midpoint of the voltage divider. A key point is that the power rating through the wiper is usually "full resistance" and drops as the measured resistance decreases. It makes sense when you think about it, if you idealize a pot as a long resistor with a wiper moving across it. If you're only using half the resistance track, the power rating will only be about half since you've reduced your dissipation area. Usually not an issue because you're feeding a micro pin or something else with high impedance, so the current through the wiper is negligible. Ok, so I'm understanding that the load is hooked up to the wiper? I just want to make sure I got that correctly. So then, if I've got it loaded with a micro pin (for instance, my Arduino GPIO set to INPUT/high impedance) then I have nothing to worry about because the current going through the wiper is really small, like you said? If that's the case, then I think I get it now. Luckily I don't think I'm doing the second scenario with the cap or low impedance load.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:47
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Shame Boy posted:Anyone got any suggestions for making keyed holes in my aluminum case for mounting switches n' stuff? I could probably ask in the metalworking thread but I figured I'd start here since y'all have probably encountered this exact thing before. If you're looking for an easy workaround that isn't as elegant, you could get away with drilling a circular hole and attaching one or two straight baffles to the inside to enforce the orientation.
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Jun 23, 2021 23:29
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Cory Parsnipson posted:Ok, so I'm understanding that the load is hooked up to the wiper? I just want to make sure I got that correctly. So then, if I've got it loaded with a micro pin (for instance, my Arduino GPIO set to INPUT/high impedance) then I have nothing to worry about because the current going through the wiper is really small, like you said? If that's the case, then I think I get it now. Luckily I don't think I'm doing the second scenario with the cap or low impedance load. You got it.
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Jun 24, 2021 03:21
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Does anybody know where to source the articulated/flexible tubing that is used gaming headset boom mics? All my search terms keep bringing back cable management tubes. I basically want to make a few of these.
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Jun 24, 2021 05:17
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TacoHavoc posted:You got it. Sweet, thanks, dude! I didn't know any of that about pots so I learned something. 
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Jun 24, 2021 05:18
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Marsupial Ape posted:Does anybody know where to source the articulated/flexible tubing that is used gaming headset boom mics? All my search terms keep bringing back cable management tubes. I basically want to make a few of these. Try searching for aluminum armature wire, which is the material that gives a gooseneck its stiffness. The black ridged outer material probably is in fact a cable management wrap or sleeve because it’s just for aesthetics. If you want the knobby articulated look then go for loc line.
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Jun 24, 2021 12:51
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And if you just want to scrounge some off of a cheap gadget you can buy on the internet for $10, see my above post. It should yield enough for at least 4 of those in your pic. ED: I can't yet confirm that you can feed cable thrrough that at present though. Here's a question. Supposing I want to circuit bend a keyboard and I don't want to alter the top of the enclosure, so I make a little breakout box, aside from only having 8 wires would CAT6 cable be adequate for that purpose? Would the wires in CAT6 cable be workable as my wire for inside the keyboard? I don't know if I've ever tried using it as straight up wire. And here's another sourcing question. I've been thinking about making enclosures for projects out of cardboard and reinforcing it with the aluminum right angle stuff you sometimes see, like those cheap all-aluminum briefcases you can get at Harbor Freight and so forth. I've been searching ebay for something that matches that description and apparently don't have the correct search terms, I've tried a few now. What is that stuff called and where would I find it? petit choux fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 13:06
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Marsupial Ape posted:Does anybody know where to source the articulated/flexible tubing that is used gaming headset boom mics? All my search terms keep bringing back cable management tubes. I basically want to make a few of these. This company seems to make it. https://www.unipriseinc.com/ I doubt they sell directly, but maybe this can help you find search terms or distributors.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:36
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petit choux posted:Here's a question. Supposing I want to circuit bend a keyboard and I don't want to alter the top of the enclosure, so I make a little breakout box, aside from only having 8 wires would CAT6 cable be adequate for that purpose? Would the wires in CAT6 cable be workable as my wire for inside the keyboard? I don't know if I've ever tried using it as straight up wire. I use solid copper wires from twisted pair cables as cheap hookup wire, mostly for breadboarding and other cases where I need to quickly build something and quality doesn't matter too much. It's OK. The insulation is thin PVC so soldering it can be dicey since the insulation tends to melt back away from the solder joint, which makes it not great for anything with close spacing. It'll be OK electrically for audio frequency over short runs, though.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:39
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I nabbed an ATNA56WR06-0 laptop screen panel, it is a 15.6" OLED 4K panel that uses a 40-pin eDP cable. I also got a 15.6" 4K controller board that allows people to make a DIY portable screen: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202976400758 When I plug it into the panel however, the panel remains solid black even with at 12v 3a power supply. the 40pin eDP cable going into the panel gets quite hot to the touch, so I assume it is trying to suck down all the amps, or even more, than the controller board can provide? The controller board manufacturer says it is only compatible with the listed panels, but I thought eDP signalling should be fairly universal when the panels are the same resolution. There's a detailed technical whitepaper that gives all the panel pinouts and other specs here https://www.dropbox.com/s/d21gtl89stwl83a/ATNA56WR06-0_Rev.003_20190130_202006161590.pdf?dl=0 Any ideas? I really wanted to discover/share a DIY portable 4K OLED combo with people. The cheapest portable 15.6 OLED panel costs $1300 but this panel and controller board cost me $175 total.
