general-chat

[ebon dew]

it's more useful for cat tracking and slower update rates.

[tardy badger]

GPS generally only is useful for retrieval

[ebon dew]

if that's the only purpose yes that would work.

[limpid sedge]

ok so i guess wireless is kinda out of question

i just need 2040, 9dof imu

and gps

[ebon dew]

however it's a receiver only, you'd still need the LTE modem to send those coordinates. it's not a transceiver, it's a receiver only.

[tardy badger]

Anyway, 6 inches of dedicated space, say about 325mm^2 of space, you could pack a lot of functionality stacking stuff

[ebon dew]

so it's really not what i would consider the ultimate gps...

[tardy badger]

I’d personally stick to a LoRa module and GPS

[ebon dew]

lora only works line of sight. if it goes beyond the horizon or out of sight the lora becomes useless.

[tardy badger]

LoRa is good up to 10 miles idk

[limpid sedge]

would u do imu or not?

[ebon dew]

an LTE satellite modem is the only real answer but due to space constraints you're going to have a hard time stuffing that in there.

[tardy badger]

If you want to log telemetry data, sure

[limpid sedge]

yea so idk what board to use

fusse that one is out of stuck

[tardy badger]

I’d do a custom set of boards

[limpid sedge]

and also it doesent fuze data like b8o085

[ebon dew]

yes 10 miles with clear line of sight to a receiver module. i mean you could get close and it could be retrievable.

if it nose dives into the ground odds are it'll be irretrievable.

[tardy badger]

Stack them with headers and keep them secure with mounting pegs and slide them into the rocket housing.

[limpid sedge]

ok so basy i will have a cusom board with

pico

b8o085

ultimate gps module with the antenn

a

[tardy badger]

I think probably scrap the Pico

[limpid sedge]

yea and just a 2040

[tardy badger]

Something that stacks inside the rocket housing

[limpid sedge]

well at that point i dont even need a custom board right

its just i bu ch of sensors wired together

[ebon dew]

plenty of space in there for all the goodies, nice one.

[tardy badger]

No it would be very custom at that point

[fierce prawn]

Yeah if I don't be able to use I need to use another device as middle man

[tardy badger]

You don’t want things dangling around

[limpid sedge]

would t a pico fit in there

[tardy badger]

It could yeah, but you’re going to want to better take advantage of the space available

[limpid sedge]

oh yea also the board needs to be wired to the pico to use 4 servos

[tardy badger]

Basically you want a rocket computer sandwich

[ebon dew]

the teensy 4.1 is wicked fast and in stock. if you have room for that i'd go for it.

[limpid sedge]

can pico do 4 servos or do i need servo controller

[tardy badger]

Slightly out of my wheelhouse with servos but I believe they just need a PWM signal

Maybe a mosfet

Are the servos for flight stability controls?

[limpid sedge]

recovery

[ebon dew]

there's a servo featherwing https://www.adafruit.com/product/2928

which kinda brings us back to using the feather ecosystem because it truly does have the most amount of addon boards. feathers have all the goodies.

[limpid sedge]

kinda

[tardy badger]

I see space being the limiting factor

[limpid sedge]

agreed

[ebon dew]

yes easily

make a bigger rocket?

[tardy badger]

6” of space and 21mm of inner diameter

[ebon dew]

I suppose you could always just slap the boards on the outside 😛

[limpid sedge]

servos are in the recovery chute

[tardy badger]

Conservatively, 325mm^2 of horizontal space that can be exploited over the 6” of height

[ebon dew]

duct tape 👍

[tardy badger]

Space 1/2” between each board, you could have ~10 layers of functionality total

Still need batteries too

[limpid sedge]

yea esspecially cor the 4 motirs

[ebon dew]

why not have some kinda det cord from one chamber to the top and then pop the top for the chute? i thought that's how most model rockets were designed?

[tardy badger]

This is a small rocket

[limpid sedge]

yea

except i am manipulating the chute

[ebon dew]

like parasailing?

[limpid sedge]

the servos wre to manipulate the chut

e

exactly

[ebon dew]

interesting idea for recovery!!!

that's sweet.

[limpid sedge]

its for saftey

[ebon dew]

i've never heard of that

[limpid sedge]

lsst time my school launched they rocket landed in youth soccer game

very scary

[tardy badger]

https://tenor.com/view/cringe-eeee-gif-24636179

[ebon dew]

yeah lol

i know that feeling

[limpid sedge]

so thats why gps required

im doing it like sou cah toa problem

[ebon dew]

the problem is the feature set vs space constraints. that's a toughie.

[tardy badger]

Makes sense. Yeah.. gosh this right space makes this very precarious

[ebon dew]

https://tenor.com/view/charlie-day-gif-18564553

[limpid sedge]

i think now it make sense why all the parts are needed as they are

gps

imu

servos

[ebon dew]

the servos alone are going to take up a lot of space.

[limpid sedge]

they are supposed to go inside the parachute

and steer it

not the rocket

[tardy badger]

We know, it’s just servos tend to be big

[ebon dew]

the chute starts on the outside?

[limpid sedge]

yep agreed

[ebon dew]

or under some kind of fairing?

[limpid sedge]

we will try to get it work with 2 servos

[limpid sedge]

wdym

[ebon dew]

you can add fairings to the outside to give yourself some room to work with on the exterior of the rocket

[limpid sedge]

i dont u derstand lol

that would impact the range

[tardy badger]

A sub micro servo is 25x22x12mm

[limpid sedge]

correct

thats why i wanna try with 2 of them

not 4

[ebon dew]

well yes but isn't the goal safety as well. with space limitations you're going to make concessions.

[tardy badger]

Also consider the weight too. Is your engine capable of producing enough thrust for all this?

[limpid sedge]

ok so in summary we need a custom rp2949 board that connects to ultimate gps and bno085

[limpid sedge]

it should be

[tardy badger]

21mm rocket engines aren’t that powerful last I remember

[ebon dew]

is there some ruleset that is preventing a larger diameter stage?

[limpid sedge]

would the pcb have connections for these things or actully have them on the pcv

[tardy badger]

What engine type are you using?

[limpid sedge]

sending infos

its 24mm btw

[ebon dew]

for the g-forces i would solder everything, everything.

[limpid sedge]

ooh good idea

[tardy badger]

You would need connectors between each board, just headers would work. Use mounting/spacing sets for securing the boards

[limpid sedge]

ok so jumper wires with soldered ends

[tardy badger]

Not wires, just stacking headers

[ebon dew]

also depends on the orientation, if they're laying flat you could get away with socket headers.

[limpid sedge]

whats that

custom pcb just has the 2040 on it and ports to connect the diff sensors and servos

[tardy badger]

Stacking headers just allows you to take regular headers and stack them vertically

Right

[limpid sedge]

does it work circularly?

[limpid sedge]

any good resoruces on how i get a basic 2040 working with power in and flash and tuff in easyada

[ebon dew]

you plug the lower headers into the mainboard

[tardy badger]

I’d use 2 sets of 4

[tardy badger]

Check the RP2040 hardware design guide

Anyway, 30 newtons is like 6.7lbs of thrust, so ideally keeping the weight below 2lbs so you can actually fly.

[tardy badger]

2lbs for everything that is

[limpid sedge]

found it but thereare no schematics in it

[ebon dew]

that's what a short header looks like plugged into an rp2040 for my LORA transceiver

[limpid sedge]

but how would the stacking header work on a circle axis

[ebon dew]

you can use short headers to make the 2 boards closer together

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2940

or use long pins and just solder them directly together to squish them together as close as possible.

[limpid sedge]

https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2040/hardware-design-with-rp2040.pdf

this is correct one right

[ebon dew]

my lora stack is about 20mm thick.

but i'd say the closest i could squish them together would be about 15mm

[limpid sedge]

im still confused

what would i connect the beaders ro on the pcb?

would i leave like open holes

[tardy badger]

Solder stacking headers in each board and stack them together

[ebon dew]

the hole is if you solder the pico w directly to the pcb, if you use pin headers which raises the pico w off the pcb then you don't need the hole.

[limpid sedge]

oh oh ok

so we stack the components on the custom pcb

[ebon dew]

that is an option but for space saving and your constraints i would recommend soldering it to the pcb with the castellated holes.

you can always use pin headers to stack stuff on top of it

but being aware that going upwards you'd still want that hole, so that's another monkeywrench.

[limpid sedge]

so make the custom pcb with the 2040 gpios and solder boards like 8no085 to the pcb

?

[ebon dew]

you could do that sure

[limpid sedge]

have u used the bno085 by chwnce?

[ebon dew]

i would make a custom pcb for the 8no085 stuff in the pico format to be plug and play

me personally no

[limpid sedge]

oh oh oh

and then another pcb for gps

so they all work togehter

[ebon dew]

well i'd try to stuff all of it on 1 pcb if possible and if not then the 2nd pcb gets stacked on top.

[limpid sedge]

ok yea thats what i wss thinking

also

is bno085 just a fusion chip or does it have imu stuff sensors too

[crystal ore]

It has the sensors inside it, yes. You can get the raw data if you want.

[limpid sedge]

cool

[ebon dew]

i'd never even looked at the bno085. that looks perfect for your needs. awesome.

