Hm, looks like parking in Amsterdam city centre won't be a cheap funny thing...

@PlasmaHH There's a lot of Transferia around Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Den Haag

You can park relatively affordably just outside the city and then ride from and to by tram/subway in one total day ticket

Or some such system

You park at the transfer, get Public Transport stubs using your parking stub and/or/etc

I have only done it once, so my knowledge is sketchy, but the Parents are very avid users of it

@PlasmaHH If you send me your destination I could use my Dutchy skills to find out for you, if you like.

@Asmyldof I researched a bit a

Already and the problem is over half an hour with trams or so that we don't know with two kids...

Would save at most 10 bucks or so

Where are you going?

Cuypmarkt

Aaaand we ware leaving now

Got to be spontaneous with kids

No internet on the way :/

Might be able to use the Cana;Bus

if they like boats

make the moving around between P&R and your destination a part of the outing

@PlasmaHH Enjoy :-)

(( Or else it seems at 10ct per hour between 10 and 16 on the "Van Woustraat", which they say is close enough by ))

But close by = hassl-y-with-car prolly, but once kids are in the car, probably not so much an issue to be in 15 mins more?

Anyone know if there's sub-sites to StackOverflow careers for such things as this EE segment? I suppose not.

@Asmyldof I don' thin we're big enough for them to bother. For sure we don't have enough mindshare in the general EE community for advertisers to really pile on to such a thing.

True, true, one could hope though

Any idea if there's a thing where good people go for jobs in our segment, that might also feature Dutchies?

I've been contacted via SO carreers before, but to the best of my knowledge I have not seen a more EE specific carreers.SE

Ah! There you are.

no i'm not

morning?

Bossman's looking for one or two more people that: 1. Fit the team in mindset (this is a bit wishy washy and probably requires meeting and such, but is very important in our small team none the less); 2. Have a good intuition with EE/Measurement, i.e. What does a number mean and is that bad or good and easily understand new knobs and dials. 3. Have a reasonable degree of initiative

@Asmyldof is that addressed to me?

So, know anyone that fits 2 and 3 and can emotionally/mentally handle potenitally not fitting 1?

Directed at anyone who might know someone that's able to make it to the Torenallee 20 every day

Who is this Bossman's you are typing about? The name sounds familiar

:-P

wait is that the RF company?

EFFECT Photonics : www.effectphotonics.nl

how many electronics'like companies are housed in torenallee? :-p

@Asmyldof well your description is very short, but I wouldn't mind fitting in at first sight.

let me check if this is the company I was thinking of.

funny, I was thinking about omniradar which is housed at torenallee 20 too

Yeah Omniradar is our neighbour

But we have free lunch... and obviously smarter people

:-P

Torenallee 20 is the old Phillips VideoLab, but actually there is a lot less tech here than there should be

what is the pay :-p

@Asmyldof In the US, LinkedIn seems to be the new "where-its-at" for job seekers and HR types.

Too dependent on what one brings to the table

near klokgebouw?

@ThePhoton I know, but we've been trying through LinkedIn, the few that we got were... Javascripty people

If you know what I mean by that

@jippie Yeah, at the Strijp-S, all new, except for these few buildings

Hmmm, I've been working for 15 years in optoelectronics test & measurement, but Torenallee 20 sounds like a long commute for me.

Actually was one of the prettiest industrial areas I've been to this spring, with loads of flowers and what not

Haha

The doubt I have with companies like omniradar and effect is that I've been out of electronics for quite a while, even though I really Really want to get back into that

I'm fairly sure the Jet isn't paid for

@Asmyldof I'm there quite often for lunch, strijp-S

bagles and juice or the fish and chips place. I like the ketelhuis for coffee

@Asmyldof My division of my company just got sold to a giant connector company, so I'd also be interested in seeing how well I shop around...Any interest in remote workers?

@jippie I can ask Bossman if he wants to make time for you, you'll probably be invited before lunch and then asked if you'd like to lunch along with us.

@Asmyldof sure we can do that.

