What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Terry01]

I got the  other part of this wee supply I've been waiting on, so i can now put it together 

[0xdeadbeef]

I don't have it yet so I'm still considering my options. The 1143A  seems to be very hard to get and absurdly expensive. The 1142A seems to go for a good price now and then though. So if I can get one of these cheap, I'd go this way. For the beginning, I will apply the +/-17V from a lab supply. Anyway, there was a thread here a while ago with manual/schematics and pinning of the connector.

[EDIT]
I just noticed that the 1142A is not just the single channel version of the 1143A . So I guess this means DIY in the long run.

Nice score. 

Any plan for the probe power unit ? DIY or wait for 1143A ?

If you choosed to DIY , PM me anytime if you need to peek inside the 1143A power unit.

Scored mine while ago ...

[hussamaldean]

PIC16F877A with PICKIT 3 programmer

[bsudbrink]

First really good estate sale in a long while... In addition to a box of 7400 series logic with 1970's date codes, I got two great vintage keyboards (see below).  Unfortunately the estate sale company had no idea of what happened to the associated systems (if there even were any).  The George Risk keyboard seems to be practically unused.

[tautech]

Not me but the wife replaced our beaten up and aged Merlin garage door remotes with a pair of these tiny keyfob types:
https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1872299238

Quite acceptable range and easy to program. 

Wonder if they'll last 35 yrs like the old ones did..................

[georges80]

Another 10 RFM96 radios arrived. Amazing how cheap they are and how well the Lora technology works for long distance at low power.

I have a small STM32F0xx board I designed that interfaces to the radios directly and brings out a u.fl connector for the antenna connection.

Getting quite a collection of sma connectors/cables/etc to hook things up together as well.

cheers,
george.

[PartialDischarge]

Amazing how cheap they are and how well the Lora technology works for long distance at low power.

What distances are you achieving and what is the current draw of this module?

[georges80]

A quick test was 1.5km line of sight. RSSI was about -80dB with a total budget of about -140dB. Over the next weeks I'll do some real testing over longer ranges, it should have no issue in open line of sight conditions reaching 30-40km which is my goal for very low data rate telemetry.

Lora is an impressive technology and you can trade off packet transmit time for SNR/range. At the higher link budget levels, overall data rate gets down to just 10's or 100's of bits per second. At those rates you need to start looking at tighter tolerance crystals and then to TCXO modules. These cheap modules use regular crystals but you can easily remove (hot air) and replace with known quality crystals from a known distributor that are in the 10ppm range. Semtech (the chip maker) has a reasonable link budget calculator where you can see various tradeoffs (snr/rate/crystal tolerance).

Current consumption of the module depends on the power level you are transmitting at (you can adjust output in 1dB steps). Overall consumption depends on transmit and receive duty cycle. The module can also be flipped into sleep mode and then it's down in the uA range. At full output and during the transmit phase it will range up to 120mA (at 3.3V), that's a 20dB output with the power amp turned full on. The tests I were doing were at 13dB and around 30mA transmit current.

The biggest task was porting the radiohead code to a non-arduino and non c++ environment - but that was just a day or so of code slashing to get to the core routines that are actually necessary. A worthwhile process to fully understand the command/control code for the SX1276 (the chip that is used/relabeled) on the module. I've used some of the Digi 900HP style radios before, so already had a decent understanding of the broadcast/unicast/routing schemes that some radio protocols use.

cheers,
george.

[djos]

I recently bought a spare desoldering gun and some small fast normally closed air valves to upgrade my zd-917 desoldering station - started work on it yesterday before family duties got in the way







I just need to wire the switch to the valve and wire the vacuum pump to always on. This should give me a nice fast suction and be a nice upgrade to my cheap station.

[lewis]

Nice unit , will we see a teardown...

Hmmmm.... that's tempting......

What is the value of the resistor you are trying to measure?

About 120R, ±20% ish.

[djos]

I recently bought a spare desoldering gun and some small fast normally closed air valves to upgrade my zd-917 desoldering station - started work on it yesterday before family duties got in the way

<SNIP>

I just need to wire the switch to the valve and wire the vacuum pump to always on. This should give me a nice fast suction and be a nice upgrade to my cheap station.

I finished my project this morning - here's a thread with details for those interested. 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/cheap-desoldering-station-upgrade-now-sucks-even-harder!-no-really!/msg2048029/#msg2048029

[Vgkid]

Nice unit , will we see a teardown...

Hmmmm.... that's tempting......

What is the value of the resistor you are trying to measure?

About 120R, ±20% ish.

I can measure that easily...

[McBryce]

After weighing up the performance vs. price, I decided to get one of these (HTi HT-18 220x160 thermal imaging camera) rather than a secondhand Flir. Hasn't arrived yet, but hopefully it will arrive before/during the Christmas break so I have some time to explore it. I've seen all the hacking options, but I intend to leave this in its original state. If I like it enough, I may get a second one for a hack project. I still have a Lepton sensor from a Flir One here that I never got around messing with.


