Post by WST

Posted: 9/22/2014 1:46 AM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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Guess what I am doing, guys!~

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 9/22/2014 3:24 AM

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True

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How is that Lukey/Otherbrand 702 treating you? Hasn't caught fire yet I hope? If you want others to guess change the image filenames. Otherwise have fun with that pilot light transistor.

true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried

Posted: 9/22/2014 3:52 AM

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WST

She/Her

Active player (450)

Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM

True wrote:

If you want others to guess change the image filenames. Otherwise have fun with that pilot light transistor.

You are a bit predictable :) In fact, I intentionally named the files that way. By the way, I have no problem with that soldering station, no idea what you mean. And thanks, it’s really fun to experiment with the tube (as well as other stuff from 60s–70s), though it seems to have bad emission — as it’s taken from an old TV.

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 9/22/2014 3:56 AM

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True

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If you haven't already, when you get some time, open the station up. Most are assembled poorly and are fire hazards. The plastics are also the wrong type and can also catch on fire. Many of the fan-in-handle type of reflow devices are particularly poor quality. Just safety shit, hopefully you don't run into problems but always check the wiring of cheap soldering gear when you get it.

true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried

Posted: 9/27/2014 7:26 AM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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A couple of photos of my another just-for-fun project — a power source for powering a small luminescent lamp from a 12V battery. Built mostly to not forget soldering :) The video of the device working will soon be on my Youtube channel.

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 10/4/2014 2:01 AM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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Digital ICs are really fun; and tonigh I finally succeeded to build digital clock using 4 simple ICs. It was not easy to build it on a breadboard — first, CMOS based ICs are very sensitive to noise, second, it’s easy to mess up the things on the breadboard. But now it is working, I am happy. Next steps will be developing the PCB for this project and maybe implement alarm clock (for example by adding this wonderful IC). I will have to try fitting all connections on single PCB layer, because I never created 2-sided PCBs, but I’m afraid this is too complex for a single layer. Link to video Instead of a quartz oscillator, I used a capacitor for testing purposes. Also you can notice absense of decimal points and counter of seconds. I did not connect them to have less wires… Yes, I know this can be done using DS1307 and attiny, maybe next time… ;)

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 11/21/2015 3:36 PM

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WST

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Economic crisis has strong effect on the quality of soldering alloys here. Since 2014, I notice heavy growth of the number of extremely bad alloys. Most of them seem to be pure lead. Even the ones marked as “lead-free”, can be pure lead — crazy. (upd) damn, I hate solder mask… After a year of attempts, I keep doing it as crappy as on this picture…

(upd2) this is what happens if you use an operational amplifier with too high supply voltage. Happened to me yesterday, and I decided to reproduce it for YouTube. Link to video (upd3) a little surprise =D sincere apologies about imperfectly etched traces

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 1/12/2016 2:32 AM

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True

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Etching is really clean for home-done work. As I sent to you personally though, Chinese fabs are so cheap today, home etching isn't very common anymore... but I guess you have to wait longer for those... Now help us build some robots :)

true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried

Posted: 1/12/2016 12:32 PM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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True wrote:

Etching is really clean for home-done work.

Yeah I’ve been doing the entire process completely myself since my childhood. At that time, I used paper to design PCBs, permanent marker to draw traces on the board and mix of CuSO₄ and NaCl for etching… Etching this way took about 2 hours (and the result was like this). I knew about some better possibilities, but at that time I couldn’t let myself buying something other than CuSO₄ because of my age. Today I use mix of HCl and H₂O₂, and the etching takes just 2-4 minutes. I use DipTrace to make projects and use both popular technologies (laser toner transferring and UV curable photoresist film). Basically I use the first for small PCBs and the second for bigger ones (as the first method does not work well for big boards).

True wrote:

As I sent to you personally though, Chinese fabs are so cheap today, home etching isn't very common anymore... but I guess you have to wait longer for those...

There are some local Russian PCB factories as well, some of them are even targetted to the hobbyists. I made an order from such a company only once, when I just came to Jakarta. My plan was to build 4 channels of an audio amplifier — 2 for me and 2 for my friend from there, who also enjoys that kind of hobby. However, the PCB manufacturer, despite their promises, took extremely long to process my order, and sent the PCBs about 6 weeks later than supposed, so, the PCBs came right after I left back to Russia :( So I really prefer etching myself… Way faster and probably even cheaper for small quantities.

True wrote:

Now help us build some robots :)

I considered that possibility, but the primary problem is that nowadays I do not have any game console (and even an analog TV). I need to buy them first. And sure, if I decide to build some TAS-related device, I’ll contact you about possibility of ordering the board, components and pre-flashed microcontroller.

