Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

OK, a +10 score on two fronts:      Click to embiggen.

Firstly, doing that above wearing the new 7 diopter Optivisor was a doddle. It was comfortable to wear and use (especially considering the room I was working in is currently at 30ºC). I got the whole job done in half the time or less than it would have taken me messing around with glasses, no glasses, loupe etc. I declare the Optivisor a win as far as I'm concerned.

Secondly, that was done with the mylar stencil shown that was cut on my little Silhouette Portrait arty-farty vinyl cutter. I've used it at 1.27mm, 0805 and 0603 before, this is the first outing that technique has had with a 0.5mm pitch part. Also winner winner chicken dinner.

   Good job, tho for that part I'd still use drag-soldering and lots of flux.

There's a reason I've had that magnifying visor for decades, my friend; and it's not just because it makes me look totes bitchin' at the bench. 

Neato on the stencil cutter, BTW... I've done a few tiny vinyl stencils with a 24-pin dot-matrix printer back in the day; does it use that or a different process?

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

To think that this discussion re the laminated v tempered glass all sprung forth out of a chat about Gorilla glass phone screen protectors, we must have covered just about every topic in this forum now apart from sex, who wants to start that one off then 

You obviously haven't been paying close enough attention! 

[Cerebus]

Neato on the stencil cutter, BTW... I've done a few tiny vinyl stencils with a 24-pin dot-matrix printer back in the day; does it use that or a different process?

mnem
 

It's a drag knife plotter/cutter.

[mansaxel]

Oh, why, oh why the flying fuck is the input-ground-output pin sequence on LM7815 and LM7915 not the same?

That catches everybody out, hopefully only once.

Today I've blown my first capacitor across the Styx. Complete brainfart while perfboarding a dual-rail supply. With above stabilisers in. I feel strange. Annoyed at it happening, but happy that it was on the other side of the PCB so the BANG was the only problem.

[tggzzz]

Oh, why, oh why the flying fuck is the input-ground-output pin sequence on LM7815 and LM7915 not the same?

That catches everybody out, hopefully only once.

Today I've blown my first capacitor across the Styx. Complete brainfart while perfboarding a dual-rail supply. With above stabilisers in. I feel strange. Annoyed at it happening, but happy that it was on the other side of the PCB so the BANG was the only problem.

Mumble decade ago I had a similar brain fart: I reversed the PSU connections to a microwave switch. It cost a month's salary, there were only two in the country, and it had been loaned to us by the customer. Oops.

They were very good about it

[mnementh]

Did it cost you a month's salary...? 

Or was it more a "you owe me" to yer immediate overlord for taking the heat for you...? 

mnem
ouch.

[BU508A]

To our German friends. Are any of you affected by that flooding? I saw some of the videos and holy shit what a mess. 

Not so far, fortunately. But I am watching the weather maps closely.

Let me ask you a question, but it is still really related to the topic. Do you have any organization whose job it is to maintain the rivers and streams over there? I ask because years ago we used to have a national network of county river authorities whose sole job was to keep rivers and ditches dredged, free from weed build up, and they used the dredged silt to build up the river banks. This served two purposes ensured the rivers were kept fast flowing, and higher banks meant they also had a greater flood capacity. Sometime around the late 1960's or 1970's these were disbanded and since then we have many bad floods which also means that now many people living in these areas are now, in many cases, trapped as they are both unable to sell their homes and cannot get any insurance cover.

So I was just wondering if that could be a contributory factor in the severity of the floods we have seen on the news?

Here in Germany we call this water protection conversation (Gewässerschutz). This is a task of the municipality, at least here in Baden-Württemberg. The municipality is responsible for keeping brooks and river courses free and not overgrown, for example. It is also responsible for flood protection control (Hochwasserschutz), which is subsidised by state and federal funds. Unfortunately, it is also the case that such issues as flood protection do not usually win any laurels in politics, which is why often enough something is only done when a disaster has occurred. There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.
In my opinion, the floods in the Eifel are also the result of a chain of such decisions. The extreme weather then showed what can happen. And it is not only limited to the Eifel. In the southeast of Bavaria (Berchtesgardener Land) there were also drastic floods with several deaths and injuries.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[tggzzz]

Did it cost you a month's salary...? 

