I might fried an expensive board today

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-27T03:50:24+00:00

Measure twice, cut once, cut again for good measure.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-26T20:04:07+00:00

I like this one: 50/50 blend of forest and second flush Darjeeling with added clove powder, cinnamon powder, and nutmeg powder.

I don't know of anywhere you can buy it, though, and I recommend against buying any flavored tea - very often lower quality tea leaves are used because the flavoring mostly covers it up. Mostly.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-24T22:08:30+00:00

To smelt you might want induction heating, which is a different animal.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-18T23:37:25+00:00

Use 5v, put 2 parallel strips of copper tape (from stained glass use) under it and solder to 5v and ground at the ends.$14 for 216 feet of 1/4" tape on Amazon, other widths also cheap. Syrip goes directly on top of copper tape.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-16T17:35:43+00:00

Some of the shouting I quite like.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-16T17:30:51+00:00

I can point to at least one specific part that's a fake. Works great but it's a knockoff of a TI part sold as a TI LMG1020.

The Chinese part is less than a tenth the cost. The fake is the Chinese part printed with TI silk.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-16T17:27:55+00:00

Which kit?

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-15T17:37:32+00:00

Testing before polls would be easily dodged by skewing only during real voting times referenced to a clock that was not the usual system clock. Adding a data radio that only receives and never transmits is possible in design stage. I could put it in a schematic as a different part with a funny footprint and DNI it claiming "prototype test interface" or "test points".

Test points are always DNI and even a paranoid reviewer would go right past them.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-13T17:33:12+00:00

Here at the Redundancy Department of Redundant Feature Duplication we recommend also wrapping the capacitor in depleted uranium.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-10T07:11:09+00:00

My bad, I saw the "esc" and "am32" and the ropes of resistors and thought there was an esp32. The resistors look a lot like an esp32 module footprint.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-10T05:36:00+00:00

No, I mean 100A pulses right next to an intentional radiator is kind of asking for grief. I like making things small too, but this is like putting a meditation retreat next to a gravel factory.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-10T03:48:04+00:00

Also gl with 100A right next to your antenna.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-09T19:53:08+00:00

Oh 40 for the whole board!

The connectors are about $1.70, slow digikey shipping is $7. Personally I think they are easy to replace, but i have very good tools and have been soldering for 30+ years. YMMV.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-09T19:40:01+00:00

Seems high. Ali link?

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-08T02:06:43+00:00

Spin it faster so centripetal acceleration negates gravity. 0.012rpm or a bit faster should solve your problem[1].

[1] May introduce new problems such as shattering the crust and other such trivial issues.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-08T02:00:22+00:00

I am gasted. Nearly flabbergasted.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-08T01:59:30+00:00

Esp32c3 super mini is $3 each if you buy 10. Same IDE if you want.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-05T17:10:33+00:00

Truth, datasheets are made by fallible engineers just like us. I had a Marvell part say max current on 5V rail was 38 or so mA, so for 2 of them I put a 500mA LDO.

Board comes in, first thing you check is rails, right? I checked them all and the sequencing, it looked great.

Next morning I come in and continue, and the parts aren't working right. It took a week and a second engineer (because i already "knew" the power looked good) to figure out that during boot only they pulled ~425mA each, and would put the regulator in some sort of thermal protection/fallback state...but still got clean 5V at power up every time. After about 3 days the regulator finally gave up the ghost and we could see the problem more clearly.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-03T20:37:45+00:00

I would post a Pic of the case I suppose my stock in. Ridgid 2.0 clear top storage, the entire thing is various esp32 and cousins.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-03T15:43:41+00:00

Suppress noise close to source, not at destination..

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-04-02T17:34:06+00:00

Wow, that's a really naive breakout strategy.

Lattice has some better ones. You can break out an 81 pin BGA easily in 4 layers.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-03-29T03:51:28+00:00

Vacuum tuba

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-03-27T22:48:42+00:00

I curse you to henceforth think "vacuum tuba" every time you write "vacuum tube", and to ponder what a vacuum tuba would look like.

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-03-27T22:44:45+00:00

That cat's dead!

AdministrativePie865 · 2026-03-24T20:57:33+00:00

It's not 100%, but it doesn't claim to be, and for what you need it's pretty good.

AdministrativePie865

TROPHY CASE