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Convert a Monochrome Bitmap Image to a Vector Image
In my last couple of posts I've been writing about barcodes. When generating them, some programs are able to output a vector image, which makes rescaling them later on easy, but some programs can only...
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What's The Channel Capacity Of The ADS-B System
If you've seen my twitter feed lately you may have noticed I've been playing around with ADS-B, the system used by commercial planes to report their position and other details. I find it an...
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Blade Switch Modification
A while back I installed a solar panel to charge a starter battery on a backup generator my grandmother has. In theory I should be able to leave the charger connected to the battery while starting the...
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Blade Switch Modification - Part 2
My last post laid out how I planned to modify a high current DPDT blade switch, making it easier to connect eye terminals from a solar charger, starter motor, and battery. The goal is to add threaded...
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Mounting a Changeover Switch on a Generator Frame
Over the last month or so I've been intermittently working on adding a changeover switch to my grandmothers generator. This will allow the battery to switched between a solar charger or the starter...
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How a Collector Card Sound Player Works
Today I'm going to have a bit of fun. Once again the local supermarket has released a set of cards with pictures of animals on them for children to collect. I've written about certain mathematical...
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Attempting to Determine How Audio Data is Stored in Flash Memory
You may have seen that I've recently been analysing a toy that plays animal sounds. It's nothing complicated, it just plays one of 108 stored sounds when a collector card is scanned though an optical...
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Listening to the SPI bus of a Flash Memory IC
It's time for another update on my attempt to reverse engineer the protocol used by a toy that plays animal sounds. To bring yourself up to speed I suggest reading the couple of posts I've done on...
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Sensitech TempTale 4 USB Teardown
I was recently at a local recycling centre and saw that they had some second hand temperature data loggers on sale for $2.50. At that price how could I not buy one to see how they worked.If you're not...
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LED Light Panel Teardown and Evaluation
For a long time I've been wanting to take better quality photos for my blog, and although I have a few issues to take care of, like a better camera and a way to position it, the main thing holding me...
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12 to 60 Volt 300 mA DC-DC Converter Design
I recently did a teardown of an LED light panel, and I wasn't thrilled with the quality of the power supply so I thought I look at designing my own. Although part of my motivation to do this was the...
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12 to 60 Volt 300 mA DC-DC Converter Design - Part 2
Continuing on from my recent post on designing a DC-DC converter for an LED panel, I've done a preliminary simulation of a boost converter using the Linear Technologies LT3761 to investigate some of...
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12 to 60 Volt 300 mA DC-DC Converter Design - Part 3
I've done a little more work on my design for a boost converter. You can catch up on my previous posts here.12 to 60 Volt 300 mA DC-DC Converter Design12 to 60 Volt 300 mA DC-DC Converter Design -...
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How Can Current Flow Backwards Through The Inductor of a Boost Converter?
I've been keeping myself occupied by (slowly) designing a boost converter for an LED light panel, and during one of my simulations I noticed something weird, there was current flowing backwards through...
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Boost Converter Startup
My ongoing series on designing a boost converter continues. Today's post will be short one. What happens in the converter during startup? The period between when you first apply power and when the...
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Boost Converter Output Capacitor Selection
I was a day late with this post as I was trying to select capacitors for my boost converter. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't think It would be this hard. The loose specification I'm trying...
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LED Driver Boost Converter
So, it's time for an update on the LED driver I'm designing. I think I have the final design of the circuit and have most of the components selected. I haven't bothered selecting actual parts for non...
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MeanWell LDH-45A-350W Dimmable LED Driver Evaluation
As you may have seen I've been designing a DC DC constant current power supply to drive some LEDs from a 12 Volt supply. The main reason for doing it myself was because most of the drivers I've seen...
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Three Terminal Resistive Network Conversions
Warning - This article describes equipment and circuits that operate at high voltages. Don't attempt to repair any high voltage circuits if you're not trained to safely work with electricity. You may...
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Using a Raspberry Pi to Log Songs Played on a Radio Station
I recently came up with an idea that required me to build a device to log the songs played on a radio station. There are a few ways to go about this, you could scrape the data from their streaming...
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