[limpid sedge]

fromomom schematic like this how do i know which part of the module goes to the pico and what part is just carrier board

[ebon dew]

have you looked into the 9-dof featherwings? https://www.adafruit.com/product/4565

plug and play stacks with any feather

[limpid sedge]

@ebon dew yea

but they dont have built in fusion like theat one doe

s

[ebon dew]

you've got a big project on your hands. wish you luck and if you need more help there's plenty of people here. sounds like an amazing project. please keep us updated on your progress!

[limpid sedge]

will do

thanks for ur help

[tardy badger]

#help-with-hw-design will be a great place to get help with your designs

@ebon dew I didn’t see if you responded earlier to my question of if you saw the product photos I took of IcyBlue

There was a million things going on when I asked lol

[limpid sedge]

cool

[ebon dew]

@tardy badger of course i did and pretty sure i commented about it too. the patience to hand assemble all those smd parts is beyond my shaky hand skill level. respect.

[gusty torrent]

I consistently get 6-8 day turnaround from JLCPCB on their cheapest shipping option.

My last order even bracketed CNY and I still got in 8 days.

[echo lava]

guys do you see any flaws in this code??

import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.keyboard import Keyboard
from adafruit_hid.keyboard_layout_us import KeyboardLayoutUS
from adafruit_hid.keycode import Keycode
import time
import board
import digitalio

These are the requires Libraries

button = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.GP18)
button_mode = digitalio.Direction.INPUT
button_pull = digitalio.Pull.UP

I am using a button at GPIO2 of Raspberry Pi, Then i initialised the button

The mode is Input , And i have stated it as Pull Down

keyboard = Keyboard(usb_hid.devices)

Setting up Keyboard

keytext = KeyboardLayoutUS(keyboard)

Keytext help us to write text files

while True:

if button.value:
    # it checks if the value of button is high or not
    keyboard.send(Keycode.GUI)
    # It is going to press Windows button
    time.sleep(0.4)
    keytext.write("Google")
    time.sleep(1)
    keyboard.send(Keycode.ENTER)
    time.sleep(0.4)
    # It is going to open Google.com
    keytext.write("https://www.youtube.com")
    time.sleep(0.4)
    keyboard.send(Keycode.ENTER)
    time.sleep(6)
    
    for search in range(3):
        keyboard.send(Keycode.TAB)
        time.sleep(0.4)
        # It is going to press TAB 3 times
        
    keyboard.send(Keycode.ENTER)
    time.sleep(0.4)
    keyboard.send(Keycode.ENTER)
    # It is going to SUBSCRIBE
time.sleep(0.1)

Do not look in the youtube link..
My Issue is that the module will continuesly run the if statement even if the button is not pressed...

[quaint marsh]

What pin is your button connected to? A comment says 2 but the code says 18

[limpid sedge]

ru in CONUS

[limpid sedge]

after more thinking, i realized that there needs to be wireless to reci e data too, as the ground center needs to transpir the recovery coordinates? can loda do this?lora

also how much accuracy can i get with this regular gps vs dgps?

[ebon dew]

Loras range can vary. In an open desert dry lake exceptional range for miles with a proper boost antenna. In a forest forget it. Scatter cant go through objects.

[limpid sedge]

and if im get transrecover, i need 2 of them right

[ebon dew]

I dont know what dgps is. Gps on the ublox modules is good to within about 100 ft.

[limpid sedge]

mine is bn880 it can produce 6 digits accuracy which is .11 of a meter but when i move it around it doesent seem to change posit? how much can adafruit do?

[ebon dew]

Yes you need at least 2 lora transceivers at minimum.

[limpid sedge]

differntial gps

[limpid sedge]

can they connect to a pc??

[ebon dew]

Via usb serial to program… not sure what you mean.

[limpid sedge]

my ground control is run my a pc

laptop

so can i connect 1 trasreciver to rocket and other to the pc

[ebon dew]

Oh, yes for sure, duh sorry.

[limpid sedge]

ok also whT is the wiring mean

u need a radio with the transrecover ?????

[ebon dew]

You can pipe one out to a tft display for portable tracking but a laptop works well for that too.

[limpid sedge]

*transreciver

[ebon dew]

The transceiver is the radio. Both a trnsmitter and receiver in one module.

Modules that can send and receive are called transceivers.

[limpid sedge]

ok cause the guide is saying connect board ci to radio ci

[ebon dew]

The gps module can only receive so thats a receiver module.

[limpid sedge]

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-rfm69hcw-and-rfm96-rfm95-rfm98-lora-packet-padio-breakouts/circuitpython-for-rfm69

see board mosi to radio mosi

does pico have mosi

rp2040

[ebon dew]

Radio in that context means the radio module or antenna pin.

[limpid sedge]

and what abt the board side though

[ebon dew]

That one in that image a radio transceiver module soldered to a breakout board.

[limpid sedge]

also i was thinking abt this. ima have rev 1 and rev2 for the circuitrry rev 1 will just be a pcb where i plug all this stuff into, rev 2 will be a pcv ethat has most of these modules on it

[ebon dew]

Yes in that guide radio means the rfm module.

[limpid sedge]

m

k

but the feather in use

has a mosi pin on it

green and orange wires

[ebon dew]

Not sure I follow. One is miso the other is mosi.

[limpid sedge]

yea

so does rp2040 have that??

[ebon dew]

Which is usually used for the SPI protocol.

Rp2040 has SPI yes. 2 spi buses actually

[limpid sedge]

oh perfect

[ebon dew]

Yup 👍

[limpid sedge]

also what is the easyest wY to get started with a basic working rp2040 based board

are there any templetes in easyada eith a basic power module flash that i can build on???

[ebon dew]

Thats a skerr question. Actually a lot of your questions are all hardware design related.

Recommend you start asking these questions in the hardware design topic. https://discord.com/channels/327254708534116352/656770973852237844

[limpid sedge]

k

[fierce prawn]

What can I use to measure the distance how much the baloon drift
What heading it is
And it's speed

[frigid tiger]

Accelerometer

accelerometer is the best tool

[fierce prawn]

Does it also contains heading and speed

[frigid tiger]

Speed is calculated by distance over time

Idk about heading

[fierce prawn]

What you would suggest to lock it in a certain area
A long enough string?

[frigid tiger]

Probably a string with an anchor or a ballast

Modern blimps are held in place by ropes

[fierce prawn]

And while in my room?

[fluid coyote]

Top led had been on for years and bottom is a new one both look the same how long do they last then? Seems good condition

Like i expected used one to have burn marks atleast

[acoustic pawn]

There would be no burn marks unless you actually blew one up. But those are some really good macro shots. How did you get those?

[fluid coyote]

Js normal mode on phone camera

In full screen mode

Cuz other modes don't got macro

[tardy badger]

Pricing out how much it would cost to get the parts for 500 units of my FPGA has been fun.

Plenty of back ordered stuff, but spending thousands on parts is a bit daunting

[late fulcrum]

I'm toying with an FPGA board too at the moment, but mostly concerned with the housekeeping details like how do I get the code onto it, power supplies, and clock.

[tardy badger]

FTDI chips seem the be the standard way to program

Power sequence seems to be important but also not at the same time? I’ve gotten away with not doing any cascaded power supply

Which chip are you looking at?

[late fulcrum]

I've seen boards (like the iCEBreaker) that seem to use the FTDI chips without appearing to need additional programming like configuring the USB parameters, connection scheme, etc., but haven't verified that this is entirely true.

[tardy badger]

I just use the ft232h

[late fulcrum]

And it Just Works?

[tardy badger]

Yeah

[late fulcrum]

Cool, thanks for the confirmation.

[tardy badger]

I use it to program the spi flash

Then the spi flash feeds the fpga

[late fulcrum]

Ah, so there are 3 main logic chips, the FPGA itself, the FTDI interface chip, and an SPI flash chip that holds the bitmap?

[tardy badger]

Yeah, if you don’t use spi flash you might run into the bitstream only being temporary

[late fulcrum]

Presumably the FTDI chip loads the bitstream on power up/reset

[tardy badger]

The FTDI in my case only programs the spi flash, it’s not used after bitstream is loaded

But I have another version that the FTDI programs the ICE5LP4K directly but the bitstream isn’t persistent so after reset I have to reprogram

[late fulcrum]

Yeah, on the one hand, it's a bit of a waste, on the other hand, it yields a lovely bit of convenience that makes it totally worth it in my estimation

[tardy badger]

Oh absolutely

The other option is to use a microcontroller to program either spi flash or the fpga

Which is what I’m attempting with an RP2040 on board instead of an FT232H

[late fulcrum]

That could save a couple of chips for my use case, but I'm unsure yet if that's a worthwhile optimization

[tardy badger]

I only see it as a benefit in that you could also connect IO between the two outside of programming for like off chip DSP or something

[late fulcrum]

In my immediate use case, the FPGA will just be an SPI peripheral to a microcontroller, but if I'm going to get boards fabbed, I may aim for a more versatile implementation I can re-use for a wider variety of projects in the future (a situation I'm guessing you're familiar with)

[tardy badger]

Yeah, I’ve got a featherwing I’m planning on assembling at some point that just has an ICE5LP4K

[late fulcrum]

Do you have a favoured clock oscillator? I found an affordable 1ppm one that looks attractive.

