Electrical Engineering

The Photon

04:52

@Giskard42 You're off by a factor of 1000.

Bartek Banachewicz

08:01

PSU arrived

there's one slight problem though

I drove my bike to work today and I am not sure if I'll be able to fit it in for the journey back home

PlasmaHH

there are no problems, just challenges to be accepted

Bartek Banachewicz

08:37

hmm those GW Instek multimeters seem available for reasonable prices on german ebay

I don't know about continuity delay though....

PlasmaHH

thats one ot the lower priority features for me

also I dont trust gw instek much anyways

and whcih ones do you mean? I dont see that many gw

Bartek Banachewicz

@PlasmaHH gdm-8251, discussed a few pages of chat above

@PlasmaHH this is the thing I miss the most in my absolutely cheapish one

PlasmaHH

@BartekBanachewicz I dont find any german ones, have a link?

Bartek Banachewicz

@PlasmaHH like this?

Asmyldof

@BartekBanachewicz That's an american one

Looking at the actual specs and the cal system I'm not vastly impressed.

Bartek Banachewicz

08:51

some people seem to be recommending Fluke 45

eh dunno

Asmyldof

If you can get a Fluke 45 same price as the GW, the choice is VERY clear

PlasmaHH

@BartekBanachewicz us not german based.

Bartek Banachewicz

@Asmyldof does it beep though :D

PlasmaHH

@BartekBanachewicz that is a non issue, for continuty test, even if it doesnt beep at all you can buy a 20 buck meter that does beep

Bartek Banachewicz

09:08

@PlasmaHH seems weird to buy a really nice meter to only have to buy yet another one

also my coworker is just charging his phone from my psu, lol

PlasmaHH

@BartekBanachewicz not at all, every meter has good and bad points, there is no one that is great in everything. plus you always need many meters, so yet another one shouldn't be a problem at all

Bartek Banachewicz

09:26

I suppose that for the common use a rough probe such as saleasasdas or the clone could work as 8 multimeters

they do graphing too

Asmyldof

10:01

@BartekBanachewicz So when your one multimeter is measuring voltage, how is your sardinesalade logic probe going to be measuring current?

I don't have a drawer full of MM's because I like collecting them

Well

Not only because I like collecting them

PlasmaHH

but because you are old and buy new ones?

Bartek Banachewicz

@Asmyldof I thought the saslsalels would measure voltage at certain points

that's how I imagined it anyway

Asmyldof

11:01

@BartekBanachewicz Logic analysers measure 1's and 0's

Instrumental Amplifier... sounds nice. Like it'll create violin solos

2

PlasmaHH

more like it has a gbw of 10khz ^^

PlasmaHH

11:37

ah its fun how exchanges try to squeeze every byte out of their data formats and now regulation demands things like to transfer floating points as 20 byte text fields, and bitfields as 4char words with a meaning...

Giskard42

@Asmyldof The salaaaaamaaamas do analog voltages?

The real ones anyway, don't know about the clones.

Bartek Banachewicz

@Asmyldof but they also have some analog support

Giskard42

Yeah, they do

The $8 clones probably don't, can't imagine you can get a fast ADC for that

Asmyldof

@BartekBanachewicz Ah, yes, there's analogue too these days. If you selected a clone of one of the Shazamalamadoodads that does analogue it's worth a try

Bartek Banachewicz

12:05

@Asmyldof I picked the cheapest one, duh

when you go chinese why not go full on

also my PSU successfully charged my coworker's phone who was brave enough to hook it up to it

so yay I guess

Asmyldof

@BartekBanachewicz Those don't do analogue.

The small grey rectangular boxes are clones of the V1

V1 used to be $60 or so and had no analogue capability

Bartek Banachewicz

oh

well dunno we'll see once it ships, so like in a month

Bartek Banachewicz

12:40

Hm, I've stumbled on the book list, and The Art of Electronics seems nice, if bit pricey.

PlasmaHH

it seems to be * the * book though

Bartek Banachewicz

I'd need to find a shop that takes paypal

it's so annoying that Amazon doesn't

PlasmaHH

why would they? you have already many options and paypal is a direct competitor

Asmyldof

Very hard to resist offering 80 cents on the Euro

Bartek Banachewicz

@PlasmaHH because that's convenient for me :D

PlasmaHH

12:55

@BartekBanachewicz don't you use any of the ways that amazon accepts to pay your paypal bills?

Asmyldof

13:31

Shh. @Marla is here

Marla

@Asmyldof . . and I was just thinking about taking a photo of my old HP digital meter (Nixie Tube display) and showing it off on here .

Asmyldof

@Marla You can still do so....

Marla

BTW @Asmyldof . . nice to see a lot of others than just the 3 stooges here today. LOL

Asmyldof

My last Nixie device left my lab years ago

PlasmaHH

@Marla in colour?

