Reddit:Electronics

How can one stay focused on a few projects until completion? I have a habit of trying to do all the things at once, which leaves my work area in a state of disarray. Which is not ideal, as this space is used for my work from home office as well.

I've always wanted one of these! However, since the professional ones are dead expensive, I built a couple of them myself. They're ESP32-based, have 354 LEDs each, use NTP and support satellite time sync (GNSS) with an optional u-blox module. A deep photo frame worked perfectly as enclosure. Hardware and firmware is open source and can be found found on GitHub.

Recently I had an interesting conversation with Bourns. TAC, my USB-C power supply, I wrote about recently, uses a coupled inductor for negative rail generation. Surprisingly, after prototypes came, the negative rail maximum load was 3 times lower than expected. Totally confused, I did multiple analysis until I incorporated finite coupling factor into the simulations. Because it turned out to be an important parameter, poorly defined, I decided to ask the manufacturer.

As probably all of you know, Bourns is one of the better inductor manufacturer in the world. May request got forwarded from sales to engineering team and back to sales. The response I got was:

"Please find our measurements of 5 samples. The coupling between the windings are 100% on this measurements."

For anyone less advanced, the coupling factor can not be 100% in any physically real device. Fortunately, the response also included the original report of the engineering team, showing measurement points. I don't know why the system generated K=100%, when my math shows 99.0-99.5%, but I'll let you be the judge of that (results sheet included)

On an unrelated note, when ordering PnP I misspelled F for E in the part no, costing me countless sleepless nights and gray hairs, but that's a story for another time.

https://preview.redd.it/hj2jewehhahd1.jpg?width=473&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1caf0151c21c4e5459c063a4a8e3d721314e2e31

https://preview.redd.it/039liuqjhahd1.png?width=737&format=png&auto=webp&s=d95470f987039489dcfd569af27458b780373eec

So earlier today, I was working from home and caught myself staring at a few clock kits that i assembled, and came to a realization of how far we, as a human species, advanced in integrating technology.

I have these 3 clocks…they all do the same thing, except one is constructed out of discrete parts with a nixie tube display, another is constructed using CMOS integrated circuits (i.e. AND gates, counter/dividers, BCD 7 segment decoders, D-Type flip flops, etc). The last one is made around a STC15W408AS microcontroller.

What dawned on me just now is that these 3 devices show the evolution of technology. From an incredibly complex device using discrete components, then to a simplified device using integrated circuits (which does the exact same thing a the discrete clock, except integrating all those transistors and diodes into CMOS ICs), then finally to a device that just uses a few parts centered around a programmable microcontroller.

Not only that, the simplest device that uses a few parts has far more features than the first two, like an auto-dimming display, displays temperature, displays the month/day/year for the date, has a couple of alarms you can set, has multiple melodies for the alarms, option to chime at the top of the hour, etc.

And to think I was able to experience this evolution of technology is pretty amazing!