[tardy badger]

And all the IO broken out to headers

[late fulcrum]

Wow, I could just wait for that...

[tardy badger]

I’ve seen most people use like 12MHz osc for clock input

I’ve not personally done it

[late fulcrum]

One of the less-standard features I'm looking for is a particularly high precision clock oscillator, but I could presumably cut a trace and send in a clock signal from an external source (although it would be grand if there were on-board support for replacing the clock input)

[late fulcrum]

Pretty! Lotsa I/O pins pinned out too, which is lovely

[tardy badger]

You could probably easily solder an oscillator between two pins and get the results you want

I think you’d want to make sure those pins support clock input

I think there are 4 pins that do

[late fulcrum]

Right. If I find a replacement oscillator that has a compatible footprint, I could probably just hot air off the original one and replace it.

[tardy badger]

Yeah. I might add an oscillator to this design yet, I’m mostly trying to figure out the program from a microcontroller bit

[late fulcrum]

But you're right, if an I/O pin that supports clock capability was available, I could just send the precision clock to it, and route it internally

I like of like the idea of a generic FPGA daughter board I could just design a board around with the project-specific features required. Yours looks like it would fit the bill, or nearly so, with the additional bonus of fitting the Feather pinout (which a bunch of additional pins available)

Similar to SparkFun's "Artemis" and "MicroMod" concepts

[tardy badger]

Yeah, I’m hoping to finalize the design and throw it on my Tindie shop in the coming month. I need to source more 1.2V LDO though

They go in and out of stock like crazy

[late fulcrum]

I'm guessing there are a few compatible choices, so you don't have to redesign the board to swap LDOs

[tardy badger]

Yeah, I originally went with an adjustable since I hoped people would avoid it since it wasn’t fixed but I was wrong

[late fulcrum]

Originally, I was going to have the FPGA act as an SPI host as well to control other things (when I was looking a hanging stuff off a PMOD port), but one thing FPGAs excel at is I/O, so I'll probably just use a simple parallel bus instead.

I'm guessing there's enough call for that specific voltage that there are a few fixed choices available (just, as you point out, none of them are predictably available at a given time)

[tardy badger]

I had looked at there were like 140k available with TI directly but July lead times for Digi-Key and other suppliers

Wait nvm it was the 2.5V reg

My current alternate 1.2V LDO is this fixed voltage one from Analog https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-inc/ADP165AUJZ-R7/5056879

[steady dove]

👋 @tardy badger

[tardy badger]

Hi

[ebon dew]

does it really matter what the low end of the LDO is for a feather as long as it's below a low battery threshold?

[tardy badger]

Most are below the battery threshold so any should be fine that matches that

[olive dome]

Be aware about the pin placement limitation for Ice40 PLL if you have a clock input that needs PLL. Check if it compiles before routing/layout.

2.5V LDO can be omit for most of the ice40 dev boards though, I don't think anyone wants to do OTP....

[vale quest]

managed to order the m4 can bus feathers I wanted 😄 Now I jsut have to wait forever for shipping!

[magic talon]

Sup

I’m a analog guy in a digital world

Excite to learn arduino

[tardy badger]

That’s what I mentioned above, there’s only a handful of pins that were compatible

As for 2.5V supply, I added for the niche user who will want it

[tardy badger]

Saw Ant-Man and Wasp Quantumania

Twas good

[delicate stream]

https://tenor.com/view/dancing-cat-dancing-kitten-60fps-boogie-cat-gif-24303276

[tardy badger]

You’ve re-emerged

Welcome back to the land of the living 🙂

[delicate stream]

Thanks, I had a bad date and now distracting myself with electronics

[tardy badger]

Oof, I’m sorry to hear that

You’re always welcome around here ❤️

The good news is that electronics are never gonna give you up. They won’t let you down. They can’t really turn around so they won’t hurt you.

They’re inanimate objects so they won’t make you cry, and they certainly won’t tell a lie either

Which means after all that. They won’t desert you

[dusty citrus]

where can I get small alluminium things of about 6x6cm with some logo printed on for cheap? I though about doing it diy by electroplasting resin and then inking it but resin sucks, I can't get the ink to stick to the metal, and I need to polish the nickel to give it an alluminum look

[crystal ore]

Maybe search for custom drink coasters? That seems to be a thing they can print with metal.

[tardy badger]

Here’s a song to pick you up https://youtu.be/NN75im_us4k

[delicate stream]

People who make mashups like those are musical geniuses

[blissful roost]

I watched it yesterday, with my dad.
Definitely very good. 🙂

[tardy badger]

Jonathan Majors, MODOK. Ugh I really enjoyed it

[gusty torrent]

Japan

[blissful roost]

😄

[tardy badger]

And the end credit scene.. muahahaha

[blissful roost]

hehe

||I'm glad that Cassie was actually relevant and not just a side character|| (Very mild spoiler.. not a bad one)

Not really a "spoiler" at all. lol

[tardy badger]

She’s in the trailers so not a spoiler

Also apparently I missed the second post credit scene.. nooooo

Guess I’ll have to wait till it comes to Disney+

[blissful roost]

I can tell you in PM, if you like... lol

[tardy badger]

I read an article and figured out what it was

[blissful roost]

It is a very good one.

[tardy badger]

My little brother sent me this

[blissful roost]

lol

[tardy badger]

I remember coming across is shortly after it came out

So it’s lived in my head for at least 12 years lol

[delicate stream]

Heh

[static flare]

I'm so sorry to hear :(

[delicate stream]

It was actually less a date and more an abandonment

People suck

[tardy badger]

Those people suck

The people here are awesome and love you

🤓

[delicate stream]

Lol, fair

Nerds are cool

[tardy badger]

And tough

I love Bluey

[delicate stream]

Hehe

[steady dove]

👋 @delicate stream

[late fulcrum]

You could look at custom anodizing, or perhaps using a metal marking coating and using a laser to place your design on it.

[tardy badger]

Taking product images on a white background is hard for my iPhone 14 pro

A dslr would allow me to control the environmental variables much better

[late fulcrum]

There are some phone apps (such as FoCal) that give you some more control of the camera.

[tardy badger]

yeah, it's just white saturates everything so you have to open the aperture move to get more details out but not so much that it's overly saturated..

i'll have to give FoCal a try though

does it cost money?

Welp, got some initial documentation up for IcyBlue on github https://github.com/skerr92/IcyBlue

[dusty citrus]

What's this a NEMA 16?

[late fulcrum]

Maybe? This page says a NEMA 16 frame is 39mm diameter. https://www.zikodrive.com/ufaqs/nema-motor-frame-sizes-mean/

Then again, that chart is less than clear as to which dimension is referred to as "diameter" http://www.piclist.com/images/Stepper-Generic-03a.gif

[dusty citrus]

I saw the same, maybe they do not count a mm out as tolerance
Thanks

[limpid sedge]

oh that makes sense. i think the shipping would be cheaper there then CONUS

[whole jacinth]

various things imply that the critical dimension for flange-mount NEMA frames is the bolt circle diameter for the mounting holes

[late fulcrum]

So, Øf in that diagram. That does make sense.

[whole jacinth]

another (less important?) diameter is the circle that encloses the corners of the flange

i'm not quite interested enough to register to download a copy of the actual NEMA standard

[dusty citrus]

What do you mean?
I was just going to ask about how is that circle drawn
As I see it starts from the center, and ends its radious at the center of one of those holes for the screws?

[whole jacinth]

yeah, in mechanical design, there's the concept of a group of holes whose centers lie on the same circle of a specified diameter and center, thus "bolt circle"

[lunar dust]

Is the main Adafruit page a subtle hint about the next AdaBox?

[tardy badger]

How small do you think an anechoic could be for RF testing?

Like what if I made a box out of plywood, applied a layer of foil between plywood and Sheetrock, and placed ridged foam insulation around the thing. Could that provide enough for doing unintentional radiator testing?

[late fulcrum]

I think for an anechoic chamber, you'd want something that absorbed RF instead of reflected it.

[whole jacinth]

yeah, usually they're full of wedges, where the sharp interior angles "trap" the RF via repeated reflections

[tardy badger]

That’s why I’m thinking a combination of faraday cage (block incoming RF) and then using RF foam cone material

For now it’s just going to be for testing emissions on a 12MHz crystal

And from active data lines like USB and the SPI traces.

So fairly low end UHF

[whole jacinth]

is your goal certification? or avoiding interference with existing equipment nearby?

[tardy badger]

Yeah, hoping to self certify without paying $850 for a chamber

Or paying $1000+ to an outside test lab

[whole jacinth]

i wonder how strict the test standards are for self-ceritification…

[tardy badger]

You have to be pretty close to the ANSI C63.4 standard or whatever it is

You have to provide proof that the test chamber meets the specifications I guess?

It’s all very convoluted

The way I see it, is attempted compliance is better than none at all

[whole jacinth]

i guess initially testing on your own can save you time and money when booking an actual official testing session

[tardy badger]

Yeah, if the product sells enough to afford better testing, definitely will look into it

I’d probably just buy a more professional chamber from a place that sells certified ANSI C63.4 chambers, and better equipment than a $65 spec an

[late fulcrum]

12MHz? That's hardly UHF, even with a bunch of harmonics.