But still I have little knowledge on what the deal is :-D

I'm in for a little adventure

@ThePhoton The main thing right now that we need is people who can help out here. We are having a lot of issues, one is delays on my end, another is Newport equipment that keeps failing. In the first months we need people that are here to fiddle around and solve issues and take up some of the load from other people

I worked on DWDM last weekend :-p

I'm happy to ask if he could use a remote wiseguy in the near future, but what I know of it right now would make me think that won't work for the issues we are solving now

We have one LabTechChiefGuy who does a great job, but with all the issues going on with all the machines and all kinds of "Ah, we didn't know that yet... ehhh" stuff, he needs help from anyone who can, but if one of us helps him, that means other stuff that's already delayed gets much worse, so one point or another, we just need more hands!

.

@jippie Hope it gets better soon, then?

sure, with a week or so all should be well.

just hectic

I am rather serious, but only up to the point that one can be with people he knows for weeks or months through a text interface.

Had I known you for months in real life situations I might at least be better equiped to make a course estimation of requirement 1

:-)

Which is why I just bluntly add that as a requirement, so everyone is clear on that

you should have left for the faire an hour earlier

Not looking for drama, nough of that already

Yah, I know

then you would also have had your kit now

But I did expect it to be at least 3 times as big and 10 times as interesting

the kit?

:-p

HS

yeah I'm not sure ... I expected it to be more into actual electronics hacking rather than gluing things into or printing jewelery

A guy I can recommend:

nl.linkedin.com/pub/jos-de-langen/8/8b2/205

Doesn't seem to be looking for work, though.

You guys okay if I just copy-paste all this into a word document and send him? Easier than typing it all over again :-)

sure

you have my contact details

I'm away'ish

Have fun-ish

?

Or good-luck-ish

Anyway... I might also do some research on thie Wouter van Ooijen

this*

Sadly not seen him in chat before :/

Looniveristy professor in electronics if i recall correctly. Has his own firm / shop

he's on linkedin

voti webshop something

@Asmyldof voti.nl/winkel/index.html

@Asmyldof no worries

Yeah, he connected me after my "Trade you" comment on one of his answers

I should really make myself a neat webshop for all my crap soon... Might end up rich... But the procrastination is strong in me when it comes to websites

If it runs on linux I can do regular scheduled off-site backups for you

IT's more the making and making it look good and modern that are the hump

I have installed Wordpress on my old laptop a year ago...

Spent about 30minutes playing with it

Then got the meh

I know I don't want to burn my fingers on that either :-p

I have a wordpress blog, it's not too bad if you run regular patches

Easiest way to make something that has a modicum of support and a lower amount of holes than Joomla though

don't use too many plugins

That's a rule for everything that connects to the world

I'm a graphical design nitwith though when it comes to websites

I actually do some regular backups for couple websites, gives me guestlist access to couple parties.

What I really need is someone good at making it all work, who works for payment in components, glues, resins, heatshrink, silicone tubes, silicone wire or brownies

do some fiddling every so often that impresses the owner ...

:-P

do you have party tickets to give away? :-p

Only if you know someone who trades party tickets for: components, glues, resins, heatshrink, silicone tubes, silicone wire or brownies

>..<

I'm not good with content, I'm good with server end

I'm too tired to think today.

Ideally I need something that gets set-up, is safe with not too much effort, reliably sends me an e-mail when someone orders something or posts a question and then has enough easy interfacing to quickly add products, links between products and group them into properties

A bit like prestashop, but not made by Frenchies and/or for US purposes (wrong tax system -> very annoying to work with) and without being hacked every other weekend

Not entirely unrelated: blog.iusmentis.com/2015/08/31/…

Meh, I'm not going to find "click here to get what you want" anyway, so I better start making better friends... :-P

@Asmyldof Does this influence my chances on visiting torenallee 20?

Not as far as I know

You can visit whenever you want, whether bossman makes time for you is entirely up to him

Nothing to do with me

I know that if I tell him "This person is good, awesome and skillful in all respects" he will make room in his calendar on the spot, but that's also because I'm not easy to convince for saying that about someone

I rather don't like being escorted to the nearest exit by a security guard

No guards here

I know the building :o)

Only thing is "visitors must go to the reception first" but if 10% of them actually do that before walking into the elevator it's many

On that, I'm off to the oppenneerbakkie

Need dinner or I'm going to melt!

