Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[james_s]

Amateur radio is a hobby, and what is any hobby if not a form of entertainment?

[IDEngineer]

>>I think in Australia they monitor and record all amateur radio transmissions...<<

How? There's a lot of ham radio spectrum.

[james_s]

The broadcast band licences are a few dozen or so stations on known frequencies that broadcast continuously across a small slice of the spectrum. The amateur radio bands cover a far wider range of spectrum and consist of potentially many thousands of licences that can pop up at any time on any frequency they are allowed to use under the terms of their license. I really doubt the government records all of it, it's not even all audio, there's CW, video and data in various formats in bands from kHz to GHz.

[jonovid]

irony of amateur radio is many are more professional then the so called professionals.
most of the  amateur activity seems to be legacy technology and aircraft radio phonetics. at least on analog by males over 50.

[Ian.M]

Finding a neat little display that would suit a quick project in the spares box..... but the manufacturer has no markings to indicate what their part number or chipset is. Guess they don't want me to ever use it or buy more from them.

Your GoogleFu is lacking! 
Google: 1.54'SPI/IIC V2.0 

I recognised it, as I got one free, misshipped by 'Tiardey' from Amazon, when they should have sent me something else, rather more expensive! 

Its an EastRising monochrome ER-OLEDM015-2?-SPI-I2C display (where ? is a single letter that codes the color - White, Blue or Yellow) configured for SPI write-only interface.  Apart from the three SPI signals, it needs an extra I/O to drive its Data/nCommand pin (DC), + a /Reset pulse.

See https://www.buydisplay.com/serial-spi-i2c-white-1-54-inch-arduino-raspberry-pi-oled-display-128x64 for datasheets, including its SSD1309 controller, Arduino and R.Pi demos and libraries and more ...

Yesterday I just finished porting their 8051 SPI demo code to a SiLabs C8051F330's hardware SPI.  The most tedious part was getting it to fit in a 7.75K FLASH MCU using SDCC 4.2 (as its well over the Keil demo 2K code limit) - I had to implement RLE compression for the bitmap arrays, write a console utility to compress them and spit out C source for the compressed arrays, and re-write the demo's Display_Picture() function to expand them 'on the fly'.  The utility's fugly, but it all works.  Code attached.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Your GoogleFu is lacking!

He's not the only one.

(TLDW, Reddit and Tiktok.)

[Ian.M]

Google has been irredeemably Evil for nearly five years now!
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-erases-dont-be-evil-from-code-of-conduct-after-18-years/

[jonovid]

seems that the new youtube trend is phone friendly pillarbox video
or is this a war with TikTok?

[paulca]

has dividing amps and watts by hours been mentioned yet?
(same goes for using kV and kW interchangeably.)

Surely you mean multiplying amps by hours to give Ah. 

[shapirus]

has dividing amps and watts by hours been mentioned yet?
(same goes for using kV and kW interchangeably.)

Surely you mean multiplying amps by hours to give Ah.

For any practical purpose, *I* multiply them, yes. I can into units of measurement.
But (remember the context of this thread!) I did mean division, which is undertaken by many carefree souls: "cell capacity: 10 A/h, power consumption: 500 W/h" etc.

[paulca]

has dividing amps and watts by hours been mentioned yet?
(same goes for using kV and kW interchangeably.)

Surely you mean multiplying amps by hours to give Ah.

For any practical purpose, *I* multiply them, yes. I can into units of measurement.
But (remember the context of this thread!) I did mean division, which is undertaken by many carefree souls: "cell capacity: 10 A/h, power consumption: 500 W/h" etc.

Yes.  Unit miss use is prevailent.  I see power/energy swapping everyday in the news.  "The modern home consumes 2500kW".  Stuff like that.

Also in a science docu this week I heard the statement, "And the probe accelerates away from the sun at 150km/s."...   there are no standards anymore.  If you point out the stupidity in such statements, it is YOU who are considered at fault, for finding fault.

[IDEngineer]

Sad state of affairs when mediocrity is celebrated.

[shapirus]

"The modern home consumes 2500kW".