[tardy badger]

Too fast to be HF class though?

[late fulcrum]

I tend to think of the cutoff points at the 3s: HF to 30MHz, VHF from 30-300MHz, >300MHz is UHF, etc.

[tardy badger]

Huh guess it’s middle hf

Anyway, it requires emissions testing under unintended radiators by the FCC because it’s over 9kHz, it also falls under CE testing requirements

[late fulcrum]

For ordinary square wave output oscillators, I'll generally include the first 10 harmonics, so 120MHz would be solidly in the VHF realm

[tardy badger]

Plus the new UKCA or whatever it’s called

I know a ton of products don’t even do testing but they’re playing with fate

I’d rather not

[late fulcrum]

I remember when Atari came out with their 800 series home computer. They couldn't afford to go through FCC testing more than once, so they shielded it six ways to Sunday. They brought it in, the tester told them "okay, you can turn it on", and they grinned and pointed out "It IS on..."

[tardy badger]

Hahaha

That’s golden

I’ve built $8 of wiggle room in my BOM, maybe I should just put a huge shield over the whole thing hahaha

$8 wiggle for worst case parts substitution

[late fulcrum]

Shielding and filtering can make a big difference, but the hard part is knowing what's needed, when, where, and if!

[tardy badger]

12MHz crystal shouldn’t produce much EMI at all

[late fulcrum]

If this is your board with the outer ground planes, that should help a lot.

Is a a bare crystal or an oscillator can?

[tardy badger]

This crystal here

I chose to place it as close to the pins as possible, very short traces to reduce radiation. Mostly solid fill around it

[late fulcrum]

Ah, looks like an oscillator module. Some of them have limited slew rate to limit higher frequency harmonic radiation.

[tardy badger]

It has very low load capacitance too which should help I imagine

8pF load, I use 5pF caps assuming ~3pF parasitic

[late fulcrum]

Load capacitance? Probably not an oscillator then. Crystal oscillators like that tend to have very low drive (microwatts) and therefore low radiation from both low current and low harmonic waveforms.

[tardy badger]

It’s a crystal yeah

[late fulcrum]

Some odd quirks in the ground fill, but PCB design software is like that sometimes.

[tardy badger]

The routing in tight spaces doesn’t help

[late fulcrum]

It looks like one trace splits and rejoins just to the left of the 6-pin chip under the battery(?) connector

[tardy badger]

Probably an artifact of me removing some components that weren’t necessarily helping the eeprom

[late fulcrum]

My boards have weird historical artifacts like that too

[tardy badger]

It’s really interesting to me the FTDI recommended circuit is different than what Adafruit implemented on the ft232h friend

The friend works so I just assume it should work for me and it does so yay saving like $0.04 in resistors haha

[late fulcrum]

Things like that make me curious. Sometimes it's design style, sometimes it's deliberate for a specific reason, and sometimes (I'm looking at you, Raspberry Pi Foundation) things just get done wrong.

[tardy badger]

What did RPi do wrong?

Was it on one of the Pi or the RP2040?

[late fulcrum]

Pi 4 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/raspberry-pi-4-uses-incorrect-usb-c-design-wont-work-with-some-chargers/

I did gleefully lift AdaFruit's trick of using resistor networks as a bunch of individual resistors when I needed more than a couple of the same value.

[tardy badger]

Hehe..

Oh yeah I do recall reading about the RPi 4 usb c issues

Kind of silly that such a mistake was made

[late fulcrum]

I love this pull quote:

"Instead of trying to come up with some clever circuit," Leung writes, "hardware designers should simply copy the figure from the USB-C Spec exactly [emphasis his]. The Figure 4–9 I posted above isn’t simply a rough guideline of one way of making a USB-C receptacle. It’s actually normative, meaning mandatory, required by the spec in order to call your system a compliant USB-C power sink. Just copy it."

[tardy badger]

I wonder if they fixed it on the new revisions

If I ever get to the point where I’m running a business out of a small industrial space, I’m definitely going to build a really nice anechoic chamber

Bigger than a 0.6x0.6x1m box that I’m planning.

[late fulcrum]

I almost bought an RF shield room once. It turned up at an industrial auction and nobody seemed to be in the market for such a specific piece of gear, or even knew what it was. The new price had likely been hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I think it went for $50. If I'd had access to a truck, I'd have bought it. While I don't have a lot of use for an 8x8x6 foot room with 4 inch thick copper walls, it was just such a nifty object.

[tardy badger]

4” copper walls 😵

I’ll just stick with like.. flashing sandwiching a piece of foam core

My employer has a humongous anechoic chamber

You can’t even hear a pin drop it’s so quiet

It’s big enough to fit 10ft dishes in

[tardy badger]

Hmm.. it seems that the lowest RF foam panel I can find does 30MHz up to 100GHz

I suppose noise below 30MHz is generally negligible

https://www.theemcshop.com/foam-rf-absorber-anechoic-chamber/3201-pu-ram-polyurethane-foam-rf-absorber-30-mhz-110-ghz.html

I suppose lower frequencies might be easily absorbed by more standard acoustic cone panels

This will probably take some experimenting

[gusty torrent]

For $50 you could probably sell the copper for scrap at a profit.

[dusty citrus]

what's the order of this? from left to right, to top to bottom?

nvm found

[tardy badger]

Me who has seriously way more on my plate than I need: “heh, this new project sounds cool!”

[ebon dew]

There's like a million interesting ideas to explore and not enough time. Maybe if I had like 20 3D printers and could fire off entire builds to JARVIS I'd be more efficient but not by much. Would be cool if there was a ChatGPT version for PCB design... which actually worked and wasn't just full of ****.

[tardy badger]

Yeah, it’s be cool to just have a command line tool to compile design blocks into a schematic and then I could just route everything

[ebon dew]

I think Stargirl has kind of the beginning for something that could possibly do that. Just feed it modules, tell it where to connect module nets together. I actually think that would work but would require a schematic database.

I think the main reason LadyAda designs everything into small modules is exactly for this purpose. She's slowly building up a module database. I mean at first it's for prototyping to make sure a module works with breakouts and such. Later can drop the breakout headers and combine schematic areas together easily. Been noticing a lot more of that with her latest schematics. It's all building from the ground up and the amount of designs out there now is starting to make something like a modular database possible.

I bet I could do something like that for EasyEDA but would take months. Nice thing about EasyEDA is you can copy/paste directly from one schematic to another. It will also import schematics as pages and you link the pages together. Definitely very doable but time consuming.

[tardy badger]

I could make design blocks that would simplify things, plus I do a lot of copy paste for known designs

[ebon dew]

same

Design blocks makes the most sense. I wouldn't know how to do that stand-alone in python or anything. I'd have to use EasyEDA since I'm most familiar with it.

[tardy badger]

My current idea would just add two additional main components to a board

SRAM and an additional USB port

[ebon dew]

I haven't actually tried that feature out yet with pages. Will definitely look into it. Might be able to use pages as the blocks.

Pages are basically schematic pages you can link together with nets.

[tardy badger]

I’m fascinated by ASIC development so I am tempted to make a board specifically for ASIC design

[ebon dew]

I signed up for the icyblue pre-release btw 🙂

no idea what i'd use it for but you're always pushing me to explore fpga. can't really figure out what i can do with one until i have one.

unless there's some kind of emulator out there for that kind of thing.

[tardy badger]

Oh yeah, madbodger mentioned one in the #fpga channel

8bitworkshop.com

I’ve used EDA Playground

[ebon dew]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-really-seriously-what-gif-15247813

[tardy badger]

I’m going to work on some examples that can be run on my board that will include the bitstreams for them (hex/bin) files

And the Verilog files as well

[ebon dew]

assembly

https://tenor.com/view/oh-forget-it-dr-leonard-mccoy-star-trek-the-original-series-oh-well-gif-23455075

i take back everything i said. that's way over my head. i have enough issues just learning circuit python right now.

[tardy badger]

There’s baby steps, don’t worry

There’s no rush in learning either and honestly no rush on getting hardware either

The best part of learning is it can happen on your own time 🙂

[ebon dew]

the more projects i want to do the more i realize they actually take longer than expected. not to mention the hundreds of projects i've started that are now sitting on shelves waiting for me to get back to someday.

[tardy badger]

By the way, you’re doing great learning circuitpython 🙂

[ebon dew]

i'm an idiot sandwich

[tardy badger]

Piles of projects, such is the life of a maker 🙂

I’ve got two padded envelopes full of bad board designs and unfinished projects lol

[ebon dew]

doesn't help when a part you use a manufacturer comes out and says there's a problem with it a decade later...

[tardy badger]

We’re talking well over 100 boards, some fully assembled, partially assembled, or not at all because I found a short while continuity testing

[ebon dew]

i really loved the mcp23017 too, fell in love with it. 😦

[tardy badger]

Well, the good news is there’s a lot of chips that do what it did that also have circuitpython support 🙂

[ebon dew]

sheesh. yeah that's really bad. how do you store all those boards? are plastic or electrostatic bags good enough to store long term?

[tardy badger]

Just bubble mailers with the boards open air

I’ll eventually take them to an electronics recycling bin

But for now they remind me of where I came from.

