episode 45: glucometer, fuel consumption and vacuum cleaner
CBA Podcast
(Michai is too lazy to make shownotes now, check again later. :-)
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episode 44: DMX512, ground reference and LED decoration stuff
CBA Podcast
Hi, and an extremely good 2021 to all of you.
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episode 43: DMM probes, laundry fix and light-hangout
CBA Podcast
Prepare yourself for epic or less epic talk about a mains test jig that proved very useful, some awesome Probe Master DMM probes well worth the money, and both me and occasional cohost Domen fixing household stuff, and the subtle psychology of starting a repair.
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episode 42: exploding cap, 3D-printing and planet decoration
CBA Podcast
The thrilling tale of 4 months of doing pretty much nothing interesting is coming to a podcast near you today!
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episode 41: oversized test-jig, spiky LED ball and knowing your equipment
CBA Podcast
In this time of global turmoil, the CBA Podcast once again proves to be your one-stop source of distraction and meh-grade information.
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episode 40: xmas smoothness, deadlifts and resistive load
CBA Podcast
Welcome to the first and so far best episode of 2020, the third year of this podcast. Thanks for sticking around and making this happen, or alternatively, thanks for just tuning in - hope you like it.
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episode 39: crossing borders, intensity curves and anti-theft socks
CBA Podcast
Another mixed bag as usual. 2 meetups with the CBA Quality Team for some Quality Time.
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episode 38: LEDstrip fun, rand, and voltage drops
CBA Podcast
Hi there! Thanks for tuning in (or reading this text and then deciding not to tune in at all). Another episode with a mixed bag of semi-interesting topics. Thanks for the feedback - the inter-segment jingle will be a bit less loud from now on. Poor ears. We start off by counting pass & fail on this year's new year's resolutions, followed by mentioning a small inline PCB for driving LED-strips and so on. The PCB was used for 2 light effects so far - links to videos of both are given below. Ran into a "gotcha" when dealing with LED-effects: intelligent LEDs stuck in "full brightness"...
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episode 37: past events, lasercutting and fear of breaking the rope
CBA Podcast
You thought that we finally learned from our mistakes and abandoned this podcast, and you thought wrong. Once again it's time to lower your standards, and enjoy a new episode of the CBA Podcast. We start with some PCB failures and flaws, followed by a very brief review of the Hackalot lasercutter & vinylcutter workshop. We attended T-DOSE, which is a Dutch open source event hosted in Eindhoven. Then for something slightly out of the ordinary, we talk about back-of-envelope calculations about whether a climbing-rope can actually break if I fall. (Spoiler alert: it cannot.) Some...
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episode 36: triple screw-up, LED lamp biopsy and bodyfat measurement
CBA Podcast
After more than 1 month of laziness, let's kickstart this episode with some failures and apologies. Next up is a summary of Hackalot's part in the Open Hackerspace Day 2019, and a teardown of a cheap and somewhat boring Aldi 230 Vac LED lamp. Finally, some very-voodoo and somewhat-less-voodoo methods of measuring the percentage of bodyfat in humans are briefly discussed.
info_outlineHi, and an extremely good 2021 to all of you.
We start off this brand new year talking about some totally unrelated and slightly more related new year's resolutions,
a miniscule car fix, and glueing with a 3D printing pen. All in not much more detail than stated here.
Continuing on last episode's VGA generator board, I added a DMX512 interface as suggested by some people - thank you for
the idea. I found Q Light Controller Plus (qlcplus) a nice and so far solid piece of software for controlling DMX devices
from a laptop + USB/RS485 converter cable.
A potential issue (or at least in my head) when making interlinked devices like these, is potentially different ground-potentials
depending on which power outlets you use to power networked your device. (See what I did there?) We talk a bit about how to guesstimate
the possible magnitude of this difference.
Just for fun I made an xmas LED star-shaped decoration using an existing DIY LED driver board. Reuse everything, recycle success.
Also, made a modular transparant acrylic home LED decoration: shine light into the edge of an engraved piece of acrylic. Of course
there was failure, this time in the form of hygroscopic LEDs + laziness + oven = damage.
Finally, I made a small power switch PCB, to be placed in between USB power source and USB device: automatically switch the device off
when the environment goes dark.
And remember: if YOU want to make this podcast suck less, please send comments, rants, complaints, threats and/or praise. :-)
Relevant links:
- Generic info on stray garbage and some cleanup initiatives (or Dutch version).
- Q Light Controller Plus : software for controlling DMX512 devices.
- The USB-to-RS485 cable I happen to use: USB-RS485-WE.
- Video of DMX512 VGA generator in action
- Tweet (*sigh*...) of star-shaped LED xmas decoration.
- Another tweet (*groan*...) of engraved acrylic LED decoration.
Pics of things talked about:
DMX512 VGA generator boards.
Engraved acrylic LED decoration PCB in action.
...in its base, open...
...and closed up.
LDR USB power switch board...
...and schematic.