Or was it more a "you owe me" to yer immediate overlord for taking the heat for you...? 

All that happened was a wry "don't do it again" - which all parties knew was redundant. I was especially careful with the other microwave switch

They were all engineers who knew sh1t happens; no doubt they had made similar mistakes in their career.

[Andrew_Debbie]

To our German friends. Are any of you affected by that flooding? I saw some of the videos and holy shit what a mess. 

I have a UT330TH enroute.    The last tracking scan was in Liege.    Hardly compares to loosing your town and I wasn't even going to mention it.  It may even turn up eventually.   But yes, it has had a small impact on my life.

[med6753]

Speaking of "oh shit". Biggest one I saw (and heard) was an operator managed to short together 2 phases of a 208V circuit which turned a 3 phase variable power stat to instant carbon on 2 of it's 3 stacks. The main breaker happily remained in circuit and let the power stat release all the magic smoke....and there was lots of it.

The responsible engineer who designed that abortion had to make a road trip to the supplier to get a new one. The tester was down for 3 days which cut production in half. Lots of unhappy stupidvisiors. A quick update was made to install 10 amp fuses in line with the new power stat and a modification to the connection process to prevent shorting.

[Cerebus]

There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.

We have exactly the same here.  Over recent years lots of new build development has taken place on the flood planes of rivers. Eventually the inevitable happens. At which point my reaction is usually "Which bit of 'flood plane' did you not understand?". It seems that one of the fours facts to make it through into my head during stultifyingly boring geography lessons at school didn't make it into the heads of professional planners, architects and builders. 

For completeness, the other three facts were "How ox-bow lakes form", "How glaciation leads to glacial lakes up in the mountains (Cwms in welsh wales, where there are a lot of very beautiful ones.)" and "How to pronounce Molybdenum".

[Robert763]

Oh bugger, I got so wrapped in this thread about safety glass that I forgot to put my bid on a nice Fluke 85 and it went for just £25.70 delivered 

The winning bidder may still have bid more than you wanted to pay so you either saved the buyer money or cost the seller profit depending on you frame of mind.

[Robert763]

It's the same problem as the Chinese have and should be in the US; the exponential growth of a parasitic drain on the world's electrical grid. Conservative estimates say cryptomining will be consuming 10% of the world's electricity in the next year or three.

That said... am I the only one here who sees that video as a very obvious fake...? Seriously...?

mnem

Does that mean we're going to restrict endless server farms for high frequency trading or perhaps the gold mining industry too? I'm not sure what's "obviously" fake about the video. The Philippines are known to destroy equipment they deem illegal and what look like typical ASICs are run over in the video. It could be a very high detail CGI render by Egyptian aliens but I couldn't tell.

Very high detail...? Are we both looking at the same video?   https://youtu.be/c_tcg9kOfkg   The render is fucking horrible; worse than XBOX, and I'm talking the original, not what they call a XBOX now.      I'm pretty sure bd could hand-draw better on his iPud. 

mnem
 

Video is real, just crap codec or poor choice of compression settings.

[Specmaster]

There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.

We have exactly the same here.  Over recent years lots of new build development has taken place on the flood planes of rivers. Eventually the inevitable happens. At which point my reaction is usually "Which bit of 'flood plane' did you not understand?". It seems that one of the fours facts to make it through into my head during stultifyingly boring geography lessons at school didn't make it into the heads of professional planners, architects and builders. 

For completeness, the other three facts were "How ox-bow lakes form", "How glaciation leads to glacial lakes up in the mountains (Cwms in welsh wales, where there are a lot of very beautiful ones.)" and "How to pronounce Molybdenum".

Yes, we have some large development sites here in my city where new dwellings are being built which has at times in my lifetime been the site of some pretty savage flooding

[Specmaster]

Oh bugger, I got so wrapped in this thread about safety glass that I forgot to put my bid on a nice Fluke 85 and it went for just £25.70 delivered 

The winning bidder may still have bid more than you wanted to pay so you either saved the buyer money or cost the seller profit depending on you frame of mind.

