CLP6C-FKB, Fidget Spinners, LED, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, PD Buddy Sink, Peratech, Pinball, Podcast, SP-200-10, Synth, USB Type-C, ValBal, Worlds Heaviest Weight, WS2801, Z-Mouse

Podcast

Parker Dillmann | June 16, 2017

MEP EP#72: Fire Sticks

Podcast Notes

The next Hardware and Electronics Engineering Meetup page is live and will be on June 28th. Please RSVP if you plan on attending!
The Stanford ValBal launched again with avionics components from MacroFab! You can see a live video on our Facebook page from the June 15th launch, and as always, track it with this site. Also check out episode 64 of the MEP where we have Sasha Maldonado and Paige Brown of the Standford Student Space Initiative!
Parker
- Tested a new serial LED board for the pinball platform
  - CLP6C-FKB LED
  - WS2801
  - Draws 60mA LED
  - 8mA standby current
  - Laser the V-scored PCBs apart
- Finishing up writing the last of the EFM8 articles that Parker started last October
Stephen
- Synth works but doesn’t.
  - Not getting ACF, something isn’t biased just right
  - Stephen will rip out some strip board and create an off board filter
  - Final version will have two envelopes
  - The current envelope works but Stephen doesn’t like it
- Mutable Instruments Shruthi 1 and a Video of how it sounds.
Pick Of the Week (POW)
- PD Buddy Sink : USB Power Delivery for everyone – Hackaday.io Projects
  - Built by Clayton Hobbs
  - Smart power jack that plugs into Power Delivery enabled power sources
  - Tell it what voltage and current you need and it talks to the to any USB PD power supply to get you the juice
- Internet of Fidget Spinners – HackADay
  - Built by Matthias
  - ESP8285 for communication
  - Accelerometer to measure wobble and an optical switch to measure the rotation speed
  - POV – persistence of vision for graphics
  - Project Page
Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO)
- Worlds Heaviest Weight – Veritasium
  - How do you measure big forces accurately? Rocket Engines that produce 33 million netwons of force.
  - Calibrating huge force transducer with the world’s heaviest weight!
  - Have to take in account the air displaced by the weights.
  - Does the Moon affect it?
- Peratech wins place in most advanced gaming mouse – Electronics Weekly
  - First mouse with Force -Sensitive Analog buttons.
  - Swiftpoint-z-mouse
    - Won three CES 2017 innovation awards
    - Includes an accelerometer and a gyroscope
  - SP-200-10 Sensor
    - QTC® SP Sensors are pressure sensitive membrane switches.
    - Made with Elastomers dubbed ‘quantum tunneling composites’ (QTCs)
- LG Display Quality Assurance Report – Parker’s new monitor packaging
  - Test report for Parker’s new monitor.

Are you interested in seeing a blog series for the synth we’re working on? Let us know!

Figure 1: Panelized Serial RGB LED modules for pinball machines.

Figure 2: Lasering out the Panelized LED modules into stripes to reduce wiring under the playfield.

Figure 3: Testing the LEDs with the PinHeck Pinball Controller.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

About The Hosts

Parker Dillmann is MacroFab's Co-Founder, and Lead ECE with backgrounds in Embedded System Design, and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. He also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas.

Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.