Reddit:Electronics

my rotary tool broke and I needed to use it. So I upgraded it with speed control while I was at it. Anywho I’m now interested in learning and understanding electronics.

Well ain't AI getting good. I'm in this project deeper than my own knowledge could've taken me. I'm working on a non running dirt bike I just bought with no spark. Chat GPT helped me go through the entire electrical system until we zeroed in on the ECU by eliminating everything else, and found the exact transistor that went bad. The ignition coil driver, (on the right with the little purple mark on it.)

At logic level, it looks like it's still working. It still switches, but it's rated for 15A continuous and its only able to sink enough current to barely illuminate an LED. That's not gonna drive an ignition coil.

So I'm gonna try to replace it with a better one and see if I can find out why it failed, to hopefully prevent it happening again. I've done similar jobs on guitar amps before, but never a computer. I don't know if you can tell, but you're not supposed to be able to work on these things. It's been a bit of a lesson in archeology, unearthing this thing. Fortunately the potting compound is quite soft and tears/slices pretty easily, and, though it took a few hours, I've been able to remove it easily enough with a knife and my thumbnails.

Fun little project. If I can manage to fix it for the $2.50 of a new transistor, and maybe a couple resistors, awesome. If not, well it's technically scrap in it's current state, anyway, and definitely worth a shot at potentially saving the $800-$1000 for a replacement ECU for this bike 😵

Needed a tool so made a tool

I got tired of searching for circuit board pattern graphics to use on website/social posts, as this pattern when designing anything embedded related is used quite often.

AI generated looked bad for me, so I made a tool to generate one, featuring shapes, text and gradient fills

If you need any pattern or just to play:

https://hacod-tech.github.io/Circuit-Board-Pattern-Generator/

This is an SoC Camera sensor and controller from an old webcam likely manufactured in the early 2000s hence that chip is manufactured in 2004 (the year i was born in lol) i found this camera in my grandparents house a decade ago i grapped it as a kid and thought it was cool and disassembled it and through it in a big plastic bag along with my cool junk collection.

A decade later i found it's pcb (the shell is no where to be found lol) and desoldered it's components and found that SoC chip that i thought it's pretty cool!

Not sure if this is a normal way to use these cores as i have no knowledge about it. But i came up with a way to get 2 isolated outputs from 1 input. The input windings go in the middle so from hole to hole and the 2 other windings are on the sides. This specific core gave 5.4v on output with 5v input but it was just put together with scraps to see if it works and it did really well.

Hey everyone. Just wanted to kinda quickly introduce myself.

My dad was always fixing radios, and was a generally great with electronics but he never thought about teaching me (probably because I was always more into art and music idk). Now I'm in my 40's and I decided to get into it, as a kind of connection to my late father, whom I really miss.
So I took an old soldering iron and tried to replace USB port in my midi piano.. and I totally botched it - ripped of the paths. The tip was too hot (I guess). Then I ordered a proper station, wire, glue, UV light etc etc and watched a lot (like A LOT) of videos about fixing PCBs. I also got a BBB and breadboard (and managed to light up a LED on it hell yeah).

Last Saturday I fixed my instrument and I bought a DYI tetris handheld and I will teach my son.. or rather we'll learn together.

Hi everyone,
I’m a hardware engineer from China, mainly working on analog circuits, power electronics, and optoelectronic systems. Recently, I designed a custom pulse signal generator for laboratory and system-level testing. The design focuses on precise timing control and signal integrity, and its main specifications include a minimum pulse width of 600 ps, a maximum pulse width of 10 µs, pulse width and delay resolution of 200 ps, and four independent output channels. This project was driven by practical testing needs, particularly for timing characterization and dynamic behavior evaluation in electronic and optoelectronic subsystems. I’m happy to share design experience, discuss architecture and measurement considerations, and also learn from the community. Glad to join, and thanks for having me.

Hi everyone!

I've just uploaded a project I've been working on to GitHub: CircuiTikZ Visual Editor.

Link: https://github.com/mangel21/CircuiTikZ-Editor

It’s a web-based tool designed to make drawing circuits for LaTeX much faster. Instead of typing out coordinates, you can:

• Drag and drop components from a library.
• Draw wires with smart snapping.
• Rotate and edit properties easily.
• Get the CircuiTikZ code instantly to copy-paste into your .tex files.

Please note that this is a very early version. It's still premature and there are many things to improve (more components, better wire routing, etc.). I am not a developer either, I'm just an electronics engineer who wants to build circuits faster.

I would love for you to try it out and see if it helps your workflow. Also, please help improve it. If you are a developer, feel free to contribute or suggest features on GitHub!

Let me know what you think!

Invasive species pose a serious threat to native wildlife and ecosystems. LoRaHunt enables efficient monitoring of live traps, supporting responsible management and relocation efforts.

Powered by an ESP32-based Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 (V3), the device primarily operates in deep sleep mode to maximize battery life, achieving up to three months of operation on four 18650 batteries. When a trap is triggered, a reed switch wakes the ESP32 to transmit the event and wait for acknowledgment. Twice-daily heartbeat signals confirm system status, eliminating the need for mandatory manual inspections.

Analog video tape to digital transfer! so far it has been a royal pain in my ass lately. From VHS deck issues, capture issues, software for said capture device only supporting PowerPC versions which needs Rosetta in Mac OS X (of which Apple abandoned years ago) all the way to my greatest pet peeve…the VHS-C adaptor.

I currently have 3 of them, with another I ordered on eBay. The first adapter I destroyed because it made me mad. The second adapter jams up my deck causing it to have E-5 error code when I fast forward. The 3rd adapter, brand new from Amazon, causes error code E-5 on all deck functions (play, fast forward, rewind, etc). basically unusable. As much I want to destroy that one, I’m going to just return it to Amazon. instead, when I receive the one I ordered on eBay and it works as expected, I will then destroy the second adaptor. Or, I get to have 2 adapter I can destroy if the eBay one doesn’t work.

I don’t have VCRs galore to try this on other decks; besides, the one I’m using now I ruled him out as the issue. It plays VHS tapes just fine. Hopefully, the eBay adapter will work out.

Since this project deals with clients 3 decades worth of precious memories in the format of VHS-C, Hi8 and MiniDV, I can’t afford to damage anything. I decided to revisit this 1 week into the new year to come back into this thing with good energy and vibes.

for now, I’m just pissed off at VHS-C adapters lol

Got a table saw recently so I went a little overboard with the French cleats. I also made a scope cart from the remains of my last desk. Fume extraction is a work in progress and I think I need a bigger flare on the hood. Next steps are better parts storage and filling out the relay rack with test gear. If anyone has any test lead/ cable storage suggestions, I’d love to hear them

I've been buying stuff from thrift stores to learn more about electronics. I took this apart and found it had a broken circuit board. It took a couple hours and it's not pretty but it works!