Sealed Tigersharks

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Welcome to the macro FEHB engineering podcast we are your host charming amplifier,

and Parker Dolman.

This is 90 You want to redo that.

Now we'll keep that one. So we use this program called squad cast. And if you don't punch in your name, when you sign into it, it just auto generates a name and Stephens name is charming amplifier, which is quite fitting,

but that was yeah, that was enough to to introduce myself as I am charming amplifier,

you actually should see if you can get that as a Twitter handle

that you know, that's

better than analog EMG.

Well, it's funny, because when we have when we have guests on a lot of times they forget to write their name. And so it'll just come up as something ridiculous, like charming amplify.

Yeah. So we wrapped up our design contest. Last week, we had 29 entries, which is pretty cool. Yeah,

it's actually so I think we mentioned it last week. But that's more than the last contest that we put on the blinking LED. But above and beyond it being more we had actually asked everyone to actually physically build their project this time around. Whereas the last time we just said design and provide your design documentation. So awesome. Thanks to everyone for building all of those entries, which every single one was excellent.

Yep. And so I'd like to thank our judges who judged everything. Charlene ganda, Joe Grande, Sophie Kravitz, and Whitney Merrill, thank you so much without yalls I guess donation of time. We could not have done this. Yeah, thank you very much. And then thank you Mauser for supplying all the prize money. We could not have done it without you either. And the winner list was first place Parker Newman with the room temperature cup holder. And this one, some of the judges, they had some some of them wrote notes down. And my favorite comment about this one was nothing is more worthless than warm beer. Which is what this thing does. Yeah.

Yeah. It's phenomenal.

Second place is Dylan with the clap activated applause machine. Which, for me the like, you have to go watch the video because it is hilarious. Which you can find@hackaday.io Yeah, Dylan did a really good job on the video there. And then third place, sir Dan with the unplug inator. Which was the device that when you powered it on, it would just unplug itself?

And that wasn't that the one that was 3d printed from like neon green PLA? Yes, I think so. Yeah, it looks fantastic.

And then, on the last episode, we picked our favorite, which was Jeffrey Bernath with the mouse controlled mouse controller, which was like a CNC machine that moved a mouse around but took its input from another mouse.

Just got super complicated and yeah, absolutely useless. Yep. So we've already been chatting about potential contests in the future. So you know, keep listening and we'll have some more for you.

Yes. Hit that hit that bell.

Like and Subscribe. Yeah.

So I've been helping my dad out recently. I'm working on like some electronics down in Galveston. And because down there like everything corrodes because it's like, you know, on the ocean, so everything rusted and corroded away. And so I've been working on a pool cleaner for my dad. And this is not designed meaning building of poking cleaner. This is actually fixing one that you know already exists.

Like, like one of those one of those things that you put in the pool and it literally like walked around.

And yeah, it just rolls around and sucks everything up. Yeah. This is a Hayward tiger shark. And I'd love that name Tiger Shark. Because it's like, ah, aggressive and it's seriously a lump of plastic with treads on it and just kind of like slowly moves across the floor of the pool. So it's like, whoever it's like definitely a marketing person who comes up with the names of these, because I want to call it like the Hayward Roly Poly.

Yeah, I'm looking up looking up other ones right now. And I'm seeing excuse me, the Nautilus which that's pretty cool. That's that's the submarine from 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Yeah. I bet you is a barracuda. Here's

another barracuda. They have great names for these. Yeah, Dolphin. I don't know. That's not as cool. A great white pool cleaner.

How do these things actually work? Like what do they actually do? Okay. Okay. So how this one works is it's got tank treads on it that run off a motor, right. And so that's how it moves across the bottom. But then it also has a fan. Well, I guess a blower unit, but it's water. It's almost like an impeller, I guess that basically pushes downward pressure on the machine while also sucking stuff up from underneath it. Oh, so so so if it's climbing a wall, it gets stuck to the wall. Yeah, it will, it will. Basically since the vet or the impeller shoots outwards, upwards from the machine. If it's sitting on the ground, it will allow it to stick to the wall kind of by suction. And so you can clean the or at least vacuum the the sides of the of the pool. But it has like a base station that goes with it. And you're thinking, Oh, the base station probably is like communicating with it and telling it what to do. No, it just sends it 24 volts DC. That's all it does. It's like two pins. And so inside the unit, it's got a a controller unit, a PCB. And it just has a timer pretty much it just like it does this thing. And then this thing and basically it's kind of like a random, well, not random but because it just changes what it's doing. So like it'll move us the blower, reverse all that stuff kind of like a Roomba. When it's in like discovery mode. It's just like kind of just bumping into things. Except that it does that all the time. It doesn't figure out what your pools like. There's no learning for it. It's not gonna map your pool. Yeah, it doesn't map your pool like a Roomba does and sell your data to like, you know, furniture comp the highest bidder. Yeah. So anyways, one of the motor, the motor that moves the treads on the sink, stop working. Right. Okay. And so, um, the cool thing with the Hayward at least, they seem to provide a lot of documentation on like fixing these things, which is good. Some other companies like the one they had previously, basically, it was like a unit and if it broke, you just had to throw it away and eat like an $800 unit. But this this company at least has like PDFs you can download and like take stuff apart and you can actually buy parts.

Oh my gosh, I think I just googled it and there's like exploded drawings. It looks like you could get one of those. Oh, what were those? The manuals you get for motorcycles. And ATVs and stuff. Climbers.

Wasn't a climbers. Clinton. Clinton. Yeah, Clinton manuals.