[ebon dew]

is it bad to just throw fr4 in the trash?

or are you talking about boards with components on them?

[tardy badger]

You really shouldn’t throw it in the trash

Yeah. Many have dead components

Many mistakes have been made but also many great boards too

[ebon dew]

did you see the bedibrator board? super simple design that i almost messed up too. it's only got like 2 buttons and an led.

[tardy badger]

Sometimes I envy people who are able to just get it right the first try. But then I remind myself that it’s the process of being wrong that allows me to be better and makes victory all the more sweet.

I didn’t, did you share it on mastodon?

Maybe I did see it. Mastodon is weird in that I don’t feel like I’m seeing everything

[ebon dew]

well i'm on like the 3rd rev of the tr-cowbell and still haven't gotten it 100% right.

and i didn't breadboard anything which in hindsight was extremely lazy and stupid of me.

[late fulcrum]

A side advantage of my having made a bunch of mistakes is I recognize them when I make them again. Better yet, I can sometimes recognize them when someone else makes them too, and give out hints!

[ebon dew]

i don't even know how to link to mastodon posts because it'll link from my instance i think

ah i have a youtube video though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkGcRJ83Vnk

[tardy badger]

It’s hard to breadboard the stuff I want to do unfortunately 🙂

[ebon dew]

taken from a design by CHEP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei7HbfuQd-s

[tardy badger]

Oh yea the bed level tool

[ebon dew]

I didn't like the way he designed the coincell on the bottom which means you can't use it while the bed is heated... which is kinda necessary for thermal expansion and the most accurate results.

i was like... i can fix that.

now it's all one sided and with a gantry level switch, improved.

was able to take his idea, redesign & improve it in about an hour, fire off the gerber and voila.

mostly thanks to learning electronics from hanging out here. i would have never been able to do something like that before joining this community.

[tardy badger]

That’s really awesome

I started with banging my head against a way, found a large electronics group on Facebook for which was full of old EEs who preferred to harp on new designers rather than help.

Then I found this community

[ebon dew]

contacted him yesterday and offered to send him 2, all open source pcb's are now on OSHW

[tardy badger]

Oh nice!

I need to submit IcyBlue to OSHW

Get my first project certified (though I could definitely do that for most of my projects)

[ebon dew]

It's really easy to submit as long as you're active with github. You can link to your github project page.

[tardy badger]

Yeah

I just never got around to it before

[ebon dew]

don't even need a real website. plus it's still better if you think github will outlive your website.

[tardy badger]

Yeah

[ebon dew]

my registrar wanted $100 for an annual renewal of SSL... i was like yeah this is getting stupid.

[tardy badger]

Most website hosts offer ssl for free with their basic tier packages

[umbral phoenix]

LetsEncrypt is free

[tardy badger]

I did get a notice from Weebly though that they’ll be deactivating my free tier with custom domain in march if I don’t upgrade my plan lol..

[ebon dew]

i'm just gonna go with self-signed from now on. it's becoming prohibitively expensive. the certificate is more than my hosting fees.

[tardy badger]

I use Weebly because the shop directly integrates with square which is easy

Plus drag and drop makes it easy to just throw something together

[umbral phoenix]

"Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the nonprofit ISRG" https://letsencrypt.org

[tardy badger]

I have a love hate relationship with web design

[ebon dew]

yeah i see square advertising everywhere and they have easy ecommerce built in. though if i was to sell something i'd probably go with tindie anyway.

[tardy badger]

Tindie is fine, but I worry about PayPal just randomly seizing my account and money in it

[ebon dew]

same. i've had the same web design for like 15 years now and it really hasn't aged too bad.

[umbral phoenix]

self-signed adds a few steps in the browser, but it's a pain for a CircuitPython device

[ebon dew]

starting to reach the point where it's beginning to look truly outdated.

thanks i'll look into that.

[tardy badger]

I need to look at Lectronz too

[late fulcrum]

I just stood up my own CA and use it to sign my certs

[ebon dew]

yeah Arturo has been busy, he's doing good things over there.

[tardy badger]

Arturo (Solder Party maker) use it

I don’t think Arturo started lectronz but I know he uses it a lot

[tardy badger]

Fascinating

How did you do that?

[ebon dew]

only reason i thought that was because ladyada said something about it last week i think. and i was like i didn't know it was arturo's.

[late fulcrum]

There's nothing magic about a CA other than trust. So I just have my machines trust my CA, and then they trust all the certs signed by it.

[ebon dew]

she might have been incorrect about arturo owning lectronz?

SSL is a pain in the *** to setup

[tardy badger]

I’m low owns Lectronz which is a Greek company

Arturo is out of Malmö, Sweden

But he does a lot of promoting for Lectronz

[ebon dew]

i always get tindie confused with tinder. the names are just too close that it's kinda awkward.

[tardy badger]

Lol I hit enter after thinking I typed Tindie the other day

Ya know, with my wife sitting right next to me 😂

[umbral phoenix]

I swiped right on that Tindie product

[tardy badger]

I think DoLA is coming soon

It says 11 minutes 😬

[ebon dew]

Only reason i'll give lectronz a shot is because it doesn't sound close to tinder.

i thought i saw a notification somewhere but can't find it

[tardy badger]

Lectronz I believe offers other ways of payment outside of PayPal too

[ebon dew]

ah i had to refresh, now it's showing up in youtube.

[frigid tiger]

Does tindie pay via paypal

[tardy badger]

Yup, only through PayPal

PayPal is just dubious. They messed with Flipper Zero makers last year, holding up over $1m or something like that

[ebon dew]

well.. Flipper's intentions are dubious

[tardy badger]

https://twitter.com/flipper_zero/status/1567194641610465281?s=20

Flipper Zero (@flipper_zero)

PayPal has blocked our business account and is holding $1.3M for more than 2 months without explaining what exactly they are not happy with. Even @PayPal support doesn't know what's going on. ⚠️This endangers the production of Flipper Zero in general. More details in thread 1/5

Likes

6587

Retweets

2129

Twitter · Sep 6, 2022, 4:54 PM

[ebon dew]

the potential for Flipper abuse is astronomical

[tardy badger]

Sure, but it was a perfectly legal product

Probably playing with some grey area but overall a cool tool

[ebon dew]

It rides that super fine line in the gray area. I'm pretty confident the FCC wouldn't approve but they'd have to prove intent.

[dusty citrus]

drupal is completely free, there are many other options which are cheap or free

[ebon dew]

exactly

[tardy badger]

But Flipper Zero is just one of many examples

[frigid tiger]

I hate PayPal and I'd hate to tie my finances to them

[tardy badger]

The fact of the matter is PayPal just makes sweeping back office changes that have zero recourse which is absolutely not okay.

[dusty citrus]

that's happens when they get too big, amazon is also known to do that thing

[ebon dew]

Take lophtcrack for example. Cracked windows xp passwords. a legitimate tool for sysadmins who have to deal with users who go over and beyond trying to make work PC's their own... which is definitely a thing. however in the wrong hands it's a nefarious tool.

like a gun... it depends on how the tool is used that makes it good or bad.

[delicate stream]

What if… there were an app for doing the swipe left/right for if you like/dislike a product design

[ebon dew]

interesting idea. wouldn't a like button be better?

i mean if you're shopping for a synthesizer and they're only showing you buck converters you're going to swipe on legitimately good designs and make the authors feel bad, not the way to go.

[delicate stream]

This was a half-baked sleepy idea XD

Could be like/meh/dislike

And could choose to view categories

[ebon dew]

just kinda brings up the point on how inefficient the tinder flow works. it's just a bad idea.

[delicate stream]

mmm

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE! The Desk of Ladyada - More RP2040 Tester Brains https://youtu.be/Qg2qjeiy4pg

[delicate stream]

OOO

[umbral phoenix]

any tool with enough network effects to have good coverage of the offerings risks becoming an evil monopoly

[dusty citrus]

tbh I also wanted something like that, but with the ability to auto generate stuff, and suggest options, like you want a resistor? here's the cheapest one, or here the automatically pcb trace route that works as a resistor, or then you want it to be bigger or shorter for some reasons? use a gizmo to scale it down/up without it changing its values ; you want to scale 3v to 5v? here's a couple of options, based on price, size and eccetera

some tools are already there (sorta), but are scattered all around the web, and not so "interactive" to use

[hasty quarry]

This image makes me really happy

Jacobians are incredible

I can't believe I haven't known about this

[ebon dew]

math can be beautiful sometimes

[gusty torrent]

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf

A little triggerhappy are we?

[delicate stream]

Honestly I'd guess it was just random nuts shooting at balloons because they think they're protecting the country

[gusty torrent]

Their stuff is at 30000+ feet

[delicate stream]

hmmm

Gun drones

Or hot air balloon nuts, lol

[ebon dew]

I read about that yesterday. Impressive that it went around the entire world so many times. Then it had the unfortunate circumstance to come down right in the middle of a politically hot climate. Was neat to find out you can launch a balloon anytime you want as long as it's payload is under a certain amount.

which makes sense because kids, parties, etc lose ballons all the time so the govt doesn't bother tracking that stuff.

However the balloons they shot down over NC and such were pretty massive with very large structures.