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong in this statement, except for not mentioning the conditions at which this was measured or calculated :).

More often, however, they would use something like "The modern home consumes 2500kW per month", which tends to wake up medieval instincts inside me.

If you point out the stupidity in such statements, it is YOU who are considered at fault, for finding fault.

YES.

[Ian.M]

"The modern home consumes 2500kW".

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong in this statement, except for not mentioning the conditions at which this was measured or calculated .

Except for the fact said modern 'home' would need something like a 11KV >130A three phase feed to reach 2500KW - that's not a home its either a massive tower block with >50 large apartments,  or a medium size factory or a small industrial estate!     There are villages in 1st world countries that draw less than that!

While we are looking at ridiculous numbers, Paulca's other example - the presumably large engine interstellar probe that's capable of accelerating at over 15000 g (assuming the idiot reporter simply dropped the 'squared') is pure SciFi territory.     

[tom66]

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong in this statement, except for not mentioning the conditions at which this was measured or calculated .

More often, however, they would use something like "The modern home consumes 2500kW per month", which tends to wake up medieval instincts inside me.

Err, kWh, no? 

Except for the fact said modern 'home' would need something like a 11KV >130A three phase feed to reach 2500KW - that's not a home its either a massive tower block with >50 large apartments,  or a medium size factory or a small industrial estate!     There are villages in 1st world countries that draw less than that!

Assumption from the UK local grid operator is the average home needs about 2kW of capacity.  This is built into diversity calculations e.g. size of a substation to feed a street.

[shapirus]

More often, however, they would use something like "The modern home consumes 2500kW per month", which tends to wake up medieval instincts inside me.

Err, kWh, no? 

In the ideal world of pink ponies, yes. In our world of pain, it's kW/month :).

[coppice]

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong in this statement, except for not mentioning the conditions at which this was measured or calculated .

More often, however, they would use something like "The modern home consumes 2500kW per month", which tends to wake up medieval instincts inside me.

Err, kWh, no? 

Why can't we all work in Joules?

Except for the fact said modern 'home' would need something like a 11KV >130A three phase feed to reach 2500KW - that's not a home its either a massive tower block with >50 large apartments,  or a medium size factory or a small industrial estate!     There are villages in 1st world countries that draw less than that!

Assumption from the UK local grid operator is the average home needs about 2kW of capacity.  This is built into diversity calculations e.g. size of a substation to feed a street.

That's going to need to rise a lot if most things run from electricity. Most discussions of moving to electric power for most energy uses ignore the trillions needed to tear up every street and lay higher capacity cables, which is a bigger issue than the substations themselves.

[SilverSolder]

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong in this statement, except for not mentioning the conditions at which this was measured or calculated .

More often, however, they would use something like "The modern home consumes 2500kW per month", which tends to wake up medieval instincts inside me.

Err, kWh, no? 

Why can't we all work in Joules?

Except for the fact said modern 'home' would need something like a 11KV >130A three phase feed to reach 2500KW - that's not a home its either a massive tower block with >50 large apartments,  or a medium size factory or a small industrial estate!     There are villages in 1st world countries that draw less than that!

Assumption from the UK local grid operator is the average home needs about 2kW of capacity.  This is built into diversity calculations e.g. size of a substation to feed a street.

That's going to need to rise a lot if most things run from electricity. Most discussions of moving to electric power for most energy uses ignore the trillions needed to tear up every street and lay higher capacity cables, which is a bigger issue than the substations themselves.

It is clearly going to take a lot longer, and cost a lot more, than the EV hype is currently (bad pun, I know) taking into account!

[paulca]

I think the sci-fi documentary failed to mention at which point in it's travels would it be at 150km/s.  The original report/paper it was sourced from probably mentioned something like "around the Orbit of jupiter".

On power consumption, yes, I heard 2kW figure too.  They recently upgraded all the old 1970s bakelite presentation points (or are in the process of), replacing older 60A and 80A fuses with 100A fuses.