Or, whatever

new shop?

Laters

enjoy

Hysbak then?

<-- out!

Yay, sut

Survived

In case it matters, I am apparently really crappy at debugging PLLs.

@PlasmaHH zurück in die Heimat?

@ThePhoton blame the equipment

@jippie not yet, but spent a day in Amsterdam

@PlasmaHH It did get better after I realized the 30-year-old spectrum analyzer I was using had a dead band within the tuning range of my VCO.

Also after I realized the PLL control chip has a chip-enable pin that needs to be set high.

hahahahaha

But even after fixing those issues, it still looks like the pll controller is doing nothing and the VCO output just drifts slowly downward

haz datasheets?

@Asmyldof controller: LMX2492 ti.com/lit/gpn/lmx2492

Sometimes downward (the drain) is the only good way for certain plls

VCO: HMC733 hittite.com/products/view.html/view/HMC733LC4B

I would expect that VCO to be reasonably straight forward

But that's also not doing as expected?

@Asmyldof I do need an active filter to get an 8 V control voltage

Any sufficiently un-intrusive probes to see if that works?

@Asmyldof VCO seems to be working as expected. Control voltage aligns with observed output frequency.

So it's probably in the controller, you suspect?

@Asmyldof Yes, as far as I can tell the controller isn't actually doing anything.

hm

Doesn't matter if I set the chip enable high or low.

Next thing I'm going to check is if I somehow got capacitors in the filter 1000x bigger than I thought.

Have you got active scope or E-field probes?

@Asmyldof Can probably get some. What kind of capacitance are you looking for?

mmmm altiums

dunno yet, haven't zoomed in on your schemtic yet

R63 should be 82 ohms instead of 8.2 ohms. I've already fixed that on the real unit.

And VCC14 is actually only 8 V, so that the VCO can't run up to a frequency that the PFD can't detect.

And the R69, is that some secret trick, or just the 0ohm it's meant to be?

@Asmyldof Yes, 0 ohms.

right. And you did use a 0ohm one?

:-)

All those 0-ohms and NOLOAD caps are to allow going to a higher order filter.

@Asmyldof Will double-check.

At least you have one. .. The SA I have is nponexistant ;)

Right, I had an incling, but sometimes you may use a 0ohm to achieve tiny buts of intentional distortion, since you also had the no_load caps, you could be doing weird tricky things with pads and what not :-)

I'm thinking @PlasmaHH may have already had his relaxation beer

@Asmyldof I'm not that experienced with PLLs. Much less a guru who would do tricky things with 0-ohm resistors.

@ThePhoton I'm not saying I'd jump into that, just that I've seen it happen and sort-of-kind-of know how some of it works

@Asmyldof that was necessary after driving in Amsterdam ;)

Off topic: Why does that VCO come in a package with so many N/C pins?

@jippie I always wondered took... Maybe ask the main site?

@jippie Probably because volume is too low to justify a custom package?

@jippie might be a combination of needing the realestate and then using a default package

@Asmyldof would be my guess too.

un-noisiness costs room, usually

A lot of the VCOs (not just from Analog/Hittite) in that frequency range have a similar package.

@Asmyldof ehh?

if you go into GHz you need to think about what you put where and how

@Asmyldof True, but I'd expect you don't want a lead frame in your way

I just need a 10 GHz probe so I can tell if the feedback signal is actually getting to the PFD and not being blown due to some dumb layout issue.

@jippie if it's grounded at the right points, it may help if it's not broken off

i.e. pins NC at final bridge

whatever, I'm not a GHz chip fab

@ThePhoton How sensitive is the device that can show you 10GHz

@Asmyldof The spectrum Analyzer?

If that's what's the most sensitive

Noise floor is at about -70 dBm

And also goes to 10GHz

hmmm

10ghz? Whaddya soon?

Could be with some 8GHz+ RG-coax you can make a poor man's E-field probe to peak a bunch of dBm above that

Doin... Damn autocorrect

Bit hit/miss, but ...

