Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

And here, we've got water, wind, sun and a fairly large amount of nuclear to tickle our electrons faster.

 

Umm... yeah. All combined still a drop in the bucket compared to that which is generated by fossil fuels. And nuke is hardly clean; it's just kicking the poison down the road for our grandkids to die from.

mnem
*toddles off to cut the lawn with 2 gas mowers at once*

[tggzzz]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

Me too, except that my Flymo is falling apart after 33 years. (Not looking forward to replacing it next year.)

Compared with the petrol cylinder mowers I used as a kid, they are reliable and a pleasure to use.

[tggzzz]

Has caused the genocide of at least 100 ant hills in its time as well.

I think you mean murder.

My Flymo has also, with difficulty and nobody looking, been used to massacre brambles

[tautech]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

Me too, except that my Flymo is falling apart after 33 years. (Not looking forward to replacing it next year.)

Compared with the petrol cylinder mowers I used as a kid, they are reliable and a pleasure to use.

Yet anywhere where there is a predominance of Kikuyu in lawns they are next to useless ! Electric or gas powered.
Without the weight of a wheeled mower the root/runner mass gets thicker and thicker until walking on a lawn feels like walking on a mattress.
It's all just lovely until you attempt to run an ordinary mower on it and it has to deal with inches thick of seasons worth of tough fibrous runners. 

[Cerebus]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

And here, we've got water, wind, sun and a fairly large amount of nuclear to tickle our electrons faster.

 

Umm... yeah. All combined still a drop in the bucket compared to that which is generated by fossil fuels. And nuke is hardly clean; it's just kicking the poison down the road for our grandkids to die from.

mnem
*toddles off to cut the lawn with 2 gas mowers at once*

You do surprise me sometimes. You come across as the kind of American who ought not to be prone to the parochialism that seems endemic there, but you frequently treat the rest of the world as if it operates the same way as the USA. It does not. Electricity production in Sweden: 2.9% from fossil fuels, 36.2% nuclear, 57.5% from renewables. (source). (Go up the road to Norway, 2% fossil fuels, 98% renewables, no nuclear. Iceland: 100% renewables.) For comparison, USA: 61.5% fossil, nuclear 19.3%, renewables 18.2%.

[Cerebus]

Compared with the petrol cylinder mowers I used as a kid, they are reliable and a pleasure to use.

When I were a lad we didn't have no posh petrol mower - I had to push it.

[AaronLee]

regarding switches, up = on, down = off

Gravity should default things to their safe condition

And then we have this gigantic turd in my house. This has to be upside down because the wires are too short if you don't do it. Not my installation for ref that one 



Also need to deep clean my kitchen - that's disgusting up there

The solution is simple, as per what's normal here in Korea. Switches are mounted to move horizontally. Right = on. Left = off. For right-handed people it's obvious which way is on, and for left-handed people, they just need to realize everything is opposite of what is natural. Straight down gravity won't change the position of the switch.

[vk6zgo]

@vk6zgo
I was reading in a Covid report that Bourke Shire Council in New South Wales in Australia have shot dead rescue dogs in their care in an effort to control Covid-19,  The WHO says that dogs and cats cannot catch or therefore transmit Covid-19 so what were they thinking? According to the report, one of those had just given birth as well. Your government has allegedly lunched an investigation 

Not my government, I'm on the other side of the country!

The NSW folks on the "Whirlpool" forum are talking about it, but it "didn't make the cut" in the Western Australian news, so I know very little about it.
As far as I can determine, it is the RSPCA, not any govt, which is looking into it.

I think the Covid-19 stuff is really peripheral to the Council's reasons for this, but I can imagine the garbled version that would have reached you via the 'Net.

Recently, the NSW govt, in their wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to pinch some vaccine from regional centres & use it to vaccinate Year 12 students sitting for their HSC exams this year.
To this end, they were to go to a large sporting facility & get the "jab"(Not the smartest idea of all time, but nobody said NSW pollies were the sharpest crayons in the box!)

This was all quite voluntary for the students, but some malcontents in a big country just North of Mexico screamed on their nutjob websites & Facebook groups that "chee-ildren" in Australia were being dragged off & forcibly injected with an "experimental" vaccine against their will.

Snopes of course, debunked it, but the nutjobs will never read the debunking, as Snopes is obviously part of the conspiracy!

[mnementh]

Well fuck. The first day I used it, this mower managed to find a piece of steel rebar driven into the ground that I have missed with the other mower ever since I got here a year ago.

Now... does this mean I need to keep the other mower, cuz this one is jinxed and wants to stay dead...?

mnem
You got me again, Murphy...

[TERRA Operative]

Here you go, I bet this one will bid to the moon in the last hour or so......

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/1001334794

[0culus]

I upped my curve tracer game. Now to find triax and a test fixture. Have a lead on the latter...triax may be harder. Hence the ghetto zener diode test I set up. 

[Vince]

Wow.... upped you have indeed !!! 

I will stick with my modest 575 hollow state, at least I don't need a PhD to operate it, it's fast and intuitive to setup and use ! 

[0culus]

Wow.... upped you have indeed !!! 