Okay, maybe that's it? Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, no, I had climber it seal. Why Mar is what I had for the Yeah, but it looks like one of those manuals.

Does that school so I started taking it apart and like, like, my first thing was like, Oh, it was probably just like the linkage that hooks up to the drive belt right then because man, that parts man nylon. And no, that was fine. So I'm like, well, crap, you know, what's actually wrong with this thing. And so I gave the whole unit 1224 volts. And of course, the impeller spins up and not the motor. It's like one big brick of plastic, of course, the picture. And so I'm like, oh, okay, so something's probably not working. And so I'm like, Okay, it's the motor sees that I just, like, grabbed the output shaft and spun it networked. And so I'm like, Okay, how do you get this thing open? While Hayward says this is a sealed non serviceable units. And so you just buy a whole new motor Brock and I'm like, Okay, how much are those 300 Box, still cheaper than a whole new unit. But it's one of those like, and 300 bucks is on the cusp of like, for me at least, like, let's just try to fix it. Yeah, cuz you know, I know how, you know, electronics How hard can it be it's just electrons flowing around. And so I unscrewed it and popped it apart. And when I when they say it was sealed, I was thinking like it was gonna be like, like, like, welded laser weld or something like that laser welded or ultrasonically welded plastic box. No, it actually has a gasket in there. And so I was able to pop the top off. And it looked like what happened basically is the seal failed. And because there was some moisture inside, and at the bottom, there's actually a big bag of desiccant as well. And it was like soaking wet. So it had done his job for quite a while. And so I cleaned up all the corrosion and all the water in there. And, and that's our looking at the circuit board. And what I think happened is it's got a, it's got two different motor controllers on it, one for the impeller, and one for the motor. So I bypassed the circuit board and is put 24 volts right on the motor motor spun up. So like the motors good, so something's wrong with the PCB. And so I started going over it like the motor control, the motor control looked fine. But the capacitor looked a little funky. And it basically looked like the top of it was crushed. I don't know why, or how that happened. Maybe it was in manufacturing or something. And so I'm like, okay, you know, it's probably the capacitor. So I actually powered up the board. But no, the cap was still doing its thing, and it still was holding 24 volts across its poles. So I'm like, Okay, so the capacitor looks a little funky, but it's still working. But the motor controllers was not functioning. And so I scraped some of the was conformal coded, that scraped off the conformal coating to read the part. And when I was scraping it off, it actually revealed as a crack was a crack on the IC. Hmm. So I don't know if the like, like, the capacitor being crushed is related to that or not. But I was able to pull the part number off the ice and said, NXP motor controller part that you can just buy a Mauser for, like $7. So I bought two to replace, and it's a for those who has a Hayward Tigershark that needs this part. It's an MC 33887 P, E, K. And it's like a 48 pin tea SOP part. So it's pretty beefy part. Yeah. And then the capacitor that I'm replacing actually got the same part. It's an Nikki con. Not a fine gold, it's a fine brown cap, five, u H, E one, h two to two and h d six is the one I picked, which matches the same size, all the values. And that's like their higher bend part as well. That cost an extra 50 cents basically. Isn't it like a long life thing? Yeah, it's got like an extra 2k hours or something on it.

It like when we had what was the James Lewis on to talk about? Ceramic caps, it would be really fun now to find somebody who is an expert in electoral politics to come on. Be cool. That would be really great. Because like, man, you look at you look at electrolytic data sheets, and there is gazillions of options out there. And like what do you pick out? Do you find the best one and like what makes a good electrolytic? Or what makes a bad one? Yeah, well, that's Yeah, right. So

I'll I'll take a picture of this but like see how it's like

Oh, geez. Okay, yeah, it looks like the Parker show showing me on the video right now. It it almost looks like it took a hit. Or it's melted yeah can be either that's weird.

Yeah, cuz it's not didn't perforate I wonder if it's melted. Like that's the casing or

that might be the casing that that got really hot for some reason? Yeah, no, it looks like in manufacturing, they put a stripe of permanent marker across the top of the cap. Yeah, I don't know why they would do that.

Maybe that was one of their like QC checks.

Oh, yeah, that yeah, that's not a bad idea. Like if it's there then you know that that board has been inspected or something like that. Something like that. Also, the one that you purchased is a 10,000 Our electrolytic cap which those are the those are like the primo

one. Yes. And it was like this unit will never last that long ever again. But it was like only 50 cents more so like yeah, let's give my dad a good capacitor, right?

Yeah, yeah. Also ready Nicolas on that 30 3600 milliamps. Yeah, it's a beefy cat man.

Yeah, man, it's got beefy motor to power too, right. So the I haven't got the parts and yet the parts show up tomorrow. So we'll have an update if everything still works after I get done with it. The interesting thing was I was like test fitting the seals to put it all back together. And I was talking to my dad about it and business history because he's a chemical engineer. So he knows more about like this stuff than me is because the seal that I put that pulled out, it's like a big O ring. But like a rectangular O ring is ginormous for the gap now. And so my dad said that the chlorine probably made it swell and make it larger. And so because I can't actually like I haven't tried fitting, it will not go back to like the buna

n or

a rubber kind of No, it's a it's a rubber. Okay. It's a solid rubber gasket. And so I can't actually use it like you just can't, it's, it looks like it's an inch longer than it should be. Oh,

are you going to make your own or something,

I'm just going to silicone crap. Just fill the whole gap, I'm going to fill that whole gap. On one side, I'm going to fill like the has like a legit sits in and fill that up with silicone and then the gap that the overhang goes in, I'm going to silicone the crap out of that. And then just squeeze it all together and screw it together and be like, well now it's definitely a sealed unit.