[crystal ore]

And airplanes hit birds all the time, so a balloon that isn't any more damaging than a seagull is probably okay too, heh heh.

[ebon dew]

birds aren't made out of metal though. if you're going to have instrumentation it'll at least have bits of metal content.

hitting a wing np, hitting the cockpit window would be a potentially fatal incident for the pilot.

[delicate stream]

Birds are partly made from metal, hard to make robots without it

[ebon dew]

that is one theory

however those metal birds don't fly at commercial altitudes

that we know of...

https://tenor.com/view/dundundun-suspense-scary-shocker-gif-6070360

[delicate stream]

They can fly to space

[ebon dew]

there's no air in space, birds cannot fly in a vacuum.

[delicate stream]

That's what their ion propulsion systems are for

[ebon dew]

oh right i forgot about those

[dusty citrus]

As I heard they have more problems in the engine, birds might break it

[frigid tiger]

Ion thrusters, very cool

[dapper hatch]

I discovered a wonderful project by a young engineer on youTube. He made a mars rover and ran it at a local coal mine emulating the remote access the mars rover has. A great little 'video essay' of his journey creating his own rover. The video was posted for weeks ago. https://youtu.be/6B4bVdM5Aw0

[delicate stream]

I would looooove to do a project like that

[steady dove]

So I should not go on any hot air balloon rides. Got it.

[dapper hatch]

Me too. 🙂

[tardy badger]

I live not too far from mars like terrain 🙂

(Moab, UT)

[delicate stream]

skerr, is that volunteering for us to send our rovers to you? lol

[tardy badger]

No, I don’t have the gas money

[delicate stream]

lol, so we gotta pay for gas money too, I see...

[frigid tiger]

You can simulate a martian lake once the salt lake dries up

[tardy badger]

Who needs to wait? Dugway proving grounds are an hour away!

[bold frost]

Hi, is this arduino only or can i use it with ESP32 + homeassistant?

[delicate stream]

Works with any microcontroller with a NeoPixel library

[static flare]

It's a NeoPixel strip, so it can be driven by any microcontroller, but they normally need a separate power supply to run longer than about 60 neopixels

AFAIK they're 5V chips but are 3V logic tolerated

But it could be the other way around

[delicate stream]

5V logic is recommended, but I've used various NeoPixels on 3.3v microcontrollers without issue

[bold frost]

Im looking for a cheap ledstrip that I can connect to an esp32, and it needs to be controllable with home assistant. Any recommendations?

[static flare]

Ultimately, you could absolutely do that! You'd need to code it in though, unless someone has created some code already that's fit for your purpose

[delicate stream]

Cheapest strips are going to be 3-channel RGB, so all LEDs of one color are on or off, could control those with transistors. That NeoPixel strip is probably your best option for individually addressable, and pretty sure someone has done Home Assistant control on ESP32

[bold frost]

Do I need anything else besides that ledstrip? Like do I need to power it or something

[static flare]

For shorter strips, you shouldn't need a separate power supply

[delicate stream]

I think it's 20mA max for a NeoPixel? so like 600mA for that 30 pixel strip

[bold frost]

Alright thanks for the info. And do you guys have a motion sensor recommendation? 1m distance if possible

[delicate stream]

ieyurghueh DYNO

[bold frost]

This site is saying it can measure up to 5m but idk if thats possible

[limpid sedge]

if i have a problem that is something like this

someone is parachuting from 2000lbs and they need to land 500 feet forward, what dive angle do they need?

how to solve using equations?

[bold frost]

wrong discord

[limpid sedge]

its for a hardware project though

still wrong

[delicate stream]

Yeah, can do 5m -- that sensor is on Adafruit

[bold frost]

Can I connect it to an esp32 and use it with homeassistant?

[delicate stream]

Mhmm, you can connect pretty much anything to the ESP32, then you just need the programming for Home Assistant

[bold frost]

alright. And do you think there is a big difference with this one? Its half the price

[delicate stream]

This one has 2 output pins; one immediately turns on/off with motion or no motion; the other pin stays high for 2 seconds after motion is detected. For the 3-pin, it only has one output and will always stay high for 2 seconds after motion. So if you need to know EXACTLY when there is or is not motion, you want the 4-pin; if you just want to know within a couple seconds, you can get the 3-pin

Also the 3-pin can do 3-12v, 3.3v logic, but the 4-pin is 3.3v power only

[bold frost]

When it detects motion it should turn on an led strip

So i am not sure which one to pick then

[delicate stream]

I'd say go for the 3-pin; you just need to know if there is motion in general, so that one is easier to deal with

[bold frost]

Thanks!

[delicate stream]

No problem :D

[tardy badger]

LinkedIn: “another OEM PCB/PCBA representative wants to join your networking”

https://tenor.com/view/welp-ok-gif-7575555

My favorite message that they put in the connect request is “nice to be knowing you!”

https://tenor.com/view/thanos-i-dont-even-know-who-you-are-marvel-gif-15769006

This is basically the days following posting anything about my PCB work. You gotta admire the hustle though

[delicate stream]

Lol

[tardy badger]

I just cleared out 225 connection requests lol..

[stable vapor]

I get a lot of financial planners trying to connect.

[dusty citrus]

What's about?

[tardy badger]

I also get business marketers who promise to help my business grow

[tardy badger]

The hustle of reps from white label PCB/PCBA fabs in China

[steady dove]

Legit.

/s

[dusty citrus]

What I thought then
Just easier some social engineering than reversing the thing

[tardy badger]

I share anything remotely related to PCBs or electronics and my connection requests get loaded with these reps

But they just need one person to say yes for it to be worth it for them

[delicate stream]

What do they want, to use your hard-crafted brand on their white-label products?

[tardy badger]

No, they want to make my PCBs and assemble them for me for money

[delicate stream]

Ahhh…

[tardy badger]

Why would I email for a quote when JLCPCB will quote me instantly online

Or PCBWay

Or MakerFab

[delicate stream]

obviously they’re better

I mean they might be better for next-level? Not sure how big scale those services go. Especially if you start getting to a point past where you can complete assembly, assuming you don’t hire humans to help you (thousands of boards)

[dusty citrus]

What
And that's why they are unknown

[frigid tiger]

Whats stopping them from making a competing service to those guys

[tardy badger]

Environmental regulations, the cost of setting up and doing business in the US among other things.

[tardy badger]

At this point I’m running my own assembly line lol

For all intents and purposes, JLCPCB’s PCBs are good enough for end products and I can order thousands cheaply.

[frigid tiger]

I like the idea of assembling them yourself

[tardy badger]

I like control and having my own equipment satisfies that need for control 😂

[delicate stream]

Lol, yeah, you’re a one-man production machine! But I mean like, if you can make 1000 products a day yourself, and you want to do 2000? 10k? You’ll need to change

Altho I guess a picky-place machine is your next step

[tardy badger]

I concede that I would never be able to make PCBs as fast or cheaply (or environmentally damaging) as JLC or other Chinese fabs

I’d spend probably about $11000 for a small assembly line that could fit on a desk

$4k for the pnp, $5k for the oven, add in shipping, feeders, a better stencil jig.

Taxes

[delicate stream]

Cursed taxes

[tardy badger]

I could probably afford the assembly line at 500 units sold, though I’d definitely want to wait until I sell 1000x or more

And shifting to a pnp doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automated and I can walk away. There’s still plenty to monitor but it’s more of a be in the same general area kind of monitoring

[delicate stream]

You might still have to sit there, but you might be able to increase your output 10x for the same time

I imagine one day you’ll sit in a cube in a warehouse and having whole huge automated systems you’re monitoring all around you, lol

[tardy badger]

I hope to employ people and inspire them the way Adafruit does

[static flare]

same

[delicate stream]

Fruits of Adafruit

[tardy badger]

The (oak) seed doesn’t fall to far from the (Ada) fruit tree

🤓

[delicate stream]

Hehe

[blissful roost]

Installed the 6.2 Linux kernel on my laptop.. seems to be working ok.

The fact that VirtualBox still works is a good start. 🙂

[delicate stream]

Heh

[lusty fossil]

Me at urgent care using the same knife I cut myself with to remove my bandage for the doc

[delicate stream]

https://tenor.com/view/loki-what-could-possibly-wrong-lets-do-it-gif-22076856

[steady dove]

How many discord channels are you all in and how many of those do you regularly chat in?

[umbral phoenix]

on this server I actively watch about a dozen channels and regularly participate in about half of those

different channels have very different levels of activity though

[dusty citrus]

I mute most of it on most servers these days, and 'peek' at stuff I won't look at daily.
They keep adding them; used to be there'd be discussion before adding chans but now they're proliferated. ;)

On servers I am new to, I let it alone and use the default setup. Can take a while to figure out what could benefit from a mute and what's too much muting. ;)

[steady dove]

I'm on (in?) three different servers. That's it. lol.

[dusty citrus]

I will also mute 15 minutes to slow down the response cycle considerably. ;)

[steady dove]

but yeah, I mute and peek, too.

[solar kindle]

I'm on 12 discord servers, active on 7 (3D stuff, space science & writing mostly), and probably chat on between 2 and 8 channels on each of those.

[dusty citrus]

I'm on seven servers, two of which I own (one of those is rarely accessed).