I will stick to my modest 575 hollow state, at least I don't need a PhD to operate it, it's fast and intuitive to setup and use ! 

This thing is fairly intuitive. However, there are things it can't do. The SMUs are limited to +/- 100V for instance, so the analog curve tracers are still very much useful. Most of these semiconductor parameter analyzers lived as part of a wafer probing station rather than as standalone bench instruments.

[Neomys Sapiens]

@vk6zgo
I was reading in a Covid report that Bourke Shire Council in New South Wales in Australia have shot dead rescue dogs in their care in an effort to control Covid-19,  The WHO says that dogs and cats cannot catch or therefore transmit Covid-19 so what were they thinking? According to the report, one of those had just given birth as well. Your government has allegedly lunched an investigation 

Wait, what?
RESCUE dogs or RESCUED dogs? The first kind is not exactly cheap to train...

[mnementh]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

And here, we've got water, wind, sun and a fairly large amount of nuclear to tickle our electrons faster.

 

Umm... yeah. All combined still a drop in the bucket compared to that which is generated by fossil fuels. And nuke is hardly clean; it's just kicking the poison down the road for our grandkids to die from.

mnem
*toddles off to cut the lawn with 2 gas mowers at once*

You do surprise me sometimes. You come across as the kind of American who ought not to be prone to the parochialism that seems endemic there, but you frequently treat the rest of the world as if it operates the same way as the USA. It does not. Electricity production in Sweden: 2.9% from fossil fuels, 36.2% nuclear, 57.5% from renewables. (source). (Go up the road to Norway, 2% fossil fuels, 98% renewables, no nuclear. Iceland: 100% renewables.) For comparison, USA: 61.5% fossil, nuclear 19.3%, renewables 18.2%.

No, I generally think... generally. and Globally. Renewable is not necessarily carbon emission free; even burning biomass/biogas is just one step closer to the ultimate energy source vs fossil. A start, but until we stop burning stuff for our electricity, we are still doomed as a species.

Yes, it is true these countries have done a lot of work to get even to this state, and they have plenty to be proud of. Sadly, all the electricity they generate in this enlightened fashion combined and more is consumed on cryptomining globally.

Also, remember that they have a different proportion of stuff burned for heat; in many regions over here (including this one, I'm horrified to say) there are still a lot of old, leaky homes heated in the winter with glowing iron wires in a big metal box, or similar iron wires in a tube filled with oil on the moprail. 

And sadly... as much as I hate to admit it, my own pitiful existence is tied to the grid whether I like it or not. Without AC through even the mild summers up here, and electricity for my CPAP... I would probably croak in a week from exhaustion the first hot spell of the season. 

That doesn't mean I have to like it, and I'm damned sure not going to lie to myself aboot how horribly all the "developed nations" abuse the resources of the world.

And none of that changes the fact that for me, over here, an electric mower could very well have a larger carbon footprint than using a small gas mower rescued from the landfill. My little putt-putt certainly has a head-start on the manufacturing portion of that equation.

mnem
 

[TERRA Operative]

Nice on the 4145B, I have a 4145A I'm almost done refurbishing. Just gotta do a final test on the CRT module after a transistor replacement and build some Triax cables.
I was lucky enough to get a test fixture for a steal, not so much on Triax...
I plan to use some of these when they come back into stock.
https://www.monotaro.com/p/8787/9626/

And then probably this cable, unless I can find low-noise stuff that fits for a decent price.
https://jp.rs-online.com/web/p/coaxial-cable/6029524/

[0culus]

Nice on the 4145B, I have a 4145A I'm almost done refurbishing. Just gotta do a final test on the CRT module after a transistor replacement and build some Triax cables.
I was lucky enough to get a test fixture for a steal, not so much on Triax...
I plan to use some of these when they come back into stock.
https://www.monotaro.com/p/8787/9626/

And then probably this cable, unless I can find low-noise stuff that fits for a decent price.
https://jp.rs-online.com/web/p/coaxial-cable/6029524/

Very good. I have a friend who may have the triax connectors if all else fails.

[Specmaster]

The more I look at the battery powered car being the savoir of the planet, the more I doubt that is true, just a huge money making scheme. Lithium itself is really nasty for the environment, causing bad health for the miners.  And uses so much water during its extraction that it is already in certain countries, causing massive water shortages and every living thing on the planet depends on an adequate supply, more important than food in many ways. As mining is ramped up to meet the demand as the world's cars are switching over to batteries from fossil fuels, the demand for water will skyrocket and could in some locations actually threaten life itself.

Then there is the vast amount of shipping the Lithium around the world for processing, before even more shipping to the Far East for battery production, then even more shipping round the world to the various vehicle manufacturers, which will then result in even more shipping round the world of the finished vehicles to customers.

Then there is the problem with the charging points globally, most house are not suitable for electric charging points, especially in cities as garages and driveways are in main few and people have to park on the street, where numerous charging points would create another set of hazards in its own right both for pedestrians and motorist alike. Then there is the massive amount of electricity generation globally that must be done to enable people to be able to charge their electric vehicles, meaning more and more power stations are required. Even more copper needs to be mined, transported to the factories for processing then sent round the world again to the cable manufacturers

All the above could well possibly generate far more C02 and other emissions. Is the answer to ban all massive fuel guzzling engines and make the smaller and even more efficient?