Use the really, really thick stuff.

I'm using silicone type two, because it doesn't use acid. And it's like curing agent. So it will be kinder to the electronics inside that sealed box.

Well and it's going in water that humans will go in, right?

Well, silicone type one would be fine out there cured. But the thing is of us type one, it releases the curing agents that uses is has an acid base and so it would probably be kind of a corrosive environment inside there and not be the motors and electronics Fire won't be happy.

I love how you're ditching a gasket, I really love that

it will fit at all. I tried like an entire afternoon trying to like put it in and then like use an icepick to kind of like poke it in on all the sides. It just won't. It won't fit. Well. And

this is inside the I'm using air quotes sealed unit right. So they're not going to sell you one of those. No,

I already looked I tried to board. Yeah, I tried looking for the circuit board. No one sells a circuit board either. So it's repairing at this point. So I'm just going to glue the whole thing back together. Basically put it I I'm just going to put it into a state where I expected it to be like I didn't expect it to be a gasket in a quote sealed, unquote, unit. So hopefully next week, I have an update on that if it's working or not. It should work. And I mean, there's no reason why it won't. And then

does it make you wonder why that ice cracked it in the first place?

Yeah, I wonder if it has something to do with the heat? Because that capacitor looks like heat damage and maybe it something with the capacitor and that IC didn't like something and yeah,

do you have an ESR meter?

I do not.

Because that would be fun to check. If if that thing had like through the roof ESR

Hmm. Well, can I just check that with the normal? Well, no yet the past current at the see if we have I think we have one at work dot the check it? Yeah. I'm gonna write that down. So I don't forget that. Check.

They have those. They're probably not like ridiculously accurate, but they'll tell you, you know, a general good, bad kind of thing. But I'm holding one of these units up by bought off of Amazon, where you just press a button and it automatically test and it'll show you ESR Well, that's

a different one than you had at the fab.

Yeah, it came with a little acrylic case. They're nice.

And then so this is a project that's going to be going it's going to be happening down the road like this winter. But this in the same vein of like doing projects down the Galveston for my parents, they have a golf cart down there. And it's a EasyGO TFT model I can't remember the year I think it's like 2002 or 2006 something like that. But it first of all it needs to like be taken all apart because all rusted to crap now. Like everything down there. If it's not galvanized, it's like rusted immediately. But we're going to upgrade it to 48 volts from 36 volts. So basically it's going to be good Hello, Pepin it step is slow, slow right now, because the batteries are old. And it's got a lot of miles on it. So we're going to be upgrading that. And I'll document like the process of upgrading it like how do you? Like, what do you have to replace to do this, because there's a lot of like, online forums for like golf carts and upgrading them and stuff. But I don't know, it's so weird. I always have this problem of like, when I start going to other like, communities, I guess, and trying to learn how to do stuff myself, like upgrading a golf cart to 48 volts, right? There's, there's a lot of tribal knowledge that people won't just write down for you. Like, they're like, Oh, you need to call or, you know, send an email to this guy. And he'll tell you, it's like, just have it on the website, then at that point, right. It's not like, you're he's not just trying to sell you something, though they all are. That's the thing, they all are trying to sell you something. And almost all the communities are like that is the only one that comes to mind. That's there's two that are not like that. The electric electronics community is not like that. And the Jeep community is not like that. Like, both of those are so willing to help you out and like, like, give you part numbers and stuff where like everyone else is just like, now, we're not gonna tell you what part number you need to switch to this breaks. Now,

there's a third one Stack Exchange. Stock Exchange. Yes, those people are unbelievably helpful.

Yes, yeah. But stock exchange is kind of like a it's like a community of communities, I guess.

It's still people taking time out of their day to read my crappy code and be like, this is awful. Here's how to fix it. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Those are the unsung heroes of the internet.

You know, I think I think people do it, because at one point in time, or anywhere that, but I shouldn't even say that, like, I still I've met like professional programmers, or developers that that still frequent their when they have a question about like how something needs to be accomplished, you know, it's just a wealth of knowledge. Yeah.

And I mean, that's why I've been kind of doing with the, with the wagoneer is all the stuff I've been doing. I've been posting everything in one spot. And I think that's kind of where we kind of want to do this like that. You want to buy a blank proponent. That's actually a subject we didn't write down here. And I want to talk about, so that was great. And jump right into it. Yeah, yeah. Great. Um, before we get to your stuff, is whatever we want to name it.

Oh, cheese. You put me on the spot here. Yeah. Well, okay, so let's, let's back up real quick. So we'll recap. People didn't hear that episode. So we came up with an idea that was called. So you want to pick up Blah, blah, blah, whatever XYZ. And it's basically a it's basically a website or a database or a knowledge base, that engineers and designers and hobbyists can access and get good information about things that they're looking to implement in their projects or designs. And it's not going to tell you how to design something, it may not even tell you like design practices. But it will tell you, if you want to pick a resistor, here's the different types of resistors. And here's what makes them special. And here's the things you need to pay attention to. And here's the when you see this weird symbol on a datasheet. That's a Greek letter. And the datasheet just assumes you know what that means. This thing tells you what that means, like in clearly written English, or whatever language but so like, we came up with this idea, and actually got a little bit of traction, some people really kind of got into it. So one of the gentlemen that the at macro fab decided to take on kind of being a moderator, right?

