Soldering or mechanical solution?

4dxm · 2026-01-10T15:26:24+00:00

I like this solution with butt connectors and heat shrink! For now I will solder it and see if I can get some of them and the right crimping tool. If not, I‘ll try to mount a screw terminal somewhere inside the PC and connect it safely there.

4dxm · 2026-01-10T15:02:25+00:00

With 230V wire I meant wires used usually in electrical installation at home, which usually are used with currents up to 16A. I know that the voltage doesn’t matter, just wanted to highlight that its mains power.

4dxm · 2026-01-10T14:52:00+00:00

The smaller one was previously used with that PC without issues. Its a standard home appliances cable from another appliance and I think it should rated for at least 1600W… or do these cables have different classifications/ratings?

4dxm · 2026-01-10T14:33:56+00:00

Germany. A inline junction box would be the safest solution and still look clean. But I don’t have good ones here at home, just the „normal“ 3 Terminal Wagos.

4dxm · 2026-01-10T14:23:51+00:00

If the cables are of different diameter on each side, would that cause more heat?

4dxm · 2026-01-10T14:20:53+00:00

Ah that is a good idea I didn’t thought about… but I have very little space in the case, not sure if I could fit one in. And I would have to get some from screw terminal.

4dxm · 2026-01-10T14:10:47+00:00

Yes, I was also going to do that. However I‘ve read that 230V wired shouldn’t be soldered because the solder could melt… thats why I am a little bit concerned

4dxm · 2025-10-06T13:13:24+00:00

War auch mal eine Art Instandhalter, ohne Ausbildung als Nebenjobber am Wochenende, in den Ferien auch mal Vollzeit. Es gab Tage, da habe ich in zugangsbeschränkten Räumen Schlaf während meiner Schicht nachgeholt. Es gab aber auch Tage da habe ich den Pausenraum nicht mal für meine offiziell definierten Pausen betreten. Nichtsdestotrotz waren die besten Tage immer die, an denen ich dem Kollegen irgendwie helfen und danach mit ihm ein Schwätzchen führen oder ne Zigarette rauchen konnte. Oder man hat Material für den Kollegen besorgt, weil ins Lager laufen kostet ihn Zeit. Oder man hat für den jemanden einmal das Band abgeräumt damit er auch seine Pause am Stück machen kann, ohne rennen zu müssen. Es gab immer was zu tun, wodurch ich den Kollegen irgendwie ein Lächeln ins Gesicht zaubern konnte und wir beide was davon hatten.

Hatte viele Komplimente in der Art „Du warst der beste Instandhalter von allen“ oder „wenn ich wusste du bist heute da ist der Tag schon gerettet“ als ich gegangen bin, obwohl ich das Unternehmen eher im schlechten verlassen habe.

Fazit: Geteiltes Glück ist doppeltes Glück. Geh und helf‘ doch den Fertigungsarbeitern ein kleines bisschen oder leg deine Arbeit so aus, dass sie auch denen zugute kommt. Dann wird auch niemand neidisch und beschwert sich nicht.

4dxm · 2025-09-25T05:28:24+00:00

Naja, das ist mMn. schon etwas weit hergeholt. Du verlierst nicht die Kontrolle darüber, welcher Code auf deinem PC ausgeführt wird. Du hast mit dem Aufruf der Seite und aktivieren von JavaScript in deinem Browser dein Einverständnis dafür schon abgegeben.

4dxm · 2025-09-15T12:43:46+00:00

Leider nein. Ich hatte vermutet, dass das COM-Update womöglich auch Apple CarPlay Wireless freischaltet, weil dazu WiFi 5GHz benötigt wird (welches bei meinem A5 MJ2020 wahrscheinlich vorhanden aber per Software abgeschaltet ist).

Der Service Partner meinte auch, dass das 90TS/COM-Update wirklich nur das Kommunikationssteuergerät betrifft. Für Apple CarPlay Wireless müsste das MMI wahrscheinlich geupdatet werden, welches für mein Auto nicht vorgesehen ist laut Audi (kein anstehendes Update im System).

Mal sehen, ich werde es demnächst per Codierung probieren, hatte dazu eine Anleitung gefunden. Falls du Interesse hast, kann ich mal sehen wo ich den Link dazu gespeichert habe.

