@Runemoro 20 V is very unlikely to hurt you.

You'd probably have to have a heart condition and sweaty palms and touch the +20 with one hand and the circuit ground with the other hand,.

@Runemoro Yes but the current doesn't depend on the rating of the wire. It depends on the voltage and the resistance provided by your body.

@Runemoro Because if you connected a load that draws more than 5 A at 20 V, the wire could heat up and start a fire.

@Runemoro Yes 20 V is probably enough to make a visible spark

If you touch it to your tongue, you will not enjoy it.

If you want to be safe, be sure to only touch the circuit with one hand at a time. Keep the other hand in your pocket or behind your back.

But with 20 V the risk is very low.

If you're wearing a heart pacemaker, ignore everything I just said and power the thing off before you work on it.

@Runemoro Well it does require some ingenuity to work that way.

I would work on 20 V without taking any special precautions, but I'm not going to tell you to do that. Better you should understand the risks yourself and make up your own mind.

grEEtz

@AnindoGhosh Morning

@ThePhoton :-)

Hi!

@abdullahkahraman Hi!

You know you have a Stack Exchange problem when: you learn how an electrical device works, and your first thought is "ah, now I can answer that three-month old question on EE.SE!"

(electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/92596/…)

@Li-aungYip Actually, I have a tip that you might want to follow up and thus improve your answer. The speed controller depends on the starter cap being there: It basically works together with the ballast cap as a lossless (ideally) voltage splitter for the AC voltage. There's more detail out there on various sites and forums, of course, I just gave you the starting hint :-)

@AnindoGhosh: Ah, I thought it might be something like that

I'll research it a bit more when I have the leisure

right now I'm staying with friends away from my home base, so I don't have a lot of spare time

@Li-aungYip :-)

@AnindoGhosh It can also work from an extra winding with higher resistance (longer, thinner wire). That creates an phase shift in the magnetic stator too.

Did you see the insulator question from a couple days back @Li-aungYip?

@jippie Yup, but the resistance = heat. Capacitance = no heat.

use even higer resistance and even longer wire. The field is only required to get the motor going.

to make it decide whether it spins clockwise or counter clockwise.

If they are really friends, they understand you need to answer these questions ;o)

@AnindoGhosh and long wire = high inductance

which in turn is low dissipation again.

@jippie: no, I hadn't seen that insulator question

but Andy Aka's answer is pretty much bang on the money

and a few days ago I was at my parent's house with only phone internet

so, i wouldn't have seen the question anyhow :P

that said, feel free to keep pinging me for interesting questions in chat

with that, I am off to bed

night @Li-aungYip

@AnindoGhosh Do you know what was said in anupam's comment on this question? meta.electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/3287/…

@W5VO No, but my wife might. It is Punjabi, one of the many Indian languages I don't speak :-) I'll ask my wife in a bit, she's the one with the language versatility.

@AnindoGhosh I can dance Punjabi style, not speak it :(

@W5VO Two upvotes, so it probably wasn't very complimentary to Olin.

;)

@ThePhoton I was curious... That being said, it doesn't make it any easier when you don't even know the language used

@W5VO Is there any rule that English is the language of discourse on SE? On the other hand I wouldn't expect anybody to have any problem with an occasional phrase in Spanish or German, so I don't think there should be a problem with an occasional phrase in Punjabi either...

see related MSO post: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/13676/…

From my perspective, I can't moderate what I don't understand.

Just realized I've got 2.5 A load hung on a 2 A dc-dc converter. Fixing this is gonna suck.

Delegate it to a minion, then kick back and relax? :)

@David Step 1: Hire minion

@ThePhoton Step 2: Give minion all important work, Step 3: Take credit.

@David I'll have to see how my boss feels about this. And what to do when my minion wants to hire a minion?

It's minions all the way down!

@ThePhoton there's a general rule that effluent can only flow one way, downwards :P

@David Unfortunately it's a very optimistic rule.

@ThePhoton Sadly yes, the real world is quite different.

How did you end up with too much current being drawn from the switcher?

@David Kept redesigning the load without going back and checking whether the power supply could handle it. Moved a lot of load from + supply to - supply.

hello all

i need your help again folks!

@JohannesSchaub-litb OK but it's been pretty quiet around here this morning.

i wanna buy cables for connecting things on my breadboard

but i dunno how they are called

@JohannesSchaub-litb pololu.com/category/39/cables-and-wire

@JohannesSchaub-litb Start there, they have good pictures and descriptions

i wanna cut and unisolate them myself

how are those ready wired up long isolated cables called in german?

i guess in english these are called "stranded wires", as on that linked page

ah no they seem to contain many small wires slapped together

@JohannesSchaub-litb Are you looking for ribbon cable?

not sure what it's called in english, "litzenkabel"

Litz wire

probably.

i am not looking for a "litzenkabel", but for one that is built of massive cupper or aluminium

because i could stick those directly into my breadboard without putting those endings onto the wire first

@JohannesSchaub-litb Why? It's going to be inflexible and subject to fatigue.

@JohannesSchaub-litb dx.com/p/… maybe

oh hmm i see

Or here, following David's link: pololu.com/category/68/male-male-premium-jumper-wires

I think when I used breadboards (long ago) we didn't use crimp-on terminations but just used pre-tinned stranded wire. Not sure if that's still a good solution given RoHS rules and stuff.

@JohannesSchaub-litb Inflexible wire does work but like @ThePhoton says it isn't the best long term solution. You just want to search for "solid core wire", around 22AWG

how do you plan your electronics?

do you sold and unsold all the way? or do you do it right the first time you try?

sounds nice to a software engineerer :)

@JohannesSchaub-litb Also, as an aside, in English Litz wire and stranded wire aren't the same. Litz wire has each strand individually insulated and normal stranded wire doesn't.

I do electronics like I do coding... start with a general idea and keep playing with it until it works properly :P

@ThePhoton ah thanks!

@JohannesSchaub-litb Design schematic. Simulate. Layout. Fab. Build. Test. For most stuff I do I can't really work on breadboards...

@ThePhoton so i guess i will want to use "normal stranded"

@ThePhoton i wanna build a remote control. dunno how to simulate it

@JohannesSchaub-litb If you can get it pre-tinned, that's probably the cheap way. If you can't, those packs of pre-crimped jumpers seem pretty affordable.

wait.. i guess i can just look whether the infrared sends out the things i want it to send... i don'T need to see my TV acting.. i will belive it will

@JohannesSchaub-litb Usually you can only simulate bits and pieces

@JohannesSchaub-litb Don't try to simulate a whole circuit. For your remote control example, just simulate the little portions.

@JohannesSchaub-litb Perhaps the portion that drives the IR LED, just simulate the driver (whether transistor or FET) to check it works correctly

i looked at a description on how to build it. the guy did connect the GPIO port of his raspberry Pi wih a transistor, and the transistor to the IR led

You can probably make small things like that work without simulation

@David nice! any free linux too to do that?

Unless you really want to understand the transistor model

@JohannesSchaub-litb I use ltspice for most analog stuff, but I'm a hobbyist and do very little, so don't use me as your recommendation.

@David i think i will regard the transistor as a black box

@JohannesSchaub-litb Work out how to break your circuits into a block diagram and treat each as individual bits you can work on one at a time

nice

For now it is bedtime here though, good luck. Am sure others will have better advice :)

thanks :)

what do you guys recommend as a starter kit with transistors and resistors and capacitors?

@JohannesSchaub-litb Digi-Key

i got assortments of stuff on ebay

I dunno what you have in Europe though