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Jun 25, 2021 02:42
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A few thoughts (I have never dealt with eDP) Have you measured current from your supply? If you're drawing a lot of current, is the voltage sagging? Do you have a scope? There is a powerup sequence in that datasheet you shared. Can you confirm that's actually happening?
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Jun 25, 2021 03:29
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cable usually shouldn't get hot, something is wrong Triple check the pinout, and make sure it's like, not flipped 180 degrees and shorting to ground or something
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Jun 25, 2021 04:01
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Stack Machine posted:I use solid copper wires from twisted pair cables as cheap hookup wire, mostly for breadboarding and other cases where I need to quickly build something and quality doesn't matter too much. It's OK. The insulation is thin PVC so soldering it can be dicey since the insulation tends to melt back away from the solder joint, which makes it not great for anything with close spacing. It'll be OK electrically for audio frequency over short runs, though. Cool, thank you. Now here's my next dumb questions, and sorry if we've talked about this before but I couldn't find it a few weeks ago: 1) what software can I use for designing a PCB, free, cheap or commercial (Using Windows 7 or 10)? And what is easiest, or has the easiest learning curve for making something very, very simple? 2) If I manage to design one, who should I get to make it for me? Or a short run of them? Thx 4 ur attn
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Jun 25, 2021 10:25
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petit choux posted:Cool, thank you. Now here's my next dumb questions, and sorry if we've talked about this before but I couldn't find it a few weeks ago: Eagle, KiCad, or... maybe circuit maker. And there's a ton of cheap PCB mfrs. OSHPark is a favorite, but you'll get 3 of the boards, and they'll be purple. Need more than 3? Chinese MFR time! PCBShopper to compare pricing.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:05
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sharkytm posted:Eagle, KiCad, or... maybe circuit maker. Thanks! At $5/sq in. that's great for smaller boards but not so great for what I'm thinking of. So I guess it will be off to pcbshopper next!
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Jun 25, 2021 11:53
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petit choux posted:Cool, thank you. Now here's my next dumb questions, and sorry if we've talked about this before but I couldn't find it a few weeks ago: KiCad and PCBway are the most reliable combo i've found. I'm not a big fan of Eagle on the software side. OSHpark is alright if you just need a temporary test board, but they have a severe lack of options compared to a big house. Advanced Circuits has consistantly given me garbage quality boards whenever i've used their cheaper tier (which is still quite a bit more expensive than PCBway even including shipping)
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Jun 25, 2021 13:50
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I've had consistently great experiences with JLC. Note that they also do SMT assembly, and scale from 5-board runs to arbitrarily large. KiCad has rough edges, but will get the job done, and appears to be the best free EDA software.
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Jun 25, 2021 14:03
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How bright is this LED I'm shopping for? Oh, 100 fL, of course. And that's...  Foot-Lamberts. Obviously. I assume there's some law where if you supply poo poo to the US Government you have to have all your specs listed in US customary units, no matter how weird they are. e: I should have read the rest of the wikipedia page before posting, because lmao called it: quote:Military specifications for illuminated switches, panels, and displays, such as MIL-PRF-22885 and SAE AS7788, also require luminance measurements in foot-lamberts. e2: Okay I think optics has the weirdest non-SI units I've ever seen, what the hell 
Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 15:05
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The latest Any Weir book: Project Hail Mary, makes good use of these conventions to lighten the mood.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:14
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Dominoes posted:I've had consistently great experiences with JLC. Note that they also do SMT assembly, and scale from 5-board runs to arbitrarily large. KiCad has rough edges, but will get the job done, and appears to be the best free EDA software. Same, though I haven't ordered many PCBs period, the couple that I have ordered from JLC have been a totally smooth experience. I use KiCad and it's pretty nice, but honestly, I feel like the lowest bar is EasyEDA. It runs in a browser and you can pull the footprints in from LCSC easily. The whole point is vendor lock-in, so that's a pretty big con, but it is genuinely easy to use for an EDA application. KiCad for sure though if you're looking to invest time in learning a tool.