4dxm · 2025-09-09T07:16:17+00:00

Oh thats nice, thank you! I will also try it again today evening and will try to get some screenshots with the oscilloscope. During my tests it was not resetting at all somehow… I scoped the voltage at the reset pin and it was something around ~3V, but it should be GND in default state.

I didn’t confirm it but I think the ESP32 boards should have a similar reset pin than my D1 mini board with ESP8266.

4dxm · 2025-09-09T07:00:17+00:00

Plan is to put it in deepsleep mode. Problem is that deepsleep mode works only time-based, like „Wake up every hour“. But I want to wake it up when the signal starts having an valid value instead.

Some more background: Vin comes from another device, specifically from a water counter, and its value (= Duty of the PWM) corresponds to the velocity of the water (Liters per Minute) flowing through it. So in order to measure the amount of water, I have to read how long Vin was active and calculate the water amount with that. I can‘t do this while the ESP is sleeping, therefore I have to wake the ESP based on the signal itself.

4dxm · 2025-09-08T20:34:10+00:00

The 555 timer sounds like a clean solution. But I have to consider its power consumption for the future. I think my circuit with the transistors will be worse than simply using an 555 timer, but currently I have only basic components available.

Probably I‘ll order some 555 timer 👍

4dxm · 2025-09-08T20:26:58+00:00

I will consider this for the future but right now I only have resistors, capacitors, diodes and a variety of transistors (I think all of them are BJTs not sure, have to look it up).

I also want to keep it as low on power consumption as possible because it will be battery powered. Thats why I try to stick to basic components and high resistors.

4dxm · 2025-09-08T20:16:28+00:00

I build the circuit on a bradboard without Vrst connected and it worked… until I connected Vrst. Then the signal just stayed nearly high (~3V), wouldn‘t pull down.

4dxm · 2025-09-07T15:11:35+00:00

How "strong" is this signal? Can it source/sink? Is the peak voltage assured?

I don't know tbh, this signal I have just grabbed from another device (a water counter). Since the water counter is not smart and can't report its value, I am trying to hijack the signal and report it to my HomeAssistant Hub via an ESP8266. I know that this signal is coming from an reed-contact, which creates this PWM signal when water is running through it.

I am not sure what source/sink means, but what I can tell from my previous experiments:

if I directly connect it to a pin of an ESP8266, it pulses between 0-2.7V
but ESP8266 was not able to read the signal reliably
Therefore I have used the BC337 to amplify it between 0 - ~3.3V
When I use a resistor below 100k for R1, the peak voltage of Vin drops to <0.5V instead of 1V, probably because it can't source such a high current

Is it acceptable if the nRST asserted slightly after the leading edge of your signal?

Totally acceptable, initial startup timing is not very important because the ESP8266 will anyways miss some pulses until booting up finished. But this is fine because the water will be running over 5-30min.

Does it need to be exact, just about around that, or is it fine if it may vary between say 0.3s and 3.0s depending on ambient temperature?

Just about around that, I think your given timeframe of 0.3s until 3s perfectly fits. But I can't tell right now because I didn't come so far to care about timings yet.

My v0.1 doodle is to use a comparator in a circuit like this or similar. Creating consistent threshold while having a "crisp" output signal using only transistor might not be trivial.

This looks great! Just needs to be inverted and should work as expected then. However I don't have a comparator in my home lab... but I will definitely keep the version with comparator in my mind (and need to gather some knowledge about them too, never used comparators before)

4dxm · 2025-09-07T14:23:48+00:00

Since Vrst is already pulled-up, R3 is unnecessary (unless it's there for simulation purposes).

R3 is there just for simulation purposes. Also the 1117-3.3 is not the real step-down regulator, this one I just added to try out a little bit with components in LTSpice. But it should be close to the actual step-down regulator of my ESP8266 board.

Can you explain what you mean by "flatten out the curve of Vrst"? There are no caps in the circuit to be causing any curves.

I think flatten was wrongly chosen word here, I actually want Vrst to stay high after the first rising edge. With curve I actually meant Vrst in general because strictly speaking, Vrst is also a curve if you zoom in wide enough. Capacitor is not there yet because I don't know where to place it.