Technically you could draw 20kW or so, not recommended and given my whole house plug ring runs off a single 32A breaker and... I have tried and never popped it.  Technically a 13A kettle, the 10A Tumble drier and the 10A living room electric fire, should trip it, but didn't, at least for the short time the kettle was boiling.  My tamed spark said about as much. "You'd think you'd break it all the time, but unless you really go at it trying, you probably never will".

I think the 2kW needs clarifying though.  It's not the total capacity, but rather the aggregate average, instantaneous load from an average household.

So if 100 new modern homes are going in, they may not spec it for 2kW as they would not represent "average" households if they are coming prebuilt with solar panels and car chargers as standard.

[shapirus]

Except for the fact said modern 'home' would need something like a 11KV >130A three phase feed to reach 2500KW - that's not a home its either a massive tower block with >50 large apartments,  or a medium size factory or a small industrial estate!     There are villages in 1st world countries that draw less than that!

Good catch. However! How many joules per second does an average home consume in the first few microseconds the moment it is powered on after a long outage, when all the SMPS' capacitors begin to charge and the refrigerator's compressor is about to begin starting up? :)

[themadhippy]

a single 32A breaker and... I have tried and never popped it.  Technically a 13A kettle, the 10A Tumble drier and the 10A living room electric fire, should trip it, but didn't,

and so it shouldnt ,your only 1A over,no were close to the instantaneous  tripping time for any 32A device fitted in domestic consumer units

[pcprogrammer]

a single 32A breaker and... I have tried and never popped it.  Technically a 13A kettle, the 10A Tumble drier and the 10A living room electric fire, should trip it, but didn't,

and so it shouldnt ,your only 1A over,no were close to the instantaneous  tripping time for any 32A device fitted in domestic consumer units

Story goes that with the "linky", the smart meter here in France, it trips instantly when you go over the set limit. Have not tried or experienced it myself.

[tom66]

That's going to need to rise a lot if most things run from electricity. Most discussions of moving to electric power for most energy uses ignore the trillions needed to tear up every street and lay higher capacity cables, which is a bigger issue than the substations themselves.

Trillions?  How much do you think the infrastructure needs upgrading by?  The biggest issue is not the cabling under the streets but the transformers and the 11kV/33kV infrastructure.   Millions, I'd grant you... Billion, maybe at a push if a lot more needs upgrading (especially at the 400kV network)... but trillions?   Er... we're not going to the moon...

[paulca]

It's interesting.  Modern high kW car charging stations can have 8 350kW chargers.  That's today.  If electrification goes forward at the rate they hope, in 10 years time rapid chargers will need to be available in much higher density.  Not 8 chargers per facility, but 80.  It's not just the cost of the infrastructure, for large commercial cosutomers they get billed per mile of distribution and billed directly for distribution and transmission losses incurred.  So the further your massive multi-megawatt facility is from a prime source like a power plant the more it's going to cost you... the more it costs the customers.

It's been determined that this is "fine" for out-of-city, close to motorway and importantly close to power plants facilities, however facilities in already developed areas will struggle to get that much power out of the current grid.

The net result is going to be a case where, if you run low on battery in the city, you are going to have to wait in a long queue for a VERY expensive charger.  If you want cheap electric you'll need to drive the 10 miles out of town to the large motorway service centre near the power station.

Imagine if you will, the M25 outer ring in London and how many cars refuel on the average rush-hour morning.  Now fast forward to a world where they are all electric.  Rather than a 5 minute splash and dash with the morning paper, it's a 20 minute top up just to be sure.  That means those stations need around 4 times as many chargers as they have pumps and limit people to 20 minutes a pop at peak times.  There are probably at least dozen of these stations around just that one motorway.  If all of them are to have 40 or 50 350kW chargers ... that's a few power plants worth on it's own!

Again... in towns, cities and already developed areas electricity for your car will become astronomically expense and you'll end up driving 10s of miles to get electric 50% cheaper!

[shapirus]

It's interesting.  Modern high kW car charging stations can have 8 350kW chargers.  That's today.

pff.
Ban personal cars within the city boundaries, problem solved.