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Jun 25, 2021 17:51
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Brainstorming ideas: I have a sprinkler system controller operating on 24v. One wire running to an outside control box with a valve for each zone that share a common 24v line and a relay controls the grounds. Adding several zones to the existing infrastructure. What's the best way to carry the on/off signal with existing wiring? (More zones than wires after the proposed change) My ideas are: - custom wireless, this seems overkill - simple circuit with timer that one zone shares a line and the circuit powers each zone for X minutes then switches to the other (kind of a simple method at the cost of time control) - something like wiresprout for a commercial made solution, but would need several of these and they'd get pricey. There is a review with a proposed diagram, I wonder if a DIY approach wouldn't be too hard.. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FYWHM3L/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_glt_fabc_DJVKKS667JXNTDHP2CV2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 Any other ideas?
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Jun 25, 2021 18:52
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Shame Boy posted:I assume there's some law where if you supply poo poo to the US Government you have to have all your specs listed in US customary units, no matter how weird they are. Yup. And then you get into aviation where some company wants to sell you an all-in-one illuminance meter for testing both emergency exit signs and anticollision lights. me: "So it can check a 15-second exposure of fifty (50) µCd/m2 across a 2cm2 area at 15cm, and also a 20 millisecond exposure of 400-1000 (four hundred to one thousand) Cd in a 5° cone. In one unit, standards-traceable?" them: "um. yes?" That's stupid crazy dynamic range, and it turns out that no, they could not actually do that, even after charging us an awful lot of money. Our calibration lab got the thing and said "ok, our standard reference light meter doesn't go down that low, so this result isn't traceable or anything, but this unit is absolutely not measuring anything below a mCd."
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Jun 25, 2021 18:52
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Mr. Bubbles posted:Brainstorming ideas: 24V AC or DC? If DC, then diodes and polarity to double the effective number of signal lines. If AC, add a rectifier then see previous solution. Fake edit: those wiresprout things are literally just diodes in packages. You could DIY those and pot them in hot glue for pennies each.
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Jun 25, 2021 19:08
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Mr. Bubbles posted:Brainstorming ideas: I'm wary of DIYing a solution for a thing that goes underground around equipment that handles water for the purposes of saving money. Nothing wrong with giving it a try for the learning, but I would imagine most of what you're paying for with the wiresprout is the testing they've done to get their reliability up in a harsh environment. A DIY may work for a while and then fail silently, unnoticed until your grass dies. Replacing the hardware periodically, or the grass, may end up costing you more than you save. I confess I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. If your controller can only control, say, 8 zones, then having one wire control 2 zones isn't really adding any granularity. Zone 9 is still only ever going to activate when zone 8 is selected. Is it just that your water pressure is insufficient to add more sprinklers running concurrently, so you need to serialize them? Any new valve is going to need a new wire running to it, so I'm not sure what you mean by "carry the on/off signal with the existing wiring."
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Jun 25, 2021 19:19
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Fake edit: those wiresprout things are literally just diodes in packages. You could DIY those and pot them in hot glue for pennies each. They probably are just diodes, but that runs the solenoids in the sprinkler valves at half voltage. A less poo poo solution would be a voltage doubler on the sending side and a diode on the receiving side so you get about the same voltage at the solenoid, also for pennies. Pot it in epoxy in an ice cube tray and you could sell it as a premium version of this product. E: you know, I thought about it for more than a second and I guess you don't even need a voltage doubler, just a filter capacitor. It's half the RMS voltages but the peaks are still just as high so just putting some capacitors to ground after the diodes would be all you need to get it back to (a bit higher than) the original voltage. Stack Machine fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 19:19
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Shame Boy posted:e2: Okay I think optics has the weirdest non-SI units I've ever seen, what the hell Even with all SI units you can get into pretty strange measurements like this legitimately useful unit: quote:One flick corresponds to a spectral radiance of 1 watt per steradian per square centimeter of surface per micrometer of span in wavelength (W·sr−1·cm−2·μm−1). Bonus points for using area in cm instead of meters, just as a little gently caress you to anyone actually trying to use it. This is basically the unit you need if you're calculating background solar spectral irradiance for optical receiver systems, this value often determines the daytime noise floor of the system.