Chris Mullins at macro fab is going to be taking over kind of like the implementation of it. And so he wants to use a program called discourse, which is kind of like a Wikipedia slash community thing. So like, you can have like chats, you can have almost kind of like a forum set up all kind of rolled into this one kind of program. And so we're at the point now where we were like, Okay, we need to pick a name so we can have a a.com or whatever.

And how about how about Wiki electronics.com

Wiki like electronics wiki? Either or Forex. have

probably. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it would be great to extend it beyond electronics, but then we're just talking about like having Wikipedia at that point. But for instance, the other day, I was purchasing some aluminum. And I saw that I could purchase 6061, and a temper that was t 6511. And I generally know T six temper on aluminum, but I was like, What's t 6511. So I had to start Googling, like, what makes t 6511. Different than te six. And you can get a lot of that information and things like the machinist handbook. But I don't have that. So you know, it would be really cool to just be like, go to the aluminum page and then have a description of tempers that aluminum has. And and this is coming purely out of electrical engineering ignorance on metallurgy, it's probably not as simple as being able to just say, pick your aluminum. And here's your temper, sort of the way that McMaster presents it to you if you go to their website. But but that's in general, what I'm describing is sort of the idea of that what we have is like, oh, I want XYZ and it has some characteristic that I don't know about. Is there a place a database I can go to and learn about what is that thing I don't know about?

Learn to electron, actually. So electronics aren't wiki anything electronics.is Not available?

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But it's Wiki electronics.com.

Wiki electronics? Which I like taking?

Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah,

they're all that's not.

Yeah. I don't know if we want to.net.io.

Because then you can do you know, that

was to hipster for us. I think. I don't think we're hipster enough to have a.io.

Because you can do electronics, but drop all the vowels?

No, no,

that was a we. What? Tom?

Yeah,

that is not that is available, we can get that.com you actually get that thought I Oh,

well. Okay. So let's, let's give it a little bit of time and give some people the ability to post in our Slack channel. some better examples of Yeah, jump in our Slack channel. And if you have an idea for this, because that's where

we're stuck right now. Because we need to build start building out the platform at this point. Yep. So we're kind of stuck at like, we need a name. So we,

we really haven't gone over? I mean, what what Mark and I are talking about now is pretty much you're hearing what we're talking about. What I mean by that is like, we haven't spoken a lot about this in the last few weeks since we came up with the idea. So we're not we're jiving ideas right now. So do you want to do it sort of like a wiki where somebody can get on and write about resistors and then post it or something like that. So

that's what I'm looking at, I'm looking at to be as community driven as possible. And especially, I was looking into discourse feels like the right platform to because if someone's like, hey, what about this thing? And then it can be kind of like actually how stackexchange works, because you can actually post questions and stuff, and people can answer them as well.

Okay, so I like the idea of having like, A, I'll keep on the resistor, I think, like have a resistor page or a resistor repository. And like, there can be subcategories in that. But like, there's, if you want to know about resistors, you go there, and it tells you everything. And then maybe there can be chat about that, or comments and things like that. But it would be nice to have it broken down into categories, and you just click where you want to go and you're there.

And to reiterate, this isn't supposed to be like a wikipedia.com replacement.

Right, either because like that would be like if you type in resistor, you'll know the history of resistors. You'll know what they are on a theoretical level. And that sounds like no, this is more of a if you need to pick a resistor, what do you need to look for? Exactly? The specification. So So here's it. Here's another example. Let's say you go to Mouser or DigiKey, and you click on resistors. You just click there and then and then pops up that huge list of all the little things that you can filter down. Let's say you're new to the game and you don't know what barely any of those categories are or there's pulldown list or whatever. You could go to this page and it would say like, basically this pulldown list means this, you know, this is a metal film resistor metal film resistors are made. Maybe they don't even talk about how They're made but like metal film resistors are good for X and carbon film are good for why, you know that kind of Yeah. But like, furniture be like books worth of information. It's just like really straightforward stuff, huh? Yeah. Or here's another good one, like when you when you go to an op amp datasheet, and it gives you a noise figure in, but nano volts per square root of frequency, you know, when the first time you see that you're like, What the hell does that mean? You know, so a quick definition of like, here is what that what that figure will tell you, and why it might matter to you or might not, or input bias current offset? Like, what does that mean to a person who just knows, oh, I want an inverting op amp configuration. And I want to pick an op amp. And on top of that may be like, here's a couple examples of Jelly Bean, Joe Schmoe part numbers for an op amp, like if you're looking for just an all around, okay, op amp for most, most situations, here's five example part numbers. And, you know, you can't go wrong with these. But if you're trying to do something special, then you need to dig deeper than these five.

Like, it can't also same thing with like, BJTs. Like, I need to, like use it be like, Okay, two n 33904. Or like, have a SMT equivalent to that same thing with like, diodes and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, like a one n for n for A or A one n 4007 or something. What is that for the SMT? WS one and 4007? You know, like that.

Like, examples like that would be really useful as well for beginners.

Exactly. It but but but above and beyond that, it's not even just about beginners. This is like, I need a here. How about the what do they call them? thyristors or No, no, a mov. mov metal oxide faster? Yep. I've dealt with them a few times in the past. But mainly, I've just dealt with them as in like, I've soldered them because a customer required them or something like that. I haven't built them into a lot of designs. If I want a metal oxide varistor in a design, what do I need to care about in that? Right? If you asked me right now I would. I'd say give me a moment. I have to go research them. Where do I go research? Basically, all the research I would do about mov VHS I wish it could be in one spot. And we're talking about taking a three hours of Google searching and putting it into one spot.

one spot. Yep.