@Asmyldof e-field probe means an antenna on the end of some coax?

I might even try with the reel of 4GHz specced RG174 I have here, but that's because it would only cost $4 for wire + plug and 10 minutes of crimping time

basically just an insulated open tip

If you strip off the shielding for 2 or 3 mm and then put a bit of heatshrink or epoxy glue on it to prevent shorts

could be you pick up some stuff

Only done that with sub 2GHz though, so I'm very much yanking details out of my rear

Is the layout new or a copy of something existing?

And they are very, very weak. Professional ones are much more reliable, but also cost $400 and a week to ship

@PlasmaHH new

Choccy coffee time!

That unfortunately does not rule out dumb layout issues then

Might be able to do summin with high res picture

Indeed

But prolly not

Also don't have anything above 1,5GHz at home, else I'd say "send me one" :-)

The other a guy was here asking bout something that sounded like a floating gate and the solution was that the fabhouse messed up one of his neat layout hacks

?

@Asmyldof The flash chip I'm using takes this approach

TSOP 48 but only something like 12 pins connceted

Can't find the question with the pad...

@crasic Or, maybe, they will come and wire-bond the rest if you pay the upgrade fee?

So my 8Gb is really 1Tb?

E-field probe does pick up 10 GHz (actually 9.8 once the VCO has drifted all the way to minimum) at the controller. But it also picks it up 3 inches away ...

Harmonics that cowfuse the controller?

@PlasmaHH Harmonics should be outside its sensitivity range.

Well there will be an e-field three inches away from a 10GHz controller. Am I missing something?

Problem is I don't see any evicdence the controller is outputting any control signal at all.

@crasic I think so

@PlasmaHH What's a cow fuse?

@Asmyldof when a farm runs their electric fences with 380kV

hahahaha

Speaking of 380kv, living in the U.S with plenty of shoddy construction this kind of junk terrifies me

electrical-forensics.com/EnergizedNeutral/EnergizedNeutral.html

@ThePhoton I love "should"s, they often enough turn out to be " don't"s

Energized neutral

Also this stuff

electrical-forensics.com/Open-Neutral/Open-Neutral.html

Open Neutral so ALL return current for a home flowed through COAX Gnd to the neighbors house to neutral

@crasic The fact alone that in 2015 there's a "first world" country with open-type transformer connections....

That overhead wiring and transformers for everyone stuff there always looks archaic to me...

More importantly:

Would you mind finishing my work for me?

Hm

How to find a kid safe polish website that's interesting if you can't read polish

@ThePhoton Is it possible something to do with those multiplexed I/O s?

Maybe something configured for sync/sweep/trigger by accident?

@Asmyldof find someone who does and whom you trust

Chemistry Stack!

Full of people with ideas!

They also have a prettier room

"In addition to the ramping functions, there is also the capability to use a terminal to add phase or frequency modulation that can be done by itself or added on top of the waveforms created by the ramp generation functions."

But nowhere any description of the voltage range on the pin that produces the function, how to fiigure out the frequency/phase deviation, ....

I only noticed they have this complex muxing thing going on on some pins, but it seemed like it would take a lot of reading to figure out

And I still have to fix this EmbedSky thing, which is unfixable

@Asmyldof Yes, there's inputs TRIG1 and TRIG2, and there's internal control signals TRIGA and TRIGB. You have to set a register to connect one of the inputs to the internal signal. And also all ramping is is off by default. (And I've done a hex dump to be sure the chip actually comes up in the documented default configuration)

But the MOD pin....

That one is hardly documented at all

@ThePhoton It can input MOD

And it can output MOD

What else would you even need to know, really?

@PlasmaHH A lot of the newer construction has underground wiring (my house included).

@W5VO now all that is left is three phase and a nice stinging voltage ;)

@PlasmaHH I know, I'm jealous of the higher nominal voltages, though I didn't think 3 phase was common for EU residential

But another one of those interesting thoughts - how do I measure my ground resistance

By pushing very hard on the ground and seeing if it moves

what do you EU folk pay for electricity per kW/h? I'm trying to figure out how to make LED lighting cost effective, and it's hard when the electricity costs very little.

