***Official Electronics Thread of Officialness (it starts off with lots of Nixie Tube Clock goodness

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Gogl said:
I open the link, looked at the first part (electrostatics part 1), read some of the comments, brain exploded.

I have got myself a soldering iron and a breadboard and intend to do some tinkering this year, thanks for posting that link I'll check out the circuit segments.
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I would recommend that you skip learning about electronics and look at microcontrollers.

Take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCxzA9_kg6s

Some people just 'get' electronics, I'm not one of them.. I tried for years to pick bits up but the basic knowledge required to do anything interesting is quite significant.

By learning electronics through the vehicle of microcontrollers, you get to make awesome stuff very quickly, and you pick up the basics of electronics by default.

I have the whole jeremy blum arduino series on my dropbox, If you're interested I can share the link so you can watch the videos at your leisure rather than waiting for youtube videos to load.

If the arduino (or even better, the shrimp which is a diy version of the arduino you can make yourself) is a little too much, look at Picaxe or Genie.
 
^^
There are a lot of sensors that plug straight into the Arduino, I'd stick with that.

Code samples for everything can be downloaded, the fiddly bit is modifying them.
Spanker said:
I have located the main power cable going in to a terminal connector in the alarm box, surely i can join a voltage dropper (wall brick) of this to power the LED strip ?
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That sounds awfully complicated. Why not just plug the wall brick into the nearest socket?
Alarm panels are not really to be messed with, they have a single job to do, best left alone.
 
yeh those kits are great value for money,
no instructions though and you may have to guess what each thing actually does :)

Lisapete said:
Anyone able to help on this?
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Umm, intended application?

You can buy beepers that beep when you apply a voltage.
Ripping a musical birthday card apart is another way.

Putting one in series with a flashing LED isn't going to provide an interrupting circuit, you'll just get a small voltage drop.
 
Need some assitance as my electronics knowledge has diminished over the 15 or so years since I did my HND (there may have been an awful lot of sleeping and cider between then and now)

Have a SCA-1568 Cree RGB module that I intend to put in a watertight enclosure and use in garden.

What I need to do is manufacture a suitable power supply that will drive 3 of them and also need a suitable RGB controller so that I have full control over colour and dimming.

Specs wise, the module draws 300mA from all three and voltage wise the red bank operates in 20-22 VDC and the blue and green operate at 30-32 VDC.

Obviously from this I need a PSU that can deliver approx 1A (ideally want to be higher so not at the top operating end of the PSU) and at 32V, but also need to be able to drop that 32 to 22 for the red of each module.

Question is, how do I go ahead and manufacture this? Part of me was thinking of using a HP Photosmart C4780 Printer supply that outputs 32V and then find a way of dropping this for the 22V and also work out the RGB controls.

What are peoples thoughts, ideas and suggetions on this?

Cheers
 
Shelster said:
What I need to do is manufacture a suitable power supply that will drive 3 of them and also need a suitable RGB controller so that I have full control over colour and dimming.
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Unfortunately in electronics nearly everything has a solution you can just buy
The same in this case, have a poke around DX for an rgb driver and eBay for a sealed rgb led security light.

I'm pretty sure elektor did an rgb driver in the past year or so, maybe for a tv backlight or something. Have a look on their website for an issue number, I've probably got a PDF of it somewhere.
 
bitslice said:
Unfortunately in electronics nearly everything has a solution you can just buy
The same in this case, have a poke around DX for an rgb driver and eBay for a sealed rgb led security light.

I'm pretty sure elektor did an rgb driver in the past year or so, maybe for a tv backlight or something. Have a look on their website for an issue number, I've probably got a PDF of it somewhere.
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Thought most of it was commercially available, was just looking for a pointer on dropping the 32v down to 22v.
 
Shelster said:
Thought most of it was commercially available, was just looking for a pointer on dropping the 32v down to 22v.
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Speaking frankly, you'll be a lot better off if you get a purpose-made RGB LED driver that deals with all the constant-current control for you.

Remember that LEDs suffer from thermal runaway due to being semiconductors, their resistance drops as their temperature rises, so if you don't have a current regulation mechanism in place you'll very rapidly end up with some friodes.
 
Just wondering if anyone could help me . I have a faulty mini usb port on my mrs tablet . Thankfully the board is separate . I ordered one from china but he sent the wrong one and he does not want to send me another :( All the others are £25+

Im quite handy with a soldering iron but no longer have equipment to do really small stuff and my eyes are not what they were !!

Does anyone fancy replacing the socket if i supply the new socket the board plus P&P and a drink via PP ?

Board is the same as the link below.. smaller socket is hdmi (left) and larger is microusb (right) which is the one that needs replaced

http://gyazo.com/da272b11bee0326b6a697ac1cbd261dc
 
Can anyone recommend me a nixie tube clock kit? I want to buy one (not necessarily with a case, as I've plans for my own), but I want something that looks the part and works well as is.

Alternatively, a pre-assembled unit - but one with decently sized valves.
 
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PCB modification

Have been trying too make some changes to a PCB board to override the power standby system without success.
If there are any electronic hobbyists with knowledge of PCB's and components in the swindon area who would like to take a look then that would be appreciated. Happy to fund your time
 
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