@NickAlexeev If Tesla can make 85 kWh batteries, then 1.6 kWh should be child's play.

Hi, anyone here

need to confirm something before I blow up my chip

your chip can't be that expensive. what's up?

I have an arduino pro mini which I think is 3.3v, and I have an FTDI cable can I just plug them in?

I don't know if the FTDI cable is 5v or 3.3v

do you have a multimeter?

yes

I tried measuring the red cable of the FTDI but it gives 0

what pins does the FTDI cable have?

Black, Brown, red, orange, yellow, green

in that order

so you know what those wires do?

aside from ground and vcc no

how were you expecting to hook it up without damaging anything then?

I know how it connects to the arduino

the arduino has pins for the black and green

and the rest are inthe middle

If the cable is recognized by your computer, I don't see why you shouldn't have a voltage somewhere that you can measure, and it should be OK for a multimeter

Try measuring the voltage from line that would go to RX, to ground (0V)

It might also take VDD from the target, though that seems odd to me.

what do you mean from line that would go to rx, to ground?

oh wait wtf

it is working now

i plugged in back in

so between vcc and ground i get 5.1v

if I plug that into my arduino it'll blow up right?

if it's only 3.3V tolerant, yes

It looks like the Pro mini has a regulator on-board: arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardProMini

but if the logic is at 5V, and your Arduino is at 3.3V, bad things will happen

whats the regulator do?

it's a 3.3v regulator (k833)

Specifically, you have a voltage regulator. That takes an input voltage greater than the target voltage (in this case 3.3V) and reduces it down to the target voltage.

so it will work?

so it would work with 20v too?

where the heck did 20V come from?

just some random big value

haha

"As others have indicated, you can apply up to 12V at the RAW pin"

but the raw pin isn't related to the FTDI cable?

There's a good chance that you will damage something by trying it. Either the FTDI cable due to over-current, or the Arduino / linear regulator by powering it though the ESD diodes.

I would not recommend it, no idea if it will work

okay so I need a new cable, thank you very much for all your help

I think you could power it through the FTDI cable (using the RAW input), but programming is where you may cause damage.

speaking of FTDI cables. I have a board with a 5V SPI interface on it, and a 5V MPSSE cable

what is MPSSE?

thing is, I don't know whether I should leave the 5V pin on the MPSSE cable unhooked, use it to power the board (it shouldn't draw a whole ton of current), or hook it up to the 5V pin on the board AND power the board from its normal supply (5V from a switching wall wart)

@W5VO the thing on the FTDI chips that talks I2C/SPI/JTAG/...

@W5VO Was just looking at the FTDI specs, and the current available from the power pin is very low.

@ThePhoton like what... 1-10mA?

@W5VO yes, something like 10 mA

huh.. I guess that's enough for programming

yeah. so that rules out powering the board through the pin....I just don't know if I'd fry the cable by trying to backpower it, or if I'd fry the cable by leaving it unhooked while connected to a powered-on board

@W5VO Looked again, maybe it's more like 250 mA or 500 mA depending on the cable PN.

huh.

@W5VO Would it have killed them to just print the PN on the cable somewhere?

Or are they selling too many replacement cables due to bad hookups to be motivated to do that?

@ThePhoton Gotta leave the door open for those counterfeit chips

@ThePhoton in the next few days I expect I can make time to try on my end as well

If y'likes

@Asmyldof moooh?

@PlasmaHH DINNER!

gets gun

@PlasmaHH ... "Learn C the Hard way" (site: c.learncodethehardway.org) - Opinion?

Hey guys, what tools do I need and what do I need to do to guarantee myself I have a working lock-in amplifier

@Asmyldof didn't read it, just now had a look through the first few chapters and am not impressed at all. From learning something the hard way I would expect it to explain the whys in more detail, but maybe that happens later, who knows

@PlasmaHH No, I'm pretty much at the end, and I would say that this site needs to be DDOS'ed bad

@user507974 ?

it looks like its done from someone who knows python and expects python is known and from that perspective, any way of learning or doing C seems hard ^^

hi...