[steady dove]

I've talked to several just recently who are on or near the discord limit, which I find amazing.

[dusty citrus]

probably snowballs past any hope of management

Before I quit <account> I was down to one <flagged_relationship> and deleted 'them'.

They wrote back 'why?' so I added them back. Six months later they never once had said hello, so I deleted them and also the entire account. ;)

[blissful roost]

I'm in 29 servers. 😛

Most of the channels are muted.

[steady dove]

I have trouble just paying attention to the few I'm in. If I haven't bothered to look at one in a while I just axe it.

[blissful roost]

Ohh.. I don't pay attention.
Much easier. 😛

[delicate stream]

Some of the servers I'm in are totally dead, and only in my list for reference purposes

Some is like 12

I could save or copy/paste things but that's work, lol

AdaCord when

poof

[steady dove]

trimming is great. throw the ballast overboard. be free!

[tardy badger]

https://tenor.com/view/yeet-eek-gif-23794417

[delicate stream]

https://tenor.com/view/rainbow-yeet-gif-14521966

[tardy badger]

I ordered my first Spectrum Analyzer :3

$65 on Amazon and it had a 5% coupon

It’s just a tinySA so it’s has limited range, 100kHz to 960MHz

Portable tinysa Spectrum Analyzer - AURSINC V0.3.1 Hand Held Frequency Analyzer | 100kHz to 960MHz MF/HF/VHF UHF Input | ESD Protected Function & 2.8 inch Touchscreen | Signal Generator https://a.co/d/iNZ3b8x

Same form factor as the NanoVNA :3

[dusty citrus]

whee. I want one and I don't know what it is. ;)

[dusty citrus]

agree ;)

[steady dove]

I almost never have any idea what you guys are talking about, but I like window shopping!

[dusty citrus]

I want to see a movie scene where they 'saved all his/her letters' and it's wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full. ;)

[tardy badger]

I’m using it to build a frequency test chamber

[dusty citrus]

My friend 'robert' at the <rooming house> would paint over his last oil painting to make a new one with a totally different theme and color scheme.

z-axis steganography

[dusty citrus]

I saw the 'let them do dangerous <x>' subthread.
My mom was an RN before marriage so she just patched us up as best she could and sent us outdoors on every sunny day with (as we got older) orders to stay out of sight until the next mealtime. ;)

If she could see you, you were going to end up pulling weeds for her in her garden.
All the kids were feral, pretty much.

♦️
The first service of the Essex Junior was to convoy to Valparaiso the Barclay and four of the British prizes. The occasion was one of great importance and interest to Farragut; for, though but a boy of twelve, he was selected to command the party of seamen detailed to manage the Barclay during this long passage.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27750/27750-h/27750-h.htm

search: Barclay - first instance near this story so no spoilers.

[limpid sedge]

what is a way i can attatch something to a pcb in a non destructive way?

currentl i e designed pcb that takes a timaye gps and imu board i ofc want to attatch them to pcb, but wanna be able to use them in future projects

[tardy badger]

https://www.solder.party/docs/flexypin/

https://lectronz.com/products/flexypin-pack-of-100

[late fulcrum]

There's TagConnect and pogo pins as additional options

[tardy badger]

Tag connectors are pricy

[limpid sedge]

ooh perfect

these modules are notncastellated...

[tardy badger]

You can use standard headers

[limpid sedge]

ooh true

and the headers hold contact right

this is in the rocket btw so maybe sodder headers?

[tardy badger]

Yeah, and you can use mounting screws

[limpid sedge]

for saftey

perfect, i should add those to my pcb

[frigid tiger]

Is there an SSD I can solder onto the PCB that I can use to store data from my atmega328p

Or a dip package

[umbral phoenix]

how much storage do you need? any speed requirements?

[olive dome]

there are microSD in SMD package - or you can solder those microSD card directly...

[dusty citrus]

does exist some sort of telescopic pipe, where the inside gets as big in height/width as the pipe that it was hosted in? like idk with some springs, that when removed do expand, and makes the exterior as big as the thing where it was hosted? I am not sure if I am explaining myself

[delicate stream]

I’ve seen one-time deployment designs similar to what you’re describing, but they can’t collapse again

[dusty citrus]

for example? maybe I can find something related

[delicate stream]

I think a few antenna designs for satellites? But I can’t remember any details. I know it was antennas and such, things that don’t need lots of strength, and the sections were smaller parts that popped into place as it expanded

[frigid tiger]

I want to be able to pick the amount, I was looking at the BGA flash nand for Apple devices that come in 64/128/256/... I'd like something like that I don't think speed matters for me

[umbral phoenix]

adding a storage chip directly will probably involve a good bit of low-level code unless it's already supported, but as will mentioned there are chips and little breakout boards with library support, mostly SPI (or I2C): flash (e.g., 16MB), FRAM (kilobytes), SD card readers (pick your card but there may be upper limits), SD Card chips (e.g., 512MB), etc.

[tardy badger]

Breaking the watch out of its case to fix a timekeeping bug for a E-Week show and tell at my work tomorrow

🤓

It’s fixed. I was making some calls to get the time from the RTC which was attempting to increment time faster 🤔

[late fulcrum]

You built ... a time machine?

[tardy badger]

Apparently so

I imagine the RTC is a bit off because it's been on two board already so probably more heat than it should really see given it has a built in crystal

[late fulcrum]

That makes sense

[tardy badger]

Either way, I can get like 10-12ish hours of "time" out of it just doing light sleep for 1 second at a time.

i'll do deep sleep one of the days, or get it right anyway.

I wish I had the means to make this case cooler looking. like full glass top bezel

milled aluminum body

having a 5 axis precision CNC mill would be super cool

[wanton thistle]

it would take you a year + but people have done epoxy granite builds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbqY8Mcbh0Q&t=308s

skookum as heck

[tardy badger]

if only I had the money laying around for the parts

[wanton thistle]

I know, some of the parts there are like...$$$

Even using Automation direct stuff will be pricey

[tardy badger]

I probably just need to send my design to Xometry or something

[wanton thistle]

If we can design one the size of an Ender 3, that would be perfect

[tardy badger]

I want to refine it more too

[wanton thistle]

chefs kiss

I have a design for a epoxy granite lathe lol

The idea was to be able to build a bigger one from a smaller one

Kind of like Dave Gingery, but more modern, because we arent cave people.

[tardy badger]

what a life it would be just to have money to throw around at ideas 🙂

[wanton thistle]

Well

The base I think would be cheap

After that its kind of just..labor

[late fulcrum]

My little Sherline tabletop CNC mill is handy, but no 5-axis monster

[tardy badger]

just to design something and throw it on a massive commercial grade CNC mill

[wanton thistle]

Oh man

[tardy badger]

plenty of my designs require that reach in and carve out

[wanton thistle]

I dont know if I can say this or not, but since I live in CT, I got to see the inside of a certain helicopter place

and my god

MY GOD

The mills go into the floor

and are as large as school busses

and Im just like 🤤

[tardy badger]

when I worked at GE Gas Turbine in SC, there was humongous CNC machines for milling impeller disks and bucket carriages

[wanton thistle]

The technology we come up with 🤤

also hello Mr or Ms FBI or Secret Service person watching me now. I wont tell any secrets

[dusty citrus]

If you're in the us, don't you have like open labs or something with a similar naming?

[wanton thistle]

🤭

[wanton thistle]

hackerspaces? Yes

[dusty citrus]

Like a free workshop with tools inside

[wanton thistle]

yeap thats a hackerspace

some have a monthly fee of like $50

[dusty citrus]

Really the us as a market, is more interesting
Here's it's just old people

[late fulcrum]

Or more, an hour drive away, only available certain times, etc.

[wanton thistle]

TW: Politics maybe?
||Lol, you say that as if old people dont rule over us ||

[tardy badger]

I'd say a lot of Hackerspaces or maker spaces here are filled with older people. except at maybe universities

[wanton thistle]

(I always have to check the rules to see if its allowed)

[tardy badger]

I'm honestly a little surprised that there isn't a greater convergence of younger people filling maker spaces in general

[wanton thistle]

The few times I went, there were kids there with their parents.

And it looks like when ever they meet, its the same. But probably cause we are working :/

[late fulcrum]

I really tried to hang out with the local hackerspace, but there were so many barriers to actually getting my projects done that I ended up giving up. Another group tried to start a space closer to me, but they never got off the ground.

[wanton thistle]

Its also not exactly on the bus line either.

[tardy badger]

I guess you don't really hit your "I wanna make something" phase until you're hitting late 30s, early 40s

[wanton thistle]

Oh yea, that too. One went fully commercial and got investors and stuff, which IMHO is far from the idea that its supposed to be..

[tardy badger]

I suppose that could be a symptom of not having nearly as much exposure to it at a younger age.

[late fulcrum]

There were a bunch of local youth firmly in the "I wanna make something" mindset, but they couldn't get the support they wanted

[dusty citrus]

I guess it's due to exposure
A lot of kids nowadays have lots of fancy tools, but yet they don't know how to use them

[tardy badger]

I find it takes years to undo educational constraints of "think in the box and follow the example given" mindset

[wanton thistle]

Theres some small stuff at libraries too! Dont forget that. One library I was at had a printer you can use, and some smaller stuff

[late fulcrum]

My dismal academic record is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that those lessons didn't take at all (quite the reverse)

[tardy badger]

I struggled with the "you're not gifted in that, so you shouldn't try it" mindset

[wanton thistle]

this and..any neurodivergence from the norm isnt welcome. Even socially you become an outcast...but lucky for us, theres the net.