Yes, this is true, but I'd have put a far higher bid in which might well have beaten the other bidders top. I was prepared to bi upto £36 for this meter, but we will never know now, but I suspect the low price is a direct reflection of the UK's Freedom Day with many people having to return to work and thus not at home sitting the eBay site all day.

[Peter_O]

There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.

We have exactly the same here.  Over recent years lots of new build development has taken place on the flood planes of rivers. Eventually the inevitable happens. At which point my reaction is usually "Which bit of 'flood plane' did you not understand?". It seems that one of the fours facts to make it through into my head during stultifyingly boring geography lessons at school didn't make it into the heads of professional planners, architects and builders. 

For completeness, the other three facts were "How ox-bow lakes form", "How glaciation leads to glacial lakes up in the mountains (Cwms in welsh wales, where there are a lot of very beautiful ones.)" and "How to pronounce Molybdenum".

Yes, we have some large development sites here in my city where new dwellings are being built which has at times in my lifetime been the site of some pretty savage flooding

Hamburg and it's harbour lies 100km up the river Elbe. To guarantee passage for the new big container vessels they deepen the river from time to time. Meanwhile the tidal range in the city is doubled and the risk of flooding the city during a north sea storm flood is increasing. Everybody knows that, but in the end the decision is ruled by greed as always.


For the germans this one is fun, despite the grief the rain floods are causing:
https://debeste.de/203115/KATAFTROPHE-EY-KATAFTROPHE-Scheisse

The guy is ranting about the street beeing a white water. Before half time of the video he is ranting about the white van blocking his way. Then: "Boy, that car is swimming" (driving ahead with full speed), "its swimming completely", laughing (driving ahead with full speed), (driving  quietly for a moment), ..., "Sh**, I'm swimming", ..., "I'm swimming completely", ..., "I f**ed it up", ... "My car is sinking".

[GreyWoolfe]

Yep. It definitely doesn't turn. When you press the AC button you can feel it kick in. When you have an 0.99 litre engine this really fucks you if you're going up a hill 

French cars are fairly not weird these days. Historically accurate though!

Whereas, on my 2 litre engine it makes no noticeable difference if the AC is switch on or off, but you can feel the difference when it is switched on and arrive at your destination cool and comfortable, nothing at all like I used to before cars had AC, then I was a big sweating jelly and shirts etc simply clung to you like a second skin.

Our previous Volvo has a broken AC clutch (worn down, needs adjusting, but has been installed by an Italian mechanic guided by a french engineer, so requires a day of disassembly including touching power steering plumbing; consequently has been put on the repair queue) and we drove it to Italy in summer 2019. It's OK to drive with all windows down up to about 135 km/h on the Autobahn/Autostrada/Autoroute; above that the infra noise becomes too tiring. Does help with the shirt-clinging though.

New Volvo has working AC. I've been missing it a bit too much, I realise.

On both my Hondas I definitely feel a drag when the A/C is switched on. 

The best A/C I ever had was a 1993 Chevy Cavalier Z24 V-6 with a variable displacement compressor and R-12. Not only did you never feel if kick on but it got so cold you could hang meat in that car. 

Mine was a 1992 2L Corolla sedan that was an absolute hooptie ride that was a give from my father in law.  Had over 270,000 miles on it.  The AC was so cold that when I was out with my son, he asked to turn the AC down because his nipples hurt.   That car was such a piece of crap and I had so much fun driving it until all the metal brake lines seemingly rusted out at the same time.  Didn't fix it as I was able to buy a retired company cargo van that was much newer, lots less miles for a very good price.  Had it on the side of the house and when we were having a garage sale, someone offered 200 bux even though we weren't trying to get rid of it yet.

[mnementh]

It's the same problem as the Chinese have and should be in the US; the exponential growth of a parasitic drain on the world's electrical grid. Conservative estimates say cryptomining will be consuming 10% of the world's electricity in the next year or three.