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Jun 25, 2021 19:20
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Forseti posted:KiCad for sure though if you're looking to invest time in learning a tool. I found this video series super helpful when learning KiCad. The guy starts off with the basics and has about 30 different episodes explaining just about everything that normal users might do. KiCad 6.0 is due to be released in around a month or two, I've used some of the recent nightly builds (called 5.99) and it's pretty nice. A lot of QoL stuff on the front end, on the back end they've changed their file structure to something that parses a lot faster so symbol/footprint libraries load much quicker now.
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Jun 26, 2021 02:19
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Stack Machine posted:They probably are just diodes, but that runs the solenoids in the sprinkler valves at half voltage. A less poo poo solution would be a voltage doubler on the sending side and a diode on the receiving side so you get about the same voltage at the solenoid, also for pennies. Pot it in epoxy in an ice cube tray and you could sell it as a premium version of this product. Right. What I'm saying is to not run AC voltage to the solenoids. Sprinkler valves run just fine on DC voltage, so just send DC down the line for everything and use diodes to pick what comes on when. There's a bit of additional circuitry on the controller side, since half the valves are going to be common + and half are common -, but a spare zone and a relay fixes that.
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Jun 26, 2021 07:38
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PDP-1 posted:KiCad 6.0 is due to be released in around a month or two, I've used some of the recent nightly builds (called 5.99) and it's pretty nice. A lot of QoL stuff on the front end, on the back end they've changed their file structure to something that parses a lot faster so symbol/footprint libraries load much quicker now. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Jun 26, 2021 |
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Jun 26, 2021 14:10
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PDP-1 posted:I found this video series super helpful when learning KiCad. The guy starts off with the basics and has about 30 different episodes explaining just about everything that normal users might do. Wow, thanks! This all looks a little formidable for me, not sure how deep I want to get into it but I'm definitely going to look at one or more of the videos.
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Jun 26, 2021 16:08
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Does anyone have an HDMI microscope they recommend? It sounds like most of the ones on aliexpress are... fine? But I want to be sure there's room underneath to get a soldering iron in there. I know some people prefer the stereoscopic kind for soldering but having to position my head just so would kill my neck eventually, and I have a good 24" monitor right there anyway. Also seems like if I put a PCB in my panavise I would then need a really tall arm for the microscope, which most don't come with. I found this video as a really nice quick walkthrough of kicad. Goes from nothing to getting a fully mfg PCB made by jlcpcb in 3 hours. If you're familiar with everything it's a good starting point to show the flow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7-8nUU6e3E
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Jun 26, 2021 16:18
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long time no see, thread. anybody up on ultrasonic transducers and ~~~the science of sonification~~~? Want a general sanity check on these posts, about an experimental ultrasonic 3d printer resin vat mixer+heater i'm tackling, for some stupid reasonAmbrose Burnside posted:i've been doing a lot of reading about sonication (amazing what you can accomplish when you're avoiding something else!) and have a much firmer idea of how to design an ultrasonic transducer + tailor it to the particular needs of a project. in this case: a miniscule thin-format immersible ultrasonic transducer that doesn't require any involved printer modifications, with a package that's small + thin enough to live its entire life in the narrow ~1/8" gap between the tank edge and the lowered build plate. my initial idea of throwing an... ultrasonic atomizer disc? into a thin housing won't work, i was misunderstanding the hardware, but I've worked out several viable routes that ought to produce a choice resonance frequency that'll cause cavitation from a very low-profile package/stack (pancake transducer or monolithic block transducer in a casing, superthin langevin design clamped together w gaskets and a ring of nuts/bolts maybe??, etc) Ambrose Burnside posted:
so yeah, am i hideously misunderstanding anything here, is there any reason this is a fool's errand as described would also love any recommendations or ideas for the immersible enclosure; i figure i'm basically going to be making a very small version of the drop-in transducer arrays that are already used in industry to add mixing/homogenization/cleaning capabilities to a tank/vessel that wasn't built with that in mind. this sort of deal-  manufacturing this is going to be a huge pain in the rear end so hopefully I can find some off-the-shelf stainless steel enclosure/case that i can use with little modification. needs to conform to some very specific dimension/fit-up requirements, but you never know. maybe that ends up looking like, i dunno, a surplus diver's watch case or something like that? idk what else fits the bill of "stout stainless steel construction" and "assembles watertight" and "has a very thin profile". Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jun 26, 2021 |
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Jun 26, 2021 19:50
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petit choux posted:Wow, thanks! This all looks a little formidable for me, not sure how deep I want to get into it but I'm definitely going to look at one or more of the videos. The DigiKey series may be better if you just want a high-level intro, or if you've never made a PCB before and want a background primer on the terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCVh2SAZY4
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Jun 27, 2021 03:04
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