@Asmyldof Well I have one that I'd like to make sure its not broken

just had a silly question....

if im asked to find current in a branch using superposition theorem am i allowed to use mesh analysis

im still a bit green in electronics but I've done a fair bit of basic electronics analysis with oscilloscopes/function generators, etc

and a little bit of NMR

@elecman if this is homework, only whoever gave it to you can set the rules. If you do it for yourself or just the result matters, do whatever you have to do

not homework for examination for engineering degree

@PlasmaHH

im a Computer Science guy.. studying myself...

so when these large circuits turns up.. they are using current division rule and stuff

so this standard practice to use mesh analysis to form some equations after replacing the sources 1 by one

or do i need to do it the hard way

@Asmyldof one of these bad boys in case you were wondering thinksrs.com/assets/instr/SR510530/SR530_FPlg.jpg

@user507974 Device has a function you want -> You have specifications for "what you want" -> You test if what you want is happening in whatever way you have to with whatever tools you have or can get. I have no crystal ball

what happened to the one we sent you?

quick, someone give me 7 125W 8Ω resistors for the weekend..

nobody? hm, looks like I need to solder quite a few 10W ones together ^^

@PlasmaHH I'm sure Medion has a few affordable ones. Will need pillows to muffle them too though

@Asmyldof exactly that is the step I was planning to avoid ^^

defective 125W 7.2 amp that only exhibits its issues when all channels are connected and running for a while on high volume. Obviously a heat issue but Id rather not run it on full volume for hours at night ^^

@PlasmaHH Easy enough, attach something that will cause lots of heat in the amp... such as, if it is of good quality, a short

If it is of poop quality that will destroy it more

no idea of harman kardon in that regard

I think it might be designed to detect shorts and then switch off though, on my old one from the 90s I had the issue that this protection was triggering from time to time for one channel for whatever reason

5kg of aluminium and a bunch of TO3 transistors?

Probably the amount of hacking as the 10W resistors...

anyone ever work with rogers 4350 pcb material before? i'm trying to get an idea for how weak 20-mil 4350 is when it's on its own. i've done a few boards that were 4350+FR4 but i found a pcb fab that'll do real cheap 2-layer 4350 so i'm considering that.

it's for a lab application, shouldn't be too aggressive

"on its own" means no support anywhre just held at one edge?

yup

i mean probably doing like SMA edge connectors on two sides and connecting it to a network analyzer through semirigid

though, for length reasons, probably not opposing sides, so i don't see a lot of pressure on any one axis

Doesn't sound explicitly dangerous to me in that situation but I never did break any similar material so have no idea of the forces actually needed

good enough for me. thanks.

Unless you are doing a huge run, it also doesn't sound too expensive to just try ^^

small run, expedited order though. i have kinda a weird job, i don't think a lot of people with no RF design experience are asked to design quickturn RF boards and get them right on the first try

everyone gets it right on the first try, its just a matter of redefining what right means...

haha that reminds me, a few weeks ago my boss was giving me a light chewing out over some orders that had gone sideways and he told me that i needed to do a better job of finding information to help me do my job on the internet

"there must be forums, websites, places you can go, etc., why haven't you found them?"

i feel like no one would understand the frustration of trying to find relevant EE information online than those assembled here

doing ee only as a hobby these days I feel far more frustration talking to the adult daycare center that is called our company

for. sure.

doing this stuff outside of work is the only reason i stay sane lol

you know that for a sane person in an insane world, it looks like the same as for an insane person in a sane world..

oh yeah i suppose while i'm chatting i'll link to this imgur.com/E0WW46U

you guys helped me build it with some advice on 50-mil wide PCBs

err,

500-mil

that grid is on a 1.5-inch grid that's embedded into the back of a vest and it looks awesome

Once I have freed enough space to build my lab bench table I will create awesomeness too

well, after I found some reasonable antistatic mat for it...

yeah they are pretty expensive

i have to imagine you could make a decent one for cheaper

You can buy in bulk, thats much much cheaper

The cheapest one sold locally I could find is 250EUR but it is not totally clear to me how heat resistant it is, they don't specify actual values

75% of our building uses intense ESD protection we handle ICs all day we get it in rolls and cut it

never thought about the heat though

but the soldering i do is all fr4 and sockets basically i don't worry about ESD much when i solder

you don't want a dropped blob of solder to melt through all of it, or turn it into some squish soup, or when you accidentally touch it with the iron to drag half of the mat as spaghetti with it

haha yeah

If some people would pool up in buying esd mats at my place...

