Analog signal processing horror
No words. Every cable is an antenna… (Click for larger)
Read moreWhat you get for your money…
I’m currently (also) designing a digital logic analyzer with a target maximum frequency of about 100MHz. To cut the story short; I received my “special” parts from SEGOR today. Incredibly I payed about 44€ for these 2 ICs. The first is a Cypress CY7C1347G-133AXC 128k * 36 static RAM; which can take up to 133MHz clock rates (static because I don’t like [and can’t take care of] refresh cycles…). The second is of course the Altera EPM570 CPLD (for up to 300MHz clock). Today these beauties arrived in a quite big box (which made me think of why they send such a giant parcel) but as i unwrapped it… but see for yourself…
Read morePlaying with lasers
I remembered to have a old HeNe laser tube laying around which I got for some bucks some years ago … at the Ham Radio fleamarket. I don’t own a neon transformer so it was pretty much laying ’round without any use. I rediscovered it today and I decided to hook it up to my 15kV (AC) high tension transformer. I used a 1k470 series resistor to keep “power down”. Pics… (klick for high res!)
Read moreUpdate
No action here lately… so that’s a quick update… 1) UsbProg My favourite allround-programmer… I am still developing (selfless- and restlessly) my reflow oven (5 freely programmable phases and 130 profiles storagable on the oven itself… coming soon). Howsoever I put my reflow-controller PCB on a USB-stick with some metal casing… Which did not kill my reflow controller but the UsbProg instead… The mega32 used on the UsbProg must have been completely fried; the bootloader flashed some LED helplessly but my PC didn’t recognize the USB-device anymore. I was unable to flash the IC using my STK500 so … with other words… destroyed. So I ordered a new UsbProg and I exchanged the damaged M32 on the old one, which was a success, it works great again! Here are some pictures of the “birth” of my second UsbProg (click for
Read moreFinepitch SMDs, FR4 and 36°
Michi and I discussed whether it is possible to mill finepitch-SMD footprints (as used with LQFP64 packages) with the CNC… Michi had already tried and told me that he “only saw stripes of FR4”. So I put in a 36° engraving bit and here’s how it turned out. (Remember this is just a proof of concept, it doesn’t look quite “usable”…)
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