So we've talked about this a lot. I think people get the point.

Yeah,

I think so. So we need a name. Yeah, come on. Yeah, help us come up with a name for this entire thing. Because hopefully, this could become something pretty big and pretty, you know, well known. So I would like it to have like a name that is something that's easy to remember something that's easy to like, someone says like, oh, I need to know about XYZ and someone's like, well just go to bla bla bla website, and it'll tell you right there. So yep. It'll be a resource for senior engineers and beginners.

Cool. Okay. Sorry for that diversion. So Steven, what do you been up to?

I've been cranking on thinking about names. Well, yeah, no, I have not been doing that. Not at all. So I've been moving on more with the fermentation controller project. So I got the enclosure in for that. And mainly I purchased the enclosure just to kind of get the ball rolling. I don't need it at this moment. But I wanted to build it and make sure it's good. Because I am going to be building two of these. So I only purchased one of the enclosures. I wanted to make sure everything was kosher with it. I like it. So I am going to purchase a second one here for Parker's version, just so I can get ahead of the game on that. I also picked up a DLA a digital logic analyzer. I didn't have one because I don't do see intensive DLA stuff.

Yeah, we disagree on on. This is like for me, DLA is like the most important tool for an electronics engineer.

And your thing is an oscilloscope. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Scope before the DLA exam, the opposite. Sure. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A DLA is just like, I don't know, it's a scope that only does two things, you know, zero and one.

Yeah, I mean, it's a digital scope.

Well, I've lasted this long without a delay. So yeah. But in this situation, I'm learning effectively how to work with AD AD parallel code, and writing to a graphics display. And I've done Generally got things sort of working, I say, sort of because like, I tell the screen to do something, and it kind of does that. I'm telling it basically, I'm telling it to write a single pixel on the screen. And it's writing various patterns of eight pixels. And anytime you see the number eight it like, that's, that's a key indicator, right? Yeah. that something's up. So I ended up purchasing a DLA and I built a In fact, I'm gonna hold it up so Parker can see it, because I love I love this craftsman ship. Second. Yeah, so I built the header board with a boatload of jumpers on the back of it. Yeah, I can plug in my dev board into this header board, I can plug my screen into it and the DLA so I can basically communicate with the screen and still spit, sniff all the signals with the DLA. And so the deal I picked up is a kinked logic analyzer, the La 2016. I got it off of Amazon, does

it make an la 2019, not newer model.

They actually make like eight different models. So I ended up going with this one because it's 16 channel. And since I was doing at at parallel, I need 13 channels at once. And this is a 200 megahertz for the full 16 channels. And that's way faster than I need. But that will I purchase towards the future in case I ever need something like that. And it'll it'll do up to like a giga sample or something like that. If you're running over USB three, so it has its own onboard memory. But as soon as it gets past that it will start stealing your computer memory, which which I think that that's pretty cute. You know, it works. It's fun. But for what I'm doing, I mean, I'm looking at like, I don't know, not very much code, tiny snippet, little snippets. So I can use the onboard memory on this thing. But so far, it's man, I open the box, I plugged it in, and I was sniffing signals in like five minutes. This thing was pretty awesome. And back at macro fab, we had a saili, we had one of the mid range ones. And those things are really awesome. Those are, man, they're pretty awesome. But I didn't want to put 500 bucks into DOA. So especially with what I'm doing, because I mean, we're talking about parallel code and some like chip selects and stuff. I'm not looking at USB signals at high speed and stuff. So

this is more than plenty for what I'm

so did you figure out the issues yet?

Yes, and no. So what's interesting is I set up this this analyzer such that it's actually reading and decoding. So everything that I'm sending the screen is actually being sent properly. There is some timing issues. So I need to incorporate some delays into the code in order to make sure that everything is clean. But that really isn't the issue here. So I've got I've got some code that basically initialize the screen, and then it tells the very top left pixel to turn on and off once a second. And that is totally functioning. But there are other pixels that are also turning on. And I don't know why, like I still have not figured out why there are other pixels, like okay, I shouldn't even say that the other pixels are not turning on and off once a second, they just turned on. And that's it. But they're all basically the code I want it to do is doing it. But there's extra artifacts in there. And I have not figured out yet why those are also being incorporated. So like I tell it to draw a sine wave, it draws a sine wave with other pixels surrounding the sine wave. And I don't like I still haven't decoded it yet. It's not noise or anything. It might be, I'm getting to the point where I'm really starting to scratch my head here where I'm like, Man, this code is like, like, if I tell it to draw a circle, it draws a circle with a bunch of crap around it.

It's, it's weird. And so like, even if I even if I tell it to write a singular pixel, and then just go into an infinite loop, it will write that pixel but it also write three or four more. And then sometimes occasionally, it'll screw up and it'll write like a pound sign somewhere in the screen. Or it'll write the, you know, the at symbol or some somewhere on the screen. So it's like picking up extra information somewhere. And I think it's a timing thing, but I just I still haven't figured that out. And one of the reasons why, I mean, I haven't dumped a ton of time into it. But the datasheet for this LCD screen is Well, there's two days data sheets, there's a datasheet for the screen itself, which is pretty minimal. And then there's a datasheet for the screen controller. And that's pretty intense. And it's not really well done. In my opinion. It's confusing. There's not, not a lot of information on like, the actual write or read sequence on things and