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 1/13/2016 5:44 PM

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WST

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Okay I have just finished assembling the board shown on the photo above (simple audio amplifier for my mom). The one with greeting for the forum members has one little mistake — after finishing it, I suddenly discovered that the used operational amplifier is badly balanced, because of which I had about 0.5 volts output voltage (while the expected value is exactly zero). So I had to add extra resistors for balancing. And before starting to work on the 2nd channel, I opened my PCB IDE (DipTrace, as I already mentioned) and added those resistors. So it was easier to properly balance the second instance. Both boards work fine, but for the second one I had to use MJE13007 as output transistors. You may be wondering why. The answer is: I already used all of my TIP41/TIP31 transistors, which suited this purpose better. This was a surprise for me, otherwise I would have bought them many days ago. It is worth to mention that I had Russian КТ819Г transistors, which also suited this purpose perfectly, but there was a little problem: their pinout differs from TIP41C, which was supposed to be used. I had no mood to redo the whole board because of that, so I just put MJE13007, as I do not have anything else in TO-220 package (except some other Russian transistors, but they all have E-C-B pinout, not B-C-E). Top view of both boards Bottom view of the first board Bottom view of the second board Now need to wash away the remaining flux and mount the boards into a box (power source is ready as well). And then I’ll probably build a simple stereo expander (using 2 opamps or 2-in-1 like NE5532). Ah, I almost forgot. I will need heatsinks. As this piece of crap will be run at low power, I will use heatsinks like this one (already used for an UV LED, just showing). (upd) found some TIP122s, which I also completely forgot about. They are darlington-type NPN power transistors. Nah, no mood to redo it, though the amplification of MJE13007 is only ~25, hope that’s enough (upd2) will be easy to add a subwoofer channel with this cheap lowpass filter from AliExpress (upd3) this can also be useful soon

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 1/15/2016 2:47 AM

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True

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WST wrote:

It is worth to mention that I had Russian КТ819Г transistors, which also suited this purpose perfectly, but there was a little problem: their pinout differs from TIP41C, which was supposed to be used. I had no mood to redo the whole board because of that, so I just put MJE13007, as I do not have anything else in TO-220 package (except some other Russian transistors, but they all have E-C-B pinout, not B-C-E).

They're TO220 and you aren't heatsinking them, so...just put them in backwards... But even if heatsinking, like you mention later, just bend it out of the way a bit, it'll be OK :)

true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried

Posted: 1/15/2016 7:46 AM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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Location: RU · ID · AM

True wrote:

WST wrote:
It is worth to mention that I had Russian КТ819Г transistors, which also suited this purpose perfectly, but there was a little problem: their pinout differs from TIP41C, which was supposed to be used. I had no mood to redo the whole board because of that, so I just put MJE13007, as I do not have anything else in TO-220 package (except some other Russian transistors, but they all have E-C-B pinout, not B-C-E).
They're TO220 and you aren't heatsinking them, so...just put them in backwards... But even if heatsinking, like you mention later, just bend it out of the way a bit, it'll be OK :)

Yep I realize it, I did it in the past a lot of times (for example, just a year ago I had to replace КТ819Г with TIP41C that way). This time it’s a bit different, I do not want the 2 boards to look too much different. It’s a pity that I live in a village and cannot just go to a store and buy the components. But, as my vacation ends in 4 days, soon I’ll move to a city where I’ll be able to buy them (without having to wait at least a week for the delivery), and then I’ll be able to solve the issue by replacing MJE13007 by TIP41C (hopefully these chinese glass fiber boards are as good as indonesian ones, and the copper will not detach), or, even better, building an extra channel, though I will have spare time for DIY only on weekends =( Hope you forgive me, guys, for spending this vacation time to build some stuff, and not for TASing, as you probably wanted. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to my TAS projects as soon as I have mood. Beleive me, without the mood I cannot TAS well. (upd) okay, I will continue working on this amplifier project later, as I buy the HS117-100 heatsinks and some other stuff… If interested, stay tuned — I will certainly post photos of the final version here.

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)

Posted: 8/12/2016 2:29 PM

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WST

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Joined: 10/6/2011
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A fun (though probably a bit dangerous) way to see how big is the actual silicon crystal in a transistor. Link to video (upd) almost forgot my promise to post final look of the amplifier… Well, that’s because I haven’t actually finished it. It is working, but still looks as a demo setup, as I’m missing a good box (and skills to make it myself). But, well, at least I bought a lot of TIP41C and made 2 extra PCBs with them, so I can show you how they look in a test setup. By the way, it sounds perfectly, but only to certain [quite high] volume, then the signal gets clipped because the opamp’s output voltage is capped by ~12 volts (due to the way it’s powered). The extra reason is the low power transformer, which I try to compensate by 4 big capacitors visible on the last photo. https://pp.vk.me/c626420/v626420932/27be7/aVY_UOSOYrI.jpg https://pp.vk.me/c626420/v626420932/27bf1/0d8yBQt45LE.jpg https://pp.vk.me/c626420/v626420932/27bfb/8zB3nRGVcic.jpg https://pp.vk.me/c626420/v626420932/27c05/RQ9hUC29Afc.jpg As soon as I find (or buy) a suitable box, I will probably give this one to my mom, as I already have a better (and more powerful) transistor-only one. This one was a “just for fun” project (as most of my TASes) intended to spend time and use those nice metallic op-amps. By the way, I compared Soviet opamps (made in 1985) with a Russian one (made in 2005), and the latter is perfectly balanced out of the box, I didn’t need any external resistors to balance it. Would be fun to measure all those stuff like THD, voltage change speed and so on, but I have no experience with that… Well, it sounds good, it’s enough for me ^^ (upd2) next time gonna build something a bit more brutal… :)

S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)