In this post, I’ll show you how to make a signal generator and oscilloscope from a PC soundcard. I used a cheap USB soundcard so in case the input voltage gets too high, I don’t damage my PC. This signal generator and oscilloscope obviously don’t have the best specs and are very limited. They can produce/measure a very narrow range of voltages and frequencies(0-20KHz).
In this post, I’ll show my DIY SMD vacuum pickup tool. I bought this vacuum pump SMD pickup but it had no way to be turned on/off. There is only a hole on the vacuum “pen” that you can cover with your finger to make or release the vacuum. I decided I would mod it and make it operable with a footswitch. When pressed the vacuum pump is turned on and when you let go the vacuum pump is turned off while the valve is opened at the same time to release the vacuum and instantly drop the SMD part from the nozzle.
In this post, I’ll show my DIY solder paste dispenser. It’s powered by a 12V adapter and can be operated by a footswitch(connected via banana connectors). It uses a small membrane air pump/compressor to dispense the solder paste/flux. Additionally, there is a solenoid air valve connected to the airline so the pressure can be released after you let go of the footswitch which prevents the solder paste or flux from oozing out. The pump and valve timing is controlled through a relay module by an attiny45 microcontroller.
In this post, I’ll show a DIY power supply I made from an old computer PSU. This is a great way to get a fairly powerful lab power supply with a range of different voltages for cheap. I used a breakout board I bought online as it’s much quicker and simpler than drilling holes for all the connectors into the case and then soldering all the wires.
In this post, I’ll show a 9V battery portable power supply I made quite a few years ago by originally following this tutorial. This particular power supply uses a voltage regulator(LM317) to drop down the voltage and dissipate the energy as heat. This means it becomes inefficient at higher currents. So it is most useful to power things that don’t require a lot of power.
It’s hard to remember everything you learn over the years especially if you don’t use it very often. That’s why I think it’s good to have a compilation of cheatsheets, reference books or other types of resources like blog posts/videos/PDFs. So in this post, I will “bookmark” some useful software engineering resources and cheatsheets for myself(or anyone else who stumbles upon this post).
About A couple of days ago I stumbled upon these errors. I was unable to start up my C# .NET Core app and debug it(Task “clean” failed with exit code “1”). When I tried to …
In this post, I will show my DIY quiet air compressor. I took the compressor from an old fridge and used an old whipped cream dispenser as an air tank. The compressor is very quiet and can thus be kept indoors(under my table in fact). The air capacity isn’t the greatest but it’s good enough for my needs(doing some pneumatics experiments, solder dispenser, …). The air pressure, however, can easily get up to 8 bar(around 120 psi). In addition to compressed air, you also get a vacuum line. You could, for example, use that for making a vacuum chamber or a vacuum pick up tool.
In this post, I will show my DIY portable power supply. The PSU uses the DPS3003 module. This module is rated for voltages from 0-32V and currents from 0-3A. You can get other models with higher or lower voltage/current ratings. The input voltage, however, must be in the range of 6-40V and your maximum output voltage is limited to your input voltage. In my case, the battery provides around 16V to the input so the output voltage can’t go higher than that.
In this post, I will show my DIY power/power factor meter. The module itself was bought(of course) I just put it in an enclosure and added some cables to make measurements easier. This way I have a handy and cheap tool for measuring the power and power factor of any device that I connect to it. This thing is no professional instrument with great accuracy but it’s good enough for doing some basic measurements.
