morning

mournin...

hm, I wonder when I ask a series of questions, if there is a good way to connect them all ...

Hi @PlasmaHH, not 100% sure if I follow but you can add a link in the question, but I'd make sure each one can stand by itself, people will get pretty annoyed if actually answering the question needs opening several others for background information.

@PeterJ of course they should stand for themselves. I am thinking about building a device that consists basically out of many functions that you could build distinct devices of. I would want to ask for each functionality a question on its own, but it seems that it would be intresting to be able to have an overview about all these things somewhere so whoever is intrested can go through all of those thematically related ones.

@Plasma I think in that case a link is perfectly fine, maybe from one to the next. I'm not 100% on this but I've got an idea if you add a comment like 'this is related to...' with a link it might end up on the related questions over the right-hand side which might be another way.

@PeterJ there is also a list of linked questions on the right side... probably adding all questions to each other would be too crowded, even if its just one char per link or so

@ThePhoton, speculation on the resistor binning answer but a question with a few upvotes and multiple quick answers can end up on the network-wide "hot question" list. Then anyone from larger sites like Stack Overflow with a reputation >= 200 can upvote the question / answers(s). I answered one that was only on the list a short time and noticed I got an extra 3 or 4 upvotes quickly while it was there.

@PeterJ yes, thats a nice effect, I got 21 upvotes on an answer of mine. It is especially common if its get on the hot list, and the average joe is able to understand that the answer is ok.

@Plasma ha just looked at that answer and one was mine :). Sometimes titles like "is textbook wrong" in the title can attract some attention too when wondering if it's the textbook being wrong or a clueless OP. Not in that case but for most others the latter.

@PeterJ intrestingly this also happened to one of my questions where I would never have expected it

whoops... chosing wrong diode in ltspice simulation, efficiency drops from 90.7 to 0.065% ...

@Plasma yeah that's an interesting one, only one answer so maybe it has more to do with a few quick upvotes on the Q/A because I can see that's one a few regulars might have found interesting and never thought about. I think they are tweaking the rules a bit so things have probably changed a bit by now.

I was about to ask a question and then I thought I maybe have the answer.

Still thinking about posting it as a reference. Should I?

well my theory may be wrong so I'll post it

I dont really understand that question...

@isomorphismes What's the question?

hey guys

are there any issues with using a surface mount thermistor as an ambient temperature sensor?

I need to compare a surface-mounted thermistor to ambient temperature, and I feel like comparison would be easiest if I had the same thermistors, so they'd have the same temperature curve

@ThePhoton electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/158294/why-does-electricity-have-a-phase

hey all... one question about IOT and an observation...

first the question: how do the devices know when there is an action for them to do when using REST APIs? do they just sit there polling continuously?

And an observation: Most IoT devices I've seen for the general tinkerer use wifi. It seems like complete overkill to have a 80MHz ARM Cortex with a wifi chip pulling 200mA or more to send a button press to the internet.

@geometrikal WiFi has that combination of: ubiquitous-enough, not-too-expensive, unlicensed. Infrastructure is already there in places that matter like hospitals, homes. Look at other options: XBee, cellular modems, Bluetooth. You soon run into problems of one kind or another.

@NickAlexeev Yea I'm thinking of making some kind of gateway for my own network... a wifi to X bridge where X is some low power wireless comms that can run off batteries... Not sure what to use for that though.

Just seems silly that we are moving towards and internet of things that have to sit next to a power point... Maybe in the future router manufacturers will include a low power system like zigbee instead

Anybody know where to buy a vertical pcb-mount 3.5-mm jack connector?

@ThePhoton I'd thumb through a paper version of DigiKey or Mouser catalog, if I were looking for something like that.

@geometrikal That's not outright silly. If you do the number$, you'll see that it makes sense in quite a few cases.

@NickAlexeev It's been years since I've had one of those on my desk.

@ThePhoton I keep paper catalogs just for looking up mechanically-significant components. I'd be happy to loan you mine. It would be a long drive for you, though. I'm half-way on the peninsula.