Hello Fediverse!
I recently set this table up with a 3D printer and I want to expand the other half of the table with an electronics workspace - I'm thinking soldering station, power supply, oscilloscope, tools etc. but I'm not sure what to get.
So this is a callout to all of the makers out there, what tools/brands/devices do you recommend? And why?
(Table sturdiness is being addressed, see thread below)
I have been reminded again that not everyone knows about the difference between old tantalum capacitors and modern tantalum polymer capacitors.
the whole "tantalum capacitors catch fire" thing occurs due to oxygen production at internal fissure boundaries in the dielectric during breakdown when exposed to overvoltage. heat + oxygen = fire.
tantalum polymer dielectrics absorb oxygen at fissure boundaries instead of producing it, self-healing them against this effect. no fire.
The history of electromagnetism is truly bizarre when you think about it. The theory was essentially 100% complete in 1873 in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Well, supposedly complete - as nobody could really understand its content fully, not even the author. Maxwell introduced the displacement current as a small technical fix, but failed to realize it could generate E&M waves. The reanalysis of the book took physicists 10 to 20 years. Pupin traveled from US to Cambridge because he wanted to ask the question "WTF is the book?" personally to Maxwell. The young Heaviside said understanding this book was his life goal (realized during 1880-1890). During this period, nobody really knows for sure that E&M waves exist. Even after Hertz demostrated E&M waves, physicists all believed it was a short-range effect like light. Then in 1895 Marconi discovered a practical longwave ratio transmitter by random tinkering. After he heard telegraph transmitters are grounded, he tried it too, accidentally inventing the monopole antenna by sheer luck (and also made it the first case of "cargo cult grounding" in RF electronics, today still practiced by many technicians that should knew better). Except that it actually worked for him spectacularly because of a quirk of the Earth's atmosphere. Physicists had absolutely no idea about it and the explanation at that time by physics guru Sommerfeld (the Zenneck surface wave solution to Maxwell's equation) was completely wrong. In 1905, there was already special relativity but still little understanding about antennas and waveguides in general. Some people actually argued that special relativity made E&M simpler... #electronics
Well, that is the first PCB design done for our #micromouse project. 7 of these are going to be on the mouse, mounted at a 90 degree angle to look at the maze walls. Lets hope they actually work.
KiCad needs funding for its next release cycle.
If you do PCB design, esp. if its your job, consider donating.
Even if you don't use KiCad yourself as your main tool (like myself) its still an incredibly important piece of infrastructure for the industry as a whole.
Finding this part seems harder than expected, but maybe someone here knows.
I am looking for a standing up, female, SATA data connector, like the one used in the assembly of the 90 degree adapter in these pictures.
Or more broadly, I just want a really thin, short and cheap card edge connector receptacle with at least 5 pins, and I figured female sata is basically that.
Progress: the player sent a command with the correct data addresses and the drive started playing!
There are no stop or navigation commands yet so it will play for a while :) #riscv#diy#electronics#ch32v003