[Cerebus]

Project of the day. I'm trying out BD's assertion that it's cheaper to design and order adapter boards from JLCPCB that it is to order off the shelf ones. I'm down to my last two SOIC-16 adapter boards and need some more.

Killing two birds with one stone, I'm also trying to remove a personal annoyance at the same time. When you use SMT to DIP adapters you always end up either with the decoupling caps a long way away, or awkwardly soldered to the adapter board. So I've added footprints for a decoupling cap and a couple of zero ohm jumper resistors to deal with the commonest situation - Vcc in the top right corner on pin 14/16 and ground in the bottom left on pin 7/8.

Voila:



By the way, panellising by hand in KiCad is a PITA.

Edit: Also, doing it my way I get a decent ground plane, and rounded corners, both of which the commercial adapters lack unless you buy the ones that cost a few dollars each.

Edit to edit: Can I not even type straight anymore?

Just one for the folks who, like me, have difficulty with working out from their rather patchy documentation what JLCPCB can do, can't do and will charge you extra for:

Looks like China has woken up for the day. That board's passed review and is into production with no problems or extra charges. The bit I was a bit concerned about was the combination of routing and v-cuts (you can't see them in the image above because including them confuses KiCad's rendering engine, but there are v-cuts alongside the edges of the sub-boards). Where I've left supporting bridges between sub-boards there are v-cuts that are only 2mm apart, but they seem to have passed without demur.

For the record, whole order is £14.45 including carriage and VAT for 10 panels, so 120 adapter boards for 12p each. Best price I can find on eBay UK is two delivered for £1.99 for UK stock, and £7.19 for 10, or £11.99 for 100 from China direct.

So the latter are as cheap as mine, but they're not as nice and if I'd just bought them I wouldn't have added anything to our sum of knowledge of what can and can't be squeezed out of JLC. 

Edit: my typing hasn't got any better as the day's gone on...

[beanflying]

@vk6zgo
I was reading in a Covid report that Bourke Shire Council in New South Wales in Australia have shot dead rescue dogs in their care in an effort to control Covid-19,  The WHO says that dogs and cats cannot catch or therefore transmit Covid-19 so what were they thinking? According to the report, one of those had just given birth as well. Your government has allegedly lunched an investigation 

Wait, what?
RESCUE dogs or RESCUED dogs? The first kind is not exactly cheap to train...

Council run Dog Pound for strays and impounded (generally dangerous etc) ones. This shire is way way rural maybe 1000km from Sydney, with a large indigenous (higher risk) population with not enough vaccination rate and very severe and likely ongoing restrictions to movement and sad as it might be but the dogs were put down.

[mnementh]

My mower is mostly wind powered on a Saturday afternoon

Still ultimately solar energy.

mnem
 

[tautech]

Well fuck. The first day I used it, this mower managed to find a piece of steel rebar driven into the ground that I have missed with the other mower ever since I got here a year ago.

Now... does this mean I need to keep the other mower, cuz this one is jinxed and wants to stay dead...?

mnem
You got me again, Murphy...

Ah nice and if you know much about blade impacts there might be a couple of issues in front of you.
Very very likely the flywheel key is now shorn or at best partially but enough to put the timing out for it now not to run properly.
At worst you could also have a bent crank and somewhat harder to remedy unless you have access to a B&S crankshaft straightening jig.
Here's one similar to what we used some decades back:
https://www.amazon.com/Stens-751-032-Crankshaft-Straightener-crankshafts/dp/B008N3K542

Fingers X'ed for you.

[mnementh]

Yup... Have personal experience with all of the above. Although straightening the crank was done ghetto fab in the toolshed; with mower bolted to angle iron in granddad's vise and a length of schedule 200 pipe as a persuader. Got it within a couple thou on dial indicator without cracking crank or case. Even the old man was impressed I figured that out myself at the tender young age of 12.

I now know I was lucky the crank didn't just grenade the first time I fired it up, of course. 

mnem
It's a wonder I didn't kill myself with the damned thing... 

[beanflying]

Anyone in need of a little HP foot fetishism eBay auction: #363517050911 Same seller also has another bunch of mainly RF goodies if you swing that way instead.

[tautech]

Yup... Have personal experience with all of the above. Although straightening the crank was done ghetto fab in the toolshed; with mower bolted to angle iron in granddad's vise and a length of schedule 200 pipe as a persuader. Got it within a couple thou on dial indicator without cracking crank or case. Even the old man was impressed I figured that out myself at the tender young age of 12.

I now know I was lucky the crank didn't just grenade the first time I fired it up, of course. 

mnem
It's a wonder I didn't kill myself with the damned thing... 

Straightening cranks used to be a good money earner and you can get them quite close to perfect and the steel in B&S don't mind being cold straightened.
Even had to do our own  but with the move away from one piece blades has reduced most of that sort of crank damage.