McBryce.

[Mr. Scram]

After weighing up the performance vs. price, I decided to get one of these (HTi HT-18 220x160 thermal imaging camera) rather than a secondhand Flir. Hasn't arrived yet, but hopefully it will arrive before/during the Christmas break so I have some time to explore it. I've seen all the hacking options, but I intend to leave this in its original state. If I like it enough, I may get a second one for a hack project. I still have a Lepton sensor from a Flir One here that I never got around messing with.


McBryce.

Are those hacking options for the HTi HT-18? Or are you referring to the Flir ones?

[McBryce]

After weighing up the performance vs. price, I decided to get one of these (HTi HT-18 220x160 thermal imaging camera) rather than a secondhand Flir. Hasn't arrived yet, but hopefully it will arrive before/during the Christmas break so I have some time to explore it. I've seen all the hacking options, but I intend to leave this in its original state. If I like it enough, I may get a second one for a hack project. I still have a Lepton sensor from a Flir One here that I never got around messing with.


McBryce.

Are those hacking options for the HTi HT-18? Or are you referring to the Flir ones?

HT-18 hacks. Andyelectric2000 posted about it here (unfortunately inadvertently lapsing into German), but what he says is that the thermal sensor unit is a stand-alone part with USB connectivity to the display unit. He's done a nice hack to create a thermal security camera:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/chinese-ht-18-220x160-8-hz-handheld-thermal-camera/msg1525120/#msg1525120

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/chinese-ht-18-220x160-8-hz-handheld-thermal-camera/msg1538648/#msg1538648

McBryce. 

[shakalnokturn]

Post just dropped this off, it came with the communication module and a much-used Philips PM9010/091 Japan-made 100MHz probe.
For 60€ delivered I wasn't taking much risk, it turns out to actually work.

[Terry01]

Post just dropped this off, it came with the communication module and a much-used Philips PM9010/091 Japan-made 100MHz probe.
For 60€ delivered I wasn't taking much risk, it turns out to actually work.
[/quote

You can’t grumble at that deal buddy! They don’t come along too often.

[Kilrah]

I wouldn't want one of those even if someone gave me one for free, too many bad memories from using them at school 

[Gaussian]

I bought a Siglent SSA3021X for Christmas. 

[deadlylover]

I bought a couple of 'helping hands' clones of the nice GRS ones, the GRS are too hard to find here in Australia, and would probably be close to 100 dollarydoos landed. The clones from Taobao work out to be around $20 plus about $10 each for shipping (they are ~1kg).

Quality control is ehhhh as you'd expect, one of my units doesn't sit flat on the desk because the bolt underneath is too long, but that's nothing a set of rubber feet cant fix.

I wanted this particular style because I can tighten the swivel points to kind of lock them in place, the springs in the jaws are strong enough, and the jaws themselves are made of metal with serrations (they will scuff up soldermask easy so be careful).

All in all I'm pretty happy but they're still a touch too expensive to give a solid recommendation to others. I want to try a few Panavise next to hold bigger items.

[Terry01]

I bought a couple of 'helping hands' clones of the nice GRS ones, the GRS are too hard to find here in Australia, and would probably be close to 100 dollarydoos landed. The clones from Taobao work out to be around $20 plus about $10 each for shipping (they are ~1kg).

Quality control is ehhhh as you'd expect, one of my units doesn't sit flat on the desk because the bolt underneath is too long, but that's nothing a set of rubber feet cant fix.

I wanted this particular style because I can tighten the swivel points to kind of lock them in place, the springs in the jaws are strong enough, and the jaws themselves are made of metal with serrations (they will scuff up soldermask easy so be careful).

All in all I'm pretty happy but they're still a touch too expensive to give a solid recommendation to others. I want to try a few Panavise next to hold bigger items.

Those are well handy by the looks of them. 

[Mr. Scram]

HT-18 hacks. Andyelectric2000 posted about it here (unfortunately inadvertently lapsing into German), but what he says is that the thermal sensor unit is a stand-alone part with USB connectivity to the display unit. He's done a nice hack to create a thermal security camera:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/chinese-ht-18-220x160-8-hz-handheld-thermal-camera/msg1525120/#msg1525120

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/chinese-ht-18-220x160-8-hz-handheld-thermal-camera/msg1538648/#msg1538648

McBryce.

I thought we might be talking about software hacks and upgrading, but it seems it's mostly hardware based hacking. That could still be interesting, though.

[BFX]

Christmas is behind the door 

Keysight Infiniivision DSOX3014T arrived today:)




 

[VK5RC]

Christmas is behind the door 

Keysight Infiniivision DSOX3014T arrived today:)

I have an older DSOX3204 — A great tool, no service problems, even done a couple of the firmware updates. It has even survived a 'ground lead' connected not to ground issue!!!
I think you will find it a great scope.

[julianhigginson]

Sent a PO for my yearly Altium subscription.