That said... am I the only one here who sees that video as a very obvious fake...? Seriously...?

mnem

Does that mean we're going to restrict endless server farms for high frequency trading or perhaps the gold mining industry too? I'm not sure what's "obviously" fake about the video. The Philippines are known to destroy equipment they deem illegal and what look like typical ASICs are run over in the video. It could be a very high detail CGI render by Egyptian aliens but I couldn't tell.

Very high detail...? Are we both looking at the same video?   https://youtu.be/c_tcg9kOfkg   The render is fucking horrible; worse than XBOX, and I'm talking the original, not what they call a XBOX now.      I'm pretty sure bd could hand-draw better on his iPud. 

mnem
 

Video is real, just crap codec or poor choice of compression settings.

If so, then even worse, IMO. That always seems to be the excuse for the crap quality of so many viral videos... you know they can't all have been shot with a fucking potato phone camera. 

mnem
"Trust none of what you hear and less than half of what you see with your own two eyes." ~grand-dad

[mnementh]

There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.

We have exactly the same here.  Over recent years lots of new build development has taken place on the flood planes of rivers. Eventually the inevitable happens. At which point my reaction is usually "Which bit of 'flood plane' did you not understand?". It seems that one of the fours facts to make it through into my head during stultifyingly boring geography lessons at school didn't make it into the heads of professional planners, architects and builders. 

For completeness, the other three facts were "How ox-bow lakes form", "How glaciation leads to glacial lakes up in the mountains (Cwms in welsh wales, where there are a lot of very beautiful ones.)" and "How to pronounce Molybdenum".

Yes, we have some large development sites here in my city where new dwellings are being built which has at times in my lifetime been the site of some pretty savage flooding

*coughALLOFHOUSTONcough*

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Oh bugger, I got so wrapped in this thread about safety glass that I forgot to put my bid on a nice Fluke 85 and it went for just £25.70 delivered 

The winning bidder may still have bid more than you wanted to pay so you either saved the buyer money or cost the seller profit depending on you frame of mind.

Yes, this is true, but I'd have put a far higher bid in which might well have beaten the other bidders top. I was prepared to bi upto £36 for this meter, but we will never know now, but I suspect the low price is a direct reflection of the UK's Freedom Day with many people having to return to work and thus not at home sitting the eBay site all day.

Yes, it works in the uk.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

   

   

*sigh*

I stumbled across these pics of my old bench while looking for something else this morning... 

mnem

*just to twist the knife*

[Specmaster]

There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.

We have exactly the same here.  Over recent years lots of new build development has taken place on the flood planes of rivers. Eventually the inevitable happens. At which point my reaction is usually "Which bit of 'flood plane' did you not understand?". It seems that one of the fours facts to make it through into my head during stultifyingly boring geography lessons at school didn't make it into the heads of professional planners, architects and builders. 

For completeness, the other three facts were "How ox-bow lakes form", "How glaciation leads to glacial lakes up in the mountains (Cwms in welsh wales, where there are a lot of very beautiful ones.)" and "How to pronounce Molybdenum".

Yes, we have some large development sites here in my city where new dwellings are being built which has at times in my lifetime been the site of some pretty savage flooding

Hamburg and it's harbour lies 100km up the river Elbe. To guarantee passage for the new big container vessels they deepen the river from time to time. Meanwhile the tidal range in the city is doubled and the risk of flooding the city during a north sea storm flood is increasing. Everybody knows that, but in the end the decision is ruled by greed as always.


For the germans this one is fun, despite the grief the rain floods are causing:
https://debeste.de/203115/KATAFTROPHE-EY-KATAFTROPHE-Scheisse

The guy is ranting about the street beeing a white water. Before half time of the video he is ranting about the white van blocking his way. Then: "Boy, that car is swimming" (driving ahead with full speed), "its swimming completely", laughing (driving ahead with full speed), (driving  quietly for a moment), ..., "Sh**, I'm swimming", ..., "I'm swimming completely", ..., "I f**ed it up", ... "My car is sinking".