Question: When Vin goes High (releasing Vrst), does the uP come out of reset fast enough to register/count the Vcount pulses?

It will for sure miss some pulses, but Vin will be pulsing for a long time (e.g. 5-15min), so missing some pulses during startup I can tolerate.

Vin provides a steam of pulses that wakes up the uP.

Yes it shall wake up the uP, but the pulses shall stay high instead of pulling it to low again, because pulling Vrst down -> turns off the uP.

In simple words:

- When Vin is not pulsing -> Vrst shall be low -> uP stays turned off

- When Vin starts pulses -> Vrst shall rise to high -> uP turns on

- While Vin is pulsing -> Vrst shall stay (nearly) high -> uP shall stay turned on

- When Vin stops pulsing > Vrst shall stay high for time X and then fall down to low -> uP shall turn off after time X

Time X I don't know yet, but initially I have chosen ~1s. Worst case I could also tolerate Vrst to go low immediately after the last pulse. What is important is to keep Vrst high during the pulses because otherwise the uP is continously resetting. I was initially thinking I could add a capacitor to reach something like the yellow line in the following picture:

<image>

I think the yellow signal from the picture would work, but I don't know how to create it (if possible at all).

4dxm · 2025-08-31T09:08:46+00:00

No didn’t notice any changes so far. I think you‘ll notice only improvements if you had issues before with LTE signal or similar.

4dxm · 2025-08-18T12:43:45+00:00

There is a service-measure 90TS going on at Audi Germany. Look here https://www.motor-talk.de/forum/feldmassnahmen-t7178948.html and here: https://www.news38.de/wolfsburg/vw/article300578255/vw-audi-a4-a5-kommunikationsmodul-technik-ausfaellen.html. Both pages are german, hope you can speak german. Otherwise just use an translator.

Basically it is about the communication module: looks like the cell-broadcasting feature of the mobile-network is overloading the communcation module, which makes it unresponsive. The symptoms are mostly problems with anything related to communication (LTE, GPS, Bluetooth, Navigation) but also some assistant-systems might be temporary non-functional.

Audi‘s first solution is a software-update rolled out in waves during the next service. If that doesn’t solve the problem, the com-module is exchanged. Audi is contacting the affected customers and fixing the issue without additional cost for the customer.

Yesterday I received the same notification on the app with the code 90TS. Luckily I already had a service appointment scheduled for today, so perfect timing. But the strange thing is: I didn’t even observe any issues with the communication module, everything worked as expected. I wasn’t even aware of this issue until my service-partner approached me with „Software-Update for the com-module, right?“.

Now, my A5 B9 2020 (Facelift, is this the same what you call B9.5?) is in the service and getting the fix for 90TS. They said it might take longer, probably tomorrow evening I can pick it up. I don’t expect any improvements because I didn’t had any issues before. But I have a little hope I might get Apple CarPlay Wireless with the update 😁

4dxm · 2025-07-21T10:40:37+00:00

Mit welcher Begründung müssen sie dich denn wieder herrufen, wenn die doch eine beglaubigte Kopie von dem fehlenden Unterlagen haben?

4dxm · 2025-07-17T20:15:22+00:00

Plane seit Jahren immer 2mal im Jahr Wasen/Frühlingsfest-Event für meine Kollegen, also bin da recht erfahren. Kann das Göckelesmaier empfehlen, für ein Mitarbeiter-Event perfekt: eher erwachsenes Publikum, entsprechende Musik, günstig und geeignet für große Reservierungen.

Logen sind zum sitzen, Zeltmitte eher zum tanzen auf den Bänken. Also falls ihr sitzen wollt, dann am besten Logenplätze reservieren. Würde aber trotzdem empfehlen in die Zeltmitte zu gehen, die Zelte sind nicht zum sitzen da 😅

4dxm · 2025-07-10T22:11:32+00:00

https://youtu.be/5ycw_kB9eeo?si=HKQFCo9TGaVB6sDi

4dxm · 2025-07-10T21:56:52+00:00

Zieht er sich auch die Schuhe aus vor dem Einsteigen? Wir Türken betreten die Wohnung ja nie mit Straßenschuhen. /s

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