Marla

13:45

1966 I think it was made

And I do Not intend to go in and fix that voltage error showing when no probes are connected. I like seeing the numbers move around a bit.

Asmyldof

@Marla Have you ever actually used it to measure 1000MV?

Marla

Of course not. The thing is my museum piece, not a work horse.

Bartek Banachewicz

14:08

@PlasmaHH not really

@Asmyldof I guess that's actually mV not MV

PlasmaHH

@BartekBanachewicz so you paypal account gets filled by ebay sales only?

Bartek Banachewicz

@PlasmaHH by general freelancing online

PlasmaHH

??

Bartek Banachewicz

@PlasmaHH there are ways to earn money online

Asmyldof

14:22

@BartekBanachewicz Says MV

Bartek Banachewicz

@Asmyldof well i know but it's to the left of 10v so

Asmyldof

@BartekBanachewicz Says MV

Marla

I just noticed that all of the on-line photos of HP3430A are all out of focus for reading the letters "MV". I never thought to check if all other units had the same MV on the panel.

Hmmmm. None listed on ebay either. Maybe this one is more rare than I thought

PlasmaHH

not even when you tick "sold auctions" or whatever that option is on us ebay?

Marla

@PlasmaHH . I didn't know about "sold auctions" in a search. Found it, and nothing shows there either on the HP3430A

(advanced search)

PlasmaHH

14:34

@Marla its a really neat feature to figure out if something exists on the market, and if yes what it might be worth

Marla

Was surprised that it showed up in the "Radio Museum". I am familiar with that site (antique radios of course), but I would not have thought to search there.

Bartek Banachewicz

108

Q: Why does the "people reached" counter use a lowercase "m" for millions?

As far as I know, the usual unit prefix for millions is mega, written as M. I think it should apply to unit-less numbers as well. Thus, I suggest that ~4.4m is changed to ~4.4M It's arguably much cooler to see a bigger M anyway.

says m

PlasmaHH

@Marla they also collect information about standard test gear

Marla

So, if I use the word "I'm", then is that a milli-me ?

or a milli-amp ?

PlasmaHH

Its I milli '

Marla

14:42

no, I Marla :)

I'm Marla

Asmyldof

15:23

Harr.

Supplier of a 17mm long device

us: "Hello, supplier, can you also make that shorter, 17mm is a bit of a push for us..."

Supplier: "The 17mm is going to be difficult to make, could you accept a 30mm part?"

us: "......"

@BartekBanachewicz The answer is wrong though

An internationalised standard for million exists. It's mln, to avoid confusion with... guess what m and M

A €4380 laptop.... that's what normal people do, right?

dirac16

15:39

I'm thinking of an electric flyswatter with charging capacitor at around 1000V. In practice, can you use a boost converter to charge a 1uF, 1000V capacitor from a 9V battery?

Bartek Banachewicz

16:24

@Asmyldof that's quite a lot for a laptop

Bartek Banachewicz

17:14

ugh

my meter is having serious issues with the pwm-set voltage

oh wait it only happens at one range

....

Giskard42

17:32

AHA! The nature of the pll problem has changed!

There is no PLL problem!

PlasmaHH

@dirac16 they use transformers

Giskard42

It's a gorram atmel ResetHandler bug!

avrfreaks.net/forum/…

Corrupts the stack trace and makes it look like the error was in sysclock_init()!

Bastard!

PlasmaHH

18:35

There is no spoon

Giskard42

@PlasmaHH Doesn't explain why the same hardware with the same chip on a different board doesn't work

And I tried all the solutions there

Nada

Just got off the phone with Atmel, they're stumped AF

Dude said, and I quote: "It's something very subtle".

The Photon

20:05

@Giskard42 Translation: Show me the PO for 100,000 units and I'll think about looking into it more closely.

Giskard42

@ThePhoton Actually they forwarded it to their experts in India

Peter K

20:35

That reminds me of the time ST Microelectronics was doing some failure analysis for me on a part with an STM32

Couldn't resolve it over the phone so they got me to send them a couple of boards with the problem.

They ended up having me ship them to Tunisia, and then promptly lost them.

Apparently Tunisia was their only facility with the necessary test equipment, but afterwards I find out from the local FAE they could have done it in Texas and he had no clue why ST would have me send parts to Tunis.

Giskard42

Perhaps Tunisia just needed some extra drink coasters

Peter K

22:47

I think this is a new low
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/330575/i-need-help-with-an-animatronic

The Photon

23:17

@PeterK That is really something special.

Peter K

It's like it was written by the same person who wrote t3h pengu1n of d00m copypasta.

The Photon

@PeterK And then google translated.

Shalvenay

hey there @ThePhoton

The Photon

23:53

@Shalvenay Hey.

7 minutes to beer o'clock, PDT.

Shalvenay

what's up?

The Photon

(at least until beer:45 when I have to be on the phone with my boss)

Transcript for

Electrical Engineering