That's a bit difficult

But,

For NL

statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/… says it all

I believe we switch between $0.05 and $0.07 per kWh depending on whether its summer or winter

Or to summarise: €0,115 per kWh

in 2015 on average

But you could be paying 9ct or 14ct

And then there's the network charge that depends on your usage group.

additional connection fees and such skew things I'm sure

We undoubtedly pay more than the USicans

But then, if we get hit by a truck and survive, we're not bankrupt, so... potato, tomahto

I also live in a cheap part of the US.

@Asmyldof It's OK, our trucks don't have the pedestrian-saving features yours do, so all we need is life insurance ;)

Fair dues

I still really like being able to call the doctor, have an appointment the same day, get a referral for the hospital for an examination that gets done within the week, often the next day, get results in 2 to 5 working days and pay a whopping maximum of € 350 per year, or € 0 depending on the reason for the exam

To clarify: We have a obligatory annual 350 that you have to pay yourself, in some cases. So if I get medicine that's not refunded in base, and it costs € 50, I have to pay 50. If I then get something that costs 120, I pay 120. But if I then do a test that would cost 500, I have already used 170 of my annuals, which means I only have to pay another 180

And it's pay-back-to-insurance for most, if not all, companies, so usually it takes 45 to 60 days from getting the meds to having to have paid the bill back

Hope it helps when there's more Care Insurance voting: it's awesomesaucestuffs!

Okay, seriously though, choccy coffee time!

I know, I know, I'm honestly not trying to stir up a EU v US debate.

@W5VO If you want to know more about statistical things from the NL's the "CBS" is where it's at

It looked like California rates were comparable

It stands for "Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek" and they are the national authority on statistical analysis of all sorts of data

Of course such a table doesn't tell you about how the connection fees and all that work, but it's at least something

Sure, I know it's not perfect (there are US equivalents).

Such as: Dutch people's CO2, Methane, etc production over the years: cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/natuur-milieu/publicaties/artikelen/…

Generating Footprint and Schematic symbol generating scripts for my EDA in excell

flying by the seat of my pants

I wish there was excell with built in python scripting. The archaic VBA functions are a pain

@crasic I'm sure you can make a Python interpreter in VBA

>.<

I would be happy with some kind of printf or templated string functions

but no, have to assemble literal values piecemeal with ass-tons of cross references

@W5VO Or in this one: cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/5D87FF45-3EBE-488A-AC98-11AE08902FE1/0/… page 31 and on they use the Parade of Pen, invented by Jan Pen in the 70's to show the income inequality and/or distribution.

Weighed to the average, the incomes are compared to heights.

The average height of a person is 1.74m, so the average income is equated to that, and then a parade is made over 60 minutes, where the households "walk by" in a freakshow

At minute 37 the household of 1.74m walks by, at minute 59 the "huge households" with income of 100k come by

(Funny note there about what we consider huge.... :-P )

Those are about 6.5m+

@Asmyldof Are tall people rich or rich people tall?

Of course, that document is pointless to you otherwise, as it is a lot of text in weirdy beardy Dutchy

At least the letters are comprehendible

@crasic There's not a real link of course

It's a funny comparison

But...

It has been shown that the ideal height for a man to be succesful in Europe is 1.83m

Or ideal average, or average ideal

wow

right on the money

Forgot the exact number for women, but they are better of small

1.6-something

2 I think

Forgot

COFFEEE!

>.<

Mmmm I have a fresh cuppa in front of me

Shuttup!

@Asmyldof That's about exactly 6 feet (yes I still care how long are the king's feet). Most Dutchies I've met would be overqualified.

I'm under, sadly

Case of bad meds

But, not doing too badly

^.^

Foamy choccy coffee with a cup of blueberries

I knew it was something stupid ---- found the "POWERDOWN" bits in the register map....

@ThePhoton ....

....

.

Still, you found it the same day

I spent 2 weeks finding a tiny blip in an FTDI protocol

@Asmyldof It's actually day 3 already...

I had to print out the datasheet and read it from paper instead of from screen.