We have a vandal running loose

Yeah. Here: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/25508/…

@ScottSeidman yeah, the echoes reached even far MSE chat

Are there any moderators online?

heh that's almost funny

Two troll accounts to delete: one, two

Though he can probably create more...

likely much more

I can't believe I am discussing these things facepalm

"Why isn't it changed, it has been in the specification for almost three years?" "Yeah, has it been, when have you made the changed and wrote the task to let us implement the change" ... "We never gave you the task, we changed the specification on the shared drive" ... "ok, let me see, hey, it is not in <new format>" ... "nobody ever told us to do it in that format" ... "oh yes, I did, I wrote it on a piece of paper and shoved it up the ass of the next dog at the sidewalk!!!"

@TheNoonMoose I've done 2-layer rogers before but it was a long time ago. I don't remember if we used as thin as 0.020. Definitely you'll want to provide some mechanical support for that kind of board (mount it on a block of aluminum or just a blank piece of G4) if you're going to use it for more than a couple of lab tests.

@Asmyldof Don't worry, I'm going to get this sorted in the next couple days (I hope).

New question:

I know Russel M had a couple of good posts on this stuff, and I found he recommended Dow 1-2577, but that's a conformal coat, not something to sit in a blob around a part. He also mentioned Sylgard 184, which looks like a good match for my use.

I also found Loctite 5140 in a web search, also looks like it could be okay.

Anybody tried any of these and have any opinions?

@ThePhoton 'k

@ThePhoton Yes, but it's made to recipe in a Chinese factory

@Asmyldof How about a 2nd-favorite one, that's available in quantities less than 1 kg.

I even have a thixotropy agent that I sometimes add

I'd go for a standard 2 component glue that's nice and goopy

If you can make some form of a vacuum chamber for a minute, that should decrease the bubbles after mixing

Bison (owned by Henkel/Loctite) used to have special thixotrope 2component epoxy that you could even sculpt and dried in 15minutes

Can't find it anymore myself

If you have no actual vacuum easily available to use for chemical de-aerearationonon a syringe that you fill with epoxy, no air, put a cap on and pull back also does wonders to get the bubbles out

Makes a pretty good vacuum if it's with a soft PP plunger

Wait times may need increasing for very thick goops

Or more repetition

@Asmyldof I've more or less done that before, but instead of all that hassle just put it under a bell jar and turned on the vacuum pump.

(Not sure if the vacuum pump was moved when we moved offices last year though)

@ThePhoton glass?

@PlasmaHH hmm

Process temperature might be a bit high for my board.

I drained the pond in my back yard today. Now I have a big hole in my garden, filled with frogs of various sizes.

I kinda feel bad about the frogs, how do I move them without touching them?

@jippie siphon

@ThePhoton siphon?

shovel

@W5VO I kinda feel bad about that :-/

@jippie back-hoe

siphon leads to frogsafe.org.au/threat/index.shtml

@ThePhoton Let me duckduckgo that for myself

a shovel ... :-|

I guess I could ask Ishmael to blow up my garden or so ..

@jippie but with a better scoop area to edge ratio

sigh ...

where are you going to put them?

@conman and BBBedian, unfamiliar with it, but if it annoys me enough I'd just apt-get purge it.

@W5VO neighbor's pond?

or the larger pond in the park 200m down the road?

@NickAlexeev Continuous would be very boring audio

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE‌​EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

@jippie I can get them out of there

I'm just not sure how long it takes me to assemble a flock of several dozen storks

@ThePhoton As I said: Vacuum is better, but some times there's only the vacuum that's not allowed to be chemically compromised with fumes or whatever, or there is none, and then the syringe method works reasonably well too

@Asmyldof maybe reigers are easier to find?

@jippie yeh, I meant those, but I'm nutrient deprived, which makes my lingual LUT work less efficiently

Frog safe makes a good point though

You can just dump lie in the pond for a week and let them dissolve and pump out the resulting goop.... maffia style

@Asmyldof what point?

That pollution makes frogs go away

@Asmyldof "dump lie"?

pollute your pond with 20% SodiumHydroxide

lye

I made a point about my LUTs... it's not changed

stove still off

It was easy draining the pond when it was full, as my pond is above street level (law of the communicating barrels ... [is that even remotely English?])

