2023-03-14
So here is an interesting topic – a cheap Chinese electric thingie performed better than advertised. Specificially a 240W DC-DC converter; 12VDC in, 24VDC out. It claims to be able to turn 20A of 12VDC into 10A of 24VDC. With the checkered history of price-concious Chinese products one may rightly be skeptical of such claims. And that’s why this genuine Gofotu H10-12-24 both surprises and delights. Not only does it live up to it’s claims, Read more…
2022-06-14
No, I’m not talking about my high school band (we were a Mr. Speed tribute band), I’m talking about the cold blooded indifference of Mother Gaia. Below are the hollowed out corpses of some sort of insect on top of my cucumber leafs. I discovered them one morning before watering. More than likely a parasite suckling on the thick, syrupy goodness of my container garden. The trick to being a crazy person is to really Read more…
2022-06-13
Well you get this: … a monitor stand attached to a pipe stand via C clamps.
2020-01-25
It has been a while since the last update and a whole lot of progress has been made. On the software side everything seems to work. For realsies this time. The full software stack compiles and runs(!) on both Linux and FreeBSD. On Linux it compiles using GCC and Clang. On FreeBSD only Clang is used since that’s the default compiler. To be fair I’ve only tested the client side stuff on FreeBSD, but as Read more…
2019-09-22
The hardware design is complete. All of the units that I will assemble have been assembled. The software is good shape. It hasn’t been touched in a few months, but last I worked on it it was in very good shape. The next step is actual physical assembly of the whole thing. Below are a few select pictures of the assembly progress. All taken with PotatoCam II. Where the magic happens, one of two. The Read more…
2019-09-16
Final assembly has begun. While waiting for the parts for the Beagle Bone expansion boards I started assembling the IO boards. I figures four at a time was a good idea. Find all the location on the first board and then copy that to the other boards. One component at a time of course. I was wrong. Five hours into this, my solder paste is getting dry, I’m getting anxious from sitting in one spot Read more…
2019-08-19
How do I put this … the latest revision of the board works. The only thing that I haven’t delved into I2C, but everything that I have tried so far works. Completely. Which is actually extremely rewarding, since this has been a slog for a year plus. Some previous posts to catch you up: So much failure More failure Everyone on the fail train Well all of the problems have been addressed. Vic’s Power and Read more…
2019-07-30
I have been playing with the latest revision of the VPSB (Vic’s Power and Serial Board). I was hoping that this would be the last revision, unfortunately the fact that I crewed up the power supply footprint will prevent that from happening. I got the pin order backwards. This is the worst kind of failure since I can’t blame anyone else. Anyways, here’s the potato-cam picture: You can see the power supplies in the Read more…
2018-08-25
Note: This post a bit of a mess because I kept screwing up and being wrong. I am going to leave it this way because I don’t want to have yet another ‘highlight reel’ of an Internet presence. Learning is a messy endeavor, especially when you’re not some brillient mind that “just gets it”. The impetus behind the last revision of the board was current. Specifically current handling. More specifically issues with current handling. Even Read more…
2017-10-08
Second board is complete. Here are a few pictures of the two boards mounted together. That’s total of eight ICTD inputs, eight 4-20mA current loop inputs, and eight digital outputs. Now I need to find something to control! Next update will be about yet another major screw up of mine.