Oh god, it's nice to know that we are not alone in the endless pursuit for our money, once they have that, we can just go away and never bother them again is their attitude, whatever happened to common decency. I was taught to respect others and to treat them in the same fashion as I expect to be treated 

that video is just so funny, what else did he expect, it was clear by observing the white van that he was not going to get through that water.

[Robert763]

Well I asked CircuitMess about approvals for the Rongo phone. The say it is CE and UKCA marked and even sent the declaration. Extract below.
Product details
For the following;
● Product : GSM LTE Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Mobile Phone
●
Declaration & Applicable standards
We hereby declare that the product above is in compliance with the essential requirements of the Radio Equipment Directive
(2014/53/EU) by application of:
SAFETY  ● EN 50360 : 2017
● EN 50566 : 2017
● EN 50663 : 2017
● EN 60950-1:2006 + A11:2009 + A1:2010 + A12:2011 + A2:2013
● EN 62311 : 2008
EMC  ● Draft EN 301 489-19 V2.1.0 (03-2017)
● Draft EN 301 489-3 V2.1.1 (03-2017)
● Draft EN 301 489-52 V1.1.0 (11-2016)
● EN 301 489-1 V2.1.1 (02-2017)
● EN 301 489-17 V3.1.1 (02-2017)
● EN 55035 : 2017
RADIO  ● 3GPP TS 36.521-1 V15.3.1 (09-2018)
● Draft EN 303 660 V1.1.1_0.0.6
● EN 300 328 V2.1.1 (11-2016)
● EN 300 330 V2.1.1 (02-2017)
● EN 300 440 V2.1.1 (03-2017)
● EN 301 511 V12.5.1 (03-2017)
● EN 301 893 V2.1.1 (05-2017)
● EN 301 908-1 V11.1.1 (07-2016)
● EN 301 908-13 V11.1.2 (07-2017)
● EN 301 908-2 V11.1.2 (08-2017)
● EN 303 413 V1.1.1 (06-2017)
● EN 303 417 V1.1.1 (09-2017)
 
Company name: CircuitMess d.o.o.
Company address: Maksimilijana Vrhovca 11, 47000 Karlovac, Croatia

I seriously doubt the complete kit has been tested to all of these standards, if any. Most likely they have just copied the approval of the ready made modules incorporated into the kit. This certainly does not cover EN 50360 : 2017 (RF exposure) because it requires the whole phone. Still if they have done the declaration it covers the user legally at least.

[Specmaster]

Oh bugger, I got so wrapped in this thread about safety glass that I forgot to put my bid on a nice Fluke 85 and it went for just £25.70 delivered 

The winning bidder may still have bid more than you wanted to pay so you either saved the buyer money or cost the seller profit depending on you frame of mind.

Yes, this is true, but I'd have put a far higher bid in which might well have beaten the other bidders top. I was prepared to bi upto £36 for this meter, but we will never know now, but I suspect the low price is a direct reflection of the UK's Freedom Day with many people having to return to work and thus not at home sitting the eBay site all day.

Yes, it works in the uk.

mnem
 

You have forgotten that I already use Gixen and indeed am a subscriber to it as well? I had that Fluke in my watch list and was waiting to see how the bidding was going before doing anything because the last few occasions my bid never got placed because the prices have been so crazy that my max bid was blown away minutes before the auctions finished. I was just about going to jump onto eBay and see what was going on with it, and because my head was full of facts and figures to do with the glass issue, I decided to rush a reply out to McBryce and then my internet went down for a few seconds and by the time it came back, it had gone. Never mind, maybe prices will be more sensible now and I can grab another sometime or other.

[mansaxel]

Yes, we have some large development sites here in my city where new dwellings are being built which has at times in my lifetime been the site of some pretty savage flooding

Our house is on a hill, and around 12m above the regulated level of Lake Mälaren. It stands on stilts. We'll be OK with 10 cm water on the ground, too, then. We're on an island, but since it is in a lake that's upstream of central Stockholm, any flood hitting us will hit the rich people in town times ten, so I'm counting on that for protection.