their current universal initializations. Not correct. It could be

it. Yeah, it could be the data sheets really confusing, because it has like a whole bunch of it assumes that you know, a lot of things about LCD screens, and I know virtually nothing about LCD screens. Man, I wish there was a Wikipedia where I could learn things about LCD screens. No, no, but there's a lot of things where it's like, a set this bit if you want this thing to happen, and I don't know what that thing is. So I'm still in that discovery phase, where I'm like, Oh, well, I'll set that bit and see if something changes, you know. I'm, I'm struggling through it right now. And one of the biggest problems and I don't know if it's a problem, but I'm using example code that someone else wrote. And the problem is like, I got lured in because I, I basically ported the code over to STM fired it up. And it functioned, you know, a write a circle, and it draws a circle, but it doesn't really, it screwed up, there's some more crap in there. So it's like, do I start from scratch and write my own code and learn the datasheet? Top to bottom or die? Keep trying to chug through and figure out what's wrong with someone else's code? That's a dilemma that I'm sure a lot of other people have been in, right? We're like, I don't know. Like, I've already put a bunch of hours into it. So I don't want to start over. Yeah, we're going through, a lot of the other project is going well. So I'm figuring like, you know what, I'll spend most of my time just trying to get the damn screen to work.

I mean, with your DLA you should be able to pick up if it's picking up any noise as well. I will fix the timing issue first.

Yeah, the timing issue is the big thing. It's, I can tell you, it's not I don't see noise on the on the DLA. The one thing is like with ADHD parallel, you there's like command bits, and there's address bits effectively, you can say like, I'm commanding you that I'm going to write to this location. And then you can then the next word is basically I'm this is the data I'm writing to that. And so there's there's Read and Write pins that you that you strobe in order to actually push data. And I can see on my DLA that when my STM says right XYZ hex code, it's actually doing that. And the timing is within General ranges. That that is that is okay. I don't know if I'm writing consecutively too quickly, I'd have to dig to the datasheet. deeper on that. I think some of the bigger issues is, some of the times you have to read back from the screen. And I don't know what I should be reading. Like, I get things back. And they're different than when I'm reading. But the datasheet is so cryptic that I'm like, I got Oxo three. Okay, great. What does that mean? I don't know. Should I have gotten that? I don't, I haven't decoded the datasheet enough yet. So basically, what the the, the example code that I have is, has a couple of layers of abstractions, there's functions that are like, right pixel, well, right pixel has like four or five functions inside of right pixel. And then each one of those has command and memory rights within those. So like, I started off with, like, oh, are my top level functions working properly and I've gotten through that those are so I'm in the second layer where it's like, those are also working properly. So now I'm having to go down to like, the very low level stuff when it's writing commands and writing definitions and things is all of that right? So I'm at that level. So hopefully, hopefully this weekend I will have a good solid Saturday that I can just drop hours into

because I know it's just going to eat a ton of hours.

Oh yeah, that's tough always does because it's the first time Have you ever done something like that?

Yeah. And the thing is the PCB I mean, it's going to be so easy on this one because there's not a lot going on in this design so I'm fine with pushing that off because I can probably knock the PCB out in like a day and a half or two or something like that. So I and all the rest of the stuff like the the part sourcing and the part selection, I knocked that out in like a day it actually I thought it was going to take way longer but I just crushed it so I'm fine with spending a lot of time on this because like you said I this is sort of my first time learning all of this in to this level of depth, so I want to do it right and try to like actually make something reasonable out of it.

Then the one other thing, I've mentioned previously, that there was issues with the power cycling, where it would just like, basically be a dead short, if I turned my power supply on, it's still doing that. I don't know why. But I mean, I have a very repeatable system of turning the screen on, which involves turning my power supply on unplugging the screen power, and then plugging it back in and it fires up. So effectively if the power supply is, you know, ramps up. And then I apply power to the screen, it works out fine. So I'm just going to do a time circuit in, in in the box that basically the the micro will fire up, it'll run through its initialization, wait a few seconds, and then apply power to the screen. So I'm just going to use the micro as like a screen controller.

So how many of these have you bought screens? One, one? Yeah, I would buy a second one. And see if it has all these issues. You know,

I need to buy a second one anyway, because there's going to be one going in yours. So I'll do that. Yeah, I need to just buy two of everything now, because I've made decisions on everything that is going to go in it. So that's a good idea. I'll do that. And yeah, maybe I got a bum unit you never know. Never know. Yep. And that would be funny because then I'd be like, Wow, I wish I had those 20 hours back.

That reminds me of I think I've told this story before, but in labs in college, where you'll be scratching your head and why stuffs not working. It's because your breadboard is bad. Oh, or like or like the cable that you're using to connect to your oscilloscope has a short minute or a break in it. I think that's the my sophomore year. My parents asked me if there was anything I needed for school and like you need a new computer or whatever. I'm like breadboard. breadboard and cables, please.

Hey, that's great. They're like 20 bucks.

You got it? Exactly. Yeah. Went over the Fry's Electronics and bought a bunch of cables and, and a fancy breadboard.

I remember struggling in a lab once with with my lab partner and we're just like God, why can't we get anything to look like what the professor says it should look like. And, and one of the TAs can overlook you. It's probably the parasitics in the in the breadboard. And I'm like, Would you like to explain that to us? Or would you like to explain like, we should maybe account for that or think about it? You know, it's just like, Oh, God, what the hell like they just want you to struggle. They want it to be harder. Yeah.

It's like I've been there before them struggle. I actually

had multiple TAs, I'm talking more than one start off a lab with being like, Please don't go to grad school. And that's my story. All right. You want to head on off to the RFO the rapid fire opinions.