(But also the anti-cap in me says that school is to train you for a job, and not to explore things)

[tardy badger]

which is counter productive really because you need exploration to innovate.

[wanton thistle]

which leads me to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUbIkNUFs-4

[whole jacinth]

some teachers who actively work against brainwashing students into good little capitalist cogs do manage to infiltrate schools from time to time

[tardy badger]

it goes in the square hole

[wanton thistle]

I will never not laugh at that video. I keep it in mind when doing GUI's

[tardy badger]

I was lucky and found what would be my path into engineering in high school architectural drafting classes.

[dusty citrus]

And many times you get people that should not be there, but virtually can't be fired

[tardy badger]

small high school very well funded by oil and natural gas royalties. Great shop/drafting teacher.

[wanton thistle]

Mr Saginaf was my teacher who was great at this. Such a wealth of knowledge. RIP, I carry on his legacy

[tardy badger]

I do plan on one day going back to making this little puck shaped home assistant called Homeco

I was inspired by Amazon Echo in 2015 and was like "a small home assistant that doesn't ship your data off would be super cool"

lol

[wanton thistle]

open source home assistant

runs ubuntu lol.

[tardy badger]

probably Debian

since debian has IoT builds

🙂

[wanton thistle]

add chatgp and..well..

I want to invest in this idea lol.

[tardy badger]

lol, I wouldn't add chatgpt unless it was one that only had a basic language model and function set that could be augmented by loaded "apps" and by the location it exists.

no shipping voice snippets back to HQ

or some database. no selling user profiles.

"Breaking news, Homeco went out of business because investors couldn't exploit user data for profit"

lol

[wanton thistle]

I can only hope

[tardy badger]

Personally, i'd upsell enhancements like attachments for car maintenance and stuff like that.

have a self hosted hub that manages all your data and locally encrypts it so it can't be accessed or decrypted remotely

[wanton thistle]

that sounds awesome

see I wish we all had time for that 😦

[tardy badger]

have an app like the RSA token that ties the authentication token to a specific security value generated on download.

NFC tap hard token registered to your phone.

[wanton thistle]

I didnt realize what time it was 😬 😴

[tardy badger]

lol

i'm just idealizing while I watch lectures on multidimensional signal processing.

[wanton thistle]

have fun, Im getting off to bed

[tardy badger]

later

[lusty fossil]

Surgery consult scheduled

*incoming. Not scheduled yet

[dusty citrus]

whats called the clamp that is commonly found in power tools?

[delicate stream]

Chuck

[dusty citrus]

Nope I can't find. A cheap clamp (like 1/2euro range) that's designed to hold in place staff of different shapes and sizes (5mm to 2cm (or more)?

[ebon dew]

look up drill chuck

[tardy badger]

But not wood chuck

[ebon dew]

there are many different types of chucks. lathe chucks, drill press chucks, drill chucks.

[dusty citrus]

I meant with that specifications

[gusty torrent]

How much bits would a drill chuck chuck?

[tardy badger]

If a drill chuck could chuck bits?

[ebon dew]

drill chucks have variable widths. the jaws open and close

from 0mm to like 20mm

[tardy badger]

They’re sometimes called threaded drill chucks

[dusty citrus]

The problem is that they are expensive
I can't find them at like "1 euro" range

[ebon dew]

yes they're not 1 euro cheap that's for sure

the bigger the chuck the more expensive generally

[tardy badger]

I wouldn’t trust a drill chuck that costed 1€

[ebon dew]

here's some different styles of drill chucks, mostly small cheaper ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxVskA976M

even dremels use drill chucks to an extent but they use collets instead

but even a tiny dremel drill chuck would be like $10-$20 USD

they require precision machining

[frigid tiger]

So the chuck on a lathe is the three bits you tighten against the workpiece???

[dusty citrus]

Yes but my usage is not a drill
I just need to fix in place stuff
Which then can be removed and substitute if necessary

[frigid tiger]

Could I use two/four/eight attiny85s to do the work one of attiny85, is there a name for that

[crystal ore]

"Terrible design decision"? 😜 Before you multiprocess a bunch of dinky little 8-bit MCUs, please consider just using one modern 32-bit one...

[frozen flame]

Not exactly sure if this is the place to ask this, but I'm running pyaudio on Geany, i've done pip install pyaudio, and it says the module is there, but I always get the error "AttributeError: Could not find PyAudio; check installation"

Nevermind, I just restarted the pi and it worked 🤷‍♂️

[frigid tiger]

Ok

Can I add a dram module to a microcontroller

[wanton thistle]

Yes but not easily. What is it that you are trying to do?

[dusty citrus]

Silabs offered a C8051F120 dev kit around 2003 and the main accessory was a 'hirose' board connector mated memory board for it. Many pins on the connector but I don't remember how many were put to use for that. I still have them both. ;)

You could reverse engineer the basics of it to see how they did it.
Almost positive more than eight conductors between the two boards were used.
(8-bit data bus almost certainly)

[dusty citrus]

(was 64kb of external memory)

[frigid tiger]

Thanks I will look into that

[late fulcrum]

SRAM/FRAM is easier than DRAM

[crystal ore]

There's also HyperRAM which I think is sort of like an octo-SPI interface.

[ebon dew]

You'd need an FPGA like Skerr's IcyBlue to attempt to integrate DDR. Greg Davill's OrangeCrab is an FPGA feather with onboard DDR3. https://www.hackster.io/news/orangecrab-a-formidable-feature-packed-fpga-feather-04fd6c99eb0f

It's been years since it's development and I have no idea on its current status. Skerr's IcyBlue FPGA feather is brand new and just starting production. He is taking pre-orders. 😉

https://www.hackster.io/news/oak-development-technologies-icyblue-feather-is-a-breadboard-friendly-fpga-dev-board-f4e790468cb3

No onboard DDR3 but he's very active here so maybe he'll look into it if you're interested in going that route. Who knows.

[solar kindle]

If SRAM's OK, you could use one of these. SPI interface, so fairly easy to connect to a microcontroller. https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/m/microchip-technology/spi-serial-sram-nvsram-devices

[limpid sedge]

how should i mount a board that doesnt have screws ,like the itsybitsy rp2040

[blissful roost]

With a yellow polkadot bikini

[thick wind]

What are you mounting it to? Often times the headers alone are a solid enough connection, but I do know some have gone as far as 3d printing clips for such an occasion.

[tardy badger]

With SRAM you can also use parallel if you’re okay losing a bit of IO

[limpid sedge]

its for a rocket

[limpid sedge]

im making a pcb that carries the itsy rp2040

[dusty citrus]

not related but answers here are always usefull, isn't there any fully free multiplatform social manager / automation toolkit? I found some but they are all paid in one way or another

[tardy badger]

Well, I was. I took preorders down in preparation for my CrowdSupply campaign 🤓

[limpid sedge]

but because there is no software configuration of the BNO085 required, you only need to connect your device's RX pin and pull the P0 pin high.

does setting a pin high need to be done with 3v3 only, or can it be done with enabling a regular pin from the pico??

[dusty citrus]

I would say design applications around the technology instead of shoe-horning an idea into the wrong technology for that idea.

[limpid sedge]

in a header pad like this, is pin 1 connected to pin 2 unless I short them??

[astral portal]

What’s the purchase order minimum?

[limpid sedge]

for me??

5

also whats a "4-Wire Kelvin Test

[ebon dew]

well it says it's a pad, you'd have to look at the physical footprint or open up the part to see where traces are routed in the part internally.

[astral portal]

No i was just asking because a banner on the shop appeared that says “Starting March 2023 we will be raising our Purchase Order minimum from $50 to $100 and removing the PO processing fee.”

[limpid sedge]

im on easyada

[ebon dew]

as for mounting a board without screws generally you'd design some kind of snap fit enclosure around it

[astral portal]

Sry i don’t know anything about easyeda

[ebon dew]

i do

select the part and then on the right side panel click on the name of the footprint

[limpid sedge]

how do i find the schmatic?

nvm got it

[ebon dew]

is the part a user contributed one or lcsc part?

[limpid sedge]

so they are not connected

[ebon dew]

yup there ya go

[limpid sedge]

eacrly what i need

i wanted the option to short P0 on the BNO085 for RVC, and reg option too

[ebon dew]

if you want them connected when you get into board view just run a trace between them.

[limpid sedge]

so now if i want RVC, i can just short this pin and problem solved

[ebon dew]

or you can also do that in schematic view

oh if you want that as a shorting jumper yes that'll work

[limpid sedge]

yea thats what i need

is ths schematic good for shorting?

[ebon dew]

make sure the pad hole spacing is correct for the pin headers you want to use

[limpid sedge]

nvm i see an issue with it

[ebon dew]

not sure why you'd want to run 3v3 directly to an SDA

[limpid sedge]

its a small error

[ebon dew]

sda is a data line, that should be going to a gpio

ah ok