Category Archives: Electronics

Making a conductive adhesive

Posted on January 13, 2009 by smackaay

Well, I was trying to solder some extra thick peizo material, having very little luck when I realized that this could be solved very easily with some sort of conductive adhesive. So I set out to make some. I’m posting … Continue reading →

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Some documentation on an LCD display

Posted on January 7, 2009 by smackaay

A while back I bought some lcd displays from a dude on Ebay. After I recieved them I found that I couldn’t find the appropriate documentation. Well I found some documentation so I post it here for posterity or if … Continue reading →

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Stuff about sensors, a quick post.

Posted on December 16, 2008 by smackaay

Well, I’ve been looking around at torque sensors and found some interesting information. For one though, they are NOT cheap. Keep in mind that these are higher sensitivity sensors but it doesn’t seem to have an overwhelming bearing on the … Continue reading →

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The LED Clock

Posted on December 11, 2008 by smackaay

Well, for the past little while, I’ve been working on a bizarre clock made with LEDs glued into a dollar-store cookie sheet. I got the idea just out of the blue and decided that it would be fun to build. … Continue reading →

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Rotary Strain Gage update

Posted on December 10, 2008 by smackaay

Well, it’s been a little while since the last update, I suppose I should have stated something sooner. So far, the device seems to work but now I have mechanical problems. Friction on the top is preventing the load from … Continue reading →

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Viscometer Rotary Strain Gage update

Posted on December 3, 2008 by smackaay

It hasn’t been long since my last update about this thing but I’ve made some progress as far as making the unit into a single board. I simply used the AD7705B as I suspected it work work great for this … Continue reading →

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The Rotary Torque Sensor… continued

Posted on November 30, 2008 by smackaay

Well, so far, so good. That’s all I can say at the moment. The rotary gage is operational, though it hasn’t had brushes made for it and it seems to output a reasonable amount of voltage difference based on displacement. … Continue reading →

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Torque Coupling Update

Posted on November 24, 2008 by smackaay

This update is a little bigger than usual since I want keep the images and text as a sort of record of what I did for future reference. For the viscometer project, I’ve discovered that the motor is far too … Continue reading →

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Creating a strain gage coupling

Posted on November 20, 2008 by smackaay

So now I have to find some way of measuring the torque applied between the two shafts of the viscometer. Here’s my idea. What you can’t see is that I plan to manufacture it out of plastic, that way the … Continue reading →

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Viscometer and Graphing

Posted on November 14, 2008 by smackaay

Now that I’ve got the new board working, I’ve been programming all of the pertinant functions back into the chip. This time I’ve redesigned them to be a little more modular and useful in the long term. As was mentioned … Continue reading →

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New Viscometer Board

Posted on November 4, 2008 by smackaay

Well, my design finally came to fruition from AP Circuits and I can say I’m quite pleased with the results. The overall appearance of it is really nice, for me at least. Interestingly enough, I had some problems and made … Continue reading →

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Working on yet another stormer viscometer board. :(

Posted on October 27, 2008 by smackaay

Well, For the last week or so I’ve been developing a new viscometer board. Sloppy as it is, it’s a jump ahead from the last board in terms of overall inputs allowed. I used the 68PLCC package PIC18F6680 in this … Continue reading →

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Repaired an abraser the other day

Posted on October 26, 2008 by smackaay

What’s an abraser you ask? Well, it’s a device that has two abrasive wheels that are pressed against a plate with paint on it. The idea is to determine the wear a certain coating or paint will get with a … Continue reading →

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Found a neat PDF Document about OP Amps

Posted on October 23, 2008 by smackaay

I was perusing about today and found a helpful document about OP-Amps. It’s distributed by Texas Instruments and it looks really good even though I haven’t read it for the most part. You can get it here: http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/slod006b/slod006b.pdf Or you … Continue reading →

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Viscometer Motor Results

Posted on October 9, 2008 by smackaay

Well, I took the plunge and built an RS232 output device so that I can track the values over a longer term than whatever my memory can hold. I’ve started with a series of tests designed to test the speed … Continue reading →

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Found a decent terminal program

Posted on October 9, 2008 by smackaay

For a while I’ve been looking for a decent freeware terminal program. Oddly enough, it’s been sitting right under my nose through a simple google search. I figure I’ll record it here for my own edification and file storage, just … Continue reading →

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Playing with simulations for the Viscometer

Posted on October 8, 2008 by smackaay

So, I’ve been playing with simulating the output of the viscometer at a specified power output. When the real unit runs it seems to output noisy but patterned values. I’ve found that the output has a sinusoidal output with anomalies … Continue reading →

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Finished another PCB for the Viscometer

Posted on October 3, 2008 by smackaay

Well, as far as viscometers go, I could be considered an expert by now (no, not really). Today my new board arrived and I assembled it, I’m kind of proud of it, it works real slick just like the last … Continue reading →

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A note about PIC MCU’s

Posted on July 24, 2008 by smackaay

Since I couldn’t see a cross reference list about PIC MCU’s between the 10F 16F 18F and 18F(80TQFP), I’ve decided to list it here in all it’s glory. I’ll add to it ass I use more MCU’s MCLR/VPP VSS(GND) VDD(+) … Continue reading →

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The lamp I’ve been saying I was going to build

Posted on July 5, 2008 by smackaay

Well, I’ve built it, the useless yet fun, timer lamp. The idea behind the timer lamp is to have a bedside lamp that you can turn on and of but also set it to turn off after a certain amount … Continue reading →

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Got the PCBs Back!

Posted on May 26, 2008 by smackaay

Well, they turned out about as good as I’d hoped, the new PCBs are pretty cool. This whole time I’ve been learning electronics I’ve been building boards by hand; That is a foolish move. I took Sam’s advice and got … Continue reading →

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PCB creation is fun

Posted on May 22, 2008 by smackaay

Been playing around with Multisim lately. I must say, it beats the tar out of using veroboard for all of my circuits. Just for whoever reads this, here’s a screenshot of my board. I sent the files off to APCircuits … Continue reading →

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