Yeah, probably change that name. Eventually.

We've done this 190 times, man, I'm not going to change it now.

Okay, I found a cool one, actually, is the Hackaday article on discrete Pong, which is an entire Pong game made with discrete components. And we've actually talked about this project back in episode round box. No, no, this one is like a Manhattan style. Full on Pong game made transistor level Pong game, which is freaking cool. So

yes, it is. You're right. It is Manhattan style. So it's just a copper ground plane and everything soldered on top of it.

Yeah, the the person who made it. And you know, they're criminally insane for doing this. There is a lot of parts on it. But what was cool was the last time we visited this project, it was sort of a Eevee, blog, forum post kind of thing, where there was a little bit of information. Well, it has significantly grown since then. And there's a full write up in a PDF form. On the website, we'll post the link to this. It's Glenn's stuff.com If you want to like his website name, it's great. Ya know, he gets right to the point. But what's super cool about it is like all of the schematics, they're no longer hand drawn, which they were originally just like hand drawn pictures. They're really fantastically done. And they're, they're, they're well drawn. Let's just put it that way. Like they're very easy to read.

We got timing diagram for the video display. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's all there. It's really good stuff and it's fully to player it does. It does the scorekeeping, there's the acceleration stuff. There's the sound stuff, there's the video generation. So if you want to learn and about all the really low level stuff. Go check that out. Also, what's really cool is I was totally looking at it today at lunch. There's a handful of discrete level op amps that are in there. They didn't even make offense like didn't even put up at by season, they're just decided to go transistor level op amps were just freaking cool. I love it. There's one that's just, if you if you look at it, it looks confusing at first and then you realize there's a 20k resistor that goes into it. And there's a 20k from the output that goes back into it. It's a negative one. Gain, op amp, basically, converter, you just made an inverter op amp was pretty freakin cool.

Also, freaking awesome for doing Manhattan style, like across the entire thing. It's gorgeous.

It's got like, not wire wrap, but a wire lacing for like the wiring harnesses. Yeah, it looks nice. Yeah,

it's really nice. I'd love to see that one day, I'd love to actually play on it and see,

I think it'd be really cool if he made it into like, a table and like epoxy filled the whole

thing. Oh, make a coffee table out of it. Yeah, that would be cool. Also, go check out the last page. I know, it's like the least sexy out of all of them. Not that really any of this is people. But yeah, on the schematic PDF, there's some really good, some really cool power supply schematics on there. So they're all discrete level regulation in the power supplies, but there's multiple power supply rails, and they all control each other. So they all you know, come up together and things like that. And there's like activation signals. It's all transistor based. So if that's your thing, and you you ever wanted to make regulated power supplies, using just transistors, like these are good references and resources for it.

And actually, speaking about transistors, I got an

I don't think it was an email, I think it was on Facebook today. But SparkFun just released, what they called the Field Guide to transistors. I saw that today. And it's really cool. The wall poster for BJT transistors. It's basically like, you know, those infographics that became popular, it's something similar to that where it's just like kind of cute drawings of BJT transistors that are sort of, you know, those old, I think they were called marble works where you could like connect together plastic tubes and put sand marbles down like mazes and things like that. Basically, SparkFun released a wall poster that generally shows the operation of BJT transistors with like falling metal balls, which is actually kind of cool, like balls and gears and stuff. They also have like a little bit of the history of transistors and some pin outs and stuff. And I just thought that was something cool to check out. If you go to SparkFun, you can actually give your, your email to them, and they'll send you a PDF copy of it, it's really well done. And on top of that they have a tutorial for transistors, where it's like a whole webpage that shows the operation of transistor. So if you are confused by them and want to be more confused by them, then you can go read them.

I remember I remember that, like I went our my professor gave us like a brief like, you know, one lecture over like transistors, yeah. And I'm like, that's a little confusing. So I went to his office hours and left more confused.

You really wish transistors were ideal, and they're just not.

They're not there. And basically, what took me to actually figure that out is I went into the lab, grabbed a whole bunch of components and just made a simple circuit and just like looked at I basically just had the oscilloscope up with like my input signal and my delay up you had an oscilloscope No, this is analog because I'm trying to figure out the analog crap because I'm like, Oh yeah, you can just slam the bass and then operates off and on right, but I wanted to go betweens. You have all the electrons in there, or none of the electrons depends.

So the you know, the four quadrants of like saturation and cut off and all that jazz and stuff, like being able to remember and pull that stuff from memory is kind of hard, you know, with transistors, but but really like being able to tell someone how a transistor works. You can't just be like, Oh, this is how it works. You have to be like well sit down, you know, get a meal, get a drink. We're going to be talking for a while. So yeah, check out the Field Guide to transistors by SparkFun. It's actually really nice. I kind of want to print it out and get it up put on my wall

NPN means the arrow on the schematic is not pointing in

on there I thought it was cute. They did some electrical engineering jokes on the I'm gonna kill this now. on their Facebook posts, they had some quotes from Mr. Ohm himself and somebody else whatever I don't I'm butchering this nevermind, don't forget I'm saying this. Let's move on to the next one.

Okay, next one is man your manufacturing reports.com. And this is a website done by Dan Heiser is just Heinz ich hydrous. Well, close. Close enough. And the cool thing is actually, we're gonna have Dan on the podcast next week, I think, yeah. So he can actually tell us how to pronounce his last name. That's actually the only reason he's coming on the podcast. He's gonna be talking

to say that. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

And the tagline for this is unbiased reviews of PCB manufacturer. So basically, he has gone through and on its own dime, I think put together reports from a bunch of popular PCB like we can get PCBs made for hobbyist slash, like low volume stuff. So I got like, PCBWay OSHPark.