Now it is nearly empty, the only way to get it going again is to fill up the pond with at least 1m3 again to get the hose full and the water going ...

lye is gootsteenontstopper? caustic soda or so?

@jippie yes

Dump a good amount of the concentrated pellets in the water that's left: Boils the frogs to a relatively humane death, then let them dissolve, then add 1m3 water to make it less goopy and get the level up, then emty it out again

rinse repeat, literally, if needed

Although, if the concentration of lye is too low, new frogs may enter the equation and you may end up eradicating them all

Another option, somewhat more humane, is fully dry out the pond and they will leave within a few days on their own

@Asmyldof too easy

Then, get out a bamboo skewer packet and skewer each frog onto one or two individually and flip them over the hedge one by one? That's definitely less easy

@jippie If you want to get rid of the frogs, you have to listen to what Moses has to say

@Asmyldof frog legs barbecue?

@ScottSeidman link or it didn't happen

@ThePhoton close enough

Crickets?

chirp

No

European crickets do "tjarmüghi"

How is that pronounced?

@BrandenBoucher I bet it's pronounced, "tjarmüghi".

@ThePhoton, that helps

@ThePhoton Correct

@BrandenBoucher What toolthingie did you use to speed up your unboxing video and were you happy with its usability?

@Asmyldof, just the free microsoft Movie Maker

For the most part, it does what I need. It would be great if it had some video/picture -in-video capabilities, and a bit better way to zoom in for slicing.

hmmm

alright then

It can be a bit fiddly

brb

There's no real advanced editing features and little in the way of filters. But not bad for free and pretty easy to use if you've never done video editing before, like myself.

hm

hohum

Wellll

I am going another way

Probably

Just received a price-hike notification of 77%

@Asmyldof for?

Which is why I asked. But I just decided to hack the registry

Couple tools I use

found out they doubled the drivers license cost

You guys pay monthly?

So much suddenly makes sense

:-P

@Asmyldof Time to evaluate the "Chinese edition"?

why monthly?

@ThePhoton This keeps a key to phone home and a clock-check

and of course, it's just for my state

If I make it not phone home, and keep thinking its not phone home time yet, I think I can just keep using it

@W5VO because else, reasons, etc

@Asmyldof surely your drivers license doesn't have monthly checks, right?

There is no keyboard layout I can set that either of my keyboards create quote marks, double or single....

WTF!?

@W5VO What does a drivers license cost in MO?

I remember when it was $10 / year in CA.

@ThePhoton I don't live in Missery

@W5VO Congratulations

I guess

lol

My last one was $20

Sorry, why did I remember MO instead of AK?

Or whatever Arkansas is

Nor Alaska

(AK is alaska, isn't it)

yes, because we were a state first.

@W5VO I think just about everybody gets to say that to alaska

We get to say it to the entire lot of you

I win

But can you see Vladimir Putin from your back yard?

BOOM!

@ThePhoton Everyone except HI

@Asmyldof Pretty sure we were a state before the EU was started ;)

@W5VO The Republican State of the Collected Netherlands predates the entire lot of you!

@Asmyldof Mmmm, you only got independence from Napoleon in 1815...Arkansas might have you beat (but California doesn't)

A bit schizophrenic about favored forms of government, aren't you Dutchy's?

@ThePhoton Alright, I got the name wrong

AR was a territory in 1819

and a state in 1836

The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands 1609

@W5VO Arkansas is also 4x the size of the Netherlands, so that has got to be good for something.

The united KINGDOM of the Netherlands is 1815

We were taught (only slightly wrongly) in my day in elementary school: We were the first to become a republic and we will probably be a Kingdom last

I suppose we were part of the US by then (Louisiana Purchase)

@W5VO By which Napoleon got a bit of money to use to conquer Europe with...

and then he wasted it on the Russians

Cakes and waffles!

among other things

Why. does. my. system. no. longer. support. quotes!?

If I go UK keyboard the same key makes @ symbols, but when I go to US intl. that key does nothing!

I think I bollocked up the language system somewhere along the way

Anything that creates an accent on a character in the Dutch setting now does nothing. Can also not make a carret or back tick

Both intriguing and deeply annoying

@Asmyldof quotes are for people who don't think for themselves.

@ThePhoton You contract it is without one