J. shins and for to you.

Yeah. And so I would go check that out and see if that's a useful resource for people. The reviews seem to be pretty in depth, like he has like a PCB sends out. And he actually, like, analyzes how well it was made, and that kind of

stuff. Yeah, and then gives a score on on each one of these manufacturers. And some of the things get the things that are scored are like ordering fulfillment, customer support, copper quality, things of that sort. So he sends the same files to them and then sees what he gets back. Hmm. Pretty cool.

Yeah. So now we're gonna move on the pocket because I want to know more about, like, how he came up with these metrics.

Yeah, and how he scores them? Yes. Like, there was a number attached to them. Like yeah,

what does ordering 7.2 Like, how do you derive 7.2

Right, right. Yeah. Also, some of them do have perfect 10s So how do you get a perfect 10? Yes. Oh, yeah. Tune in next week for that.

And then our next topic is this we were talking about these in our Slack channel it their way go wire level nuts. And so a wire nut is like those little hat things that you put on the end of wires and twist them together, and then it falls apart and electrocute you. So I discovered these about a couple years ago and I've been using them in interior automotive applications. So like, like you need 12 volts for some gauges and aftermarket stuff. It's a really easy way to splice stuff in and and they're a lot smaller more compact and like a busbar and you don't have to like on a bus bar. Like you know, because it's all screwed in. You had to put like a wire end on it like he had to put like a ring terminal on your wire this you just stick the wire in and it's fine. So it's thinking about like a wire nut where you twist everything together but instead of that each wire has its own hole and it's a lever that you flip up stick the wire in and slam it shut

so the the the lever is actually like a cam inside that like squishes into the wire

right well actually the lever open opens up it pushes a piece of metal down that's a spring Oh okay. So it's like a spirit it's basically springs and opens up a basically like a clan like a jaw. Yeah, like it opens up a jaw

so so it's kind of like the the terminal blocks that have that little orange plunger at the front that you push down with a screwdriver and then you can shove your wire in but instead of the plunger it's a lever lever

yeah yeah exactly like that. And while I'm getting out with this is the there's a video that we found a basically them dumping like 120 amps into one of these wire conductors. And it just doesn't fail

the wire jacket and melts before that. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

So yeah, I thought that was a interesting video. I always enjoy watching stuff like critically fail and that that was was a good one.

where's a good place to get these things? The wagon?

I usually get them on Amazon. I don't know if they're legit or not. But like you can get like 40 of them for likes. 17 bucks on Amazon, the five wire because I like they come in different widths of how many wires they can hook up. But apparently they're like rated for like, you can use them in your wall. Like if you're if you have like us a socket box and you're like teen off or something like that. But I've never used them for that. I use them for like low voltage automotive stuff.

Well, yeah, if they can handle 120 amps, I think they Yeah, they could probably handle mains, right? Yeah. forgot what I was gonna say. Yeah, well, that's the

yep, I recommend for people who are doing automotive stuff because it's so nice. I will only thing I wish is they were like, they had mounting tabs. Right now, they do sell stuff like some mounting tab stuff for like DIN rail applications. But, I mean, you don't have DIN rail in your car.

Wait, you don't have DIN rail in your car yet. You sound like the kind of guy that have DIN rail in your

glove box and it's a full on PLC in there. No, um, so what I do is I 3d print, I can go to the Thingiverse and you can look up like, go to two or whatever it is. And you can like download a bunch of like Mount mounting options. So I I print 3d print them and then glue. You know, we're super glue, glue the Waldo connectors to it. And then that way you can have it mounted somewhere with screws.

Do they cut so they come in different configurations of like 234 or five? Connections basically poles? Yeah, but do they come in different wire gauge sizes? Or is there like one size fits all or?

It's kind of one size fits all?

Got it? So what like 22 to 12 gauge or something like that? Maybe not 12 But

I think it goes up to 12 Yeah,

does it Okay, cool. Yeah, some of them do. Yeah, so it's perfectly automotive.

Yep. And then they also have a PCB mount versions of the suit that like huge solder on your PCB. Oh, no, like, that's cool. Yeah, we were looking at those in the Slack channel. Do

they are are those available on Mauser or any of the big guys? I think so. I would love to check that out. Because that's kind of cool, actually. Yeah, you

can use it in your fermentation box.

Geez, more stuff to design. Yeah.

Let's see this Mauser carry.

I just looked up Lego on Mauser and I don't think so. I don't see anything. If Mazur doesn't carry it I don't buy it. That's not true Well, cool. Yeah, I think that that'll wrap this podcast up. So that was the macro fab engineering podcast we were your host charming amplifier.

And Parker Dolman take it easy later everyone thank you yes, you our listener for downloading our show if you have a cool idea project or charming amplifier, let Steven and I know Tweet us at Mac fab at Longhorn engineer or at analog NG. I wonder if Steven is going to get that new twitter handle I even forgot what it was. Oh, yeah. At charming amplifier. Emails that podcast@maximum.com. Also check out our Slack channel where we talk about waco wire level nuts all the time. If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, click that subscribe button. That way you get the latest episode right when it releases and please review us wherever you listen. I think you can only review us on iTunes though. It helps the show stay visible and helps new listeners find us. Then I'm going to do the world's longest ad read Josh