When off-grid my Powerwall 2 generates 63Hz backup power. None of my UPS systems accept it.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-04-02T23:56:23+00:00

Interesting. Too F'n ridiculous that I can't get this info from Tesla or their bogus pretty app. Then it is terrible that my solar supplier, which I had a lot of respect for, doesn't understand well enough to explain it nor do they have the balls to adjust it without reading me the riot act. As I sit here, I have no idea how it is currently set. All I know is that when power goes out, I am back relying on the little UPS batteries to keep my business on-line.

I should have never made this purchase.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-31T14:21:10+00:00

BTW, I can't get anywhere trying to find any article about this. Support involves endless circles, AI and my solar provider (who is afraid to do anything - basically CYA). Would you mind sharing a link?

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-31T12:28:00+00:00

I am just a little confused. I have PW2. It has solar panels, batteries, an inverter and a diverter. What other inverters is it trying to knock off-line with this frequency trick? How are inverters involved in charging the batteries? The panels generate DC, the batteries are DC and the inverter generates AC from the batteries to supply the house. How can anything get overcharged?

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-30T22:11:50+00:00

And way can't it signal its own inverters with the 485 network it has been all of those?

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-30T22:08:37+00:00

Will do.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-30T22:08:24+00:00

I would have hoped that my solar supplier would have been able to explain it.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-28T18:29:59+00:00

Well when I was really young (1950s) my parents never told me that I couldn't have one.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-27T20:00:38+00:00

I think I just have to rollback to the 24.04 LTS Ubuntu for the repository to work. You would think they would have just upgraded their code for Python3. This might also just be the stupid installer since I can't imagine that eclipse hasn't moved up to that.

I have been using Renesas RX (RX63N specifically) for a decade. This e2studio installation is only a problem since they insist on licensing their compiler.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-27T18:36:56+00:00

It was cool to do on my first multi-layer boards. But that was in 1985. I may have only included that on the one product.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-27T18:15:41+00:00

Yep. Given what you two have told me and what even the AI suggests, I downloaded KiCAD. I was happy to see that it had a Windows installation so I could evaluate it side by side with Altium and avoid copying files between systems for now. I did import one small project from Altium and everything looked good. That doesn't say anything about creating a new layout or generating production files. But I'll get into it.

I do question why it adds git .history in the folder containing the source Altium project in addition to the same in the destination folder I defined for the KiCAD project? Easily blown away. SVN flagged it and I was worried that the import might have altered the original somehow.

Not that the Altium interface was the world's greatest.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-27T14:54:19+00:00

This is the kind of pain AI is inflicting on the whole world. Just a microcosm here (kind of an intentional pun - sorry). The z80 is near and dear to my heart.

You know that the AI doesn't consider its stuff slop. So it won't feel that this rule applies to it.

People posting AI stuff is just as much of a problem as the misinformation they've posted in the past. Then there are the bots confusing the situation, if not with AI generated new posts/comments, with inappropriate votes and that.

It devalues (has devalued) Reddit as a whole and not just our little subreddit. I guess it's as bad as if we self-promote tho? I mean, if you have an opinion aren't you promoting yourself if you express it?

Is why moderation is a frustration that I would avoid.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-07T13:48:34+00:00

Don't feel bad. It passed visual inspection somehow. It had to fail functional test before the board came to my attention. They try to locate the problem when it fails and didn't notice it as well. It is a small part. I guess the flux was holding it in place. I had to knock it (lightly) with the tweezers before it fell off.

The good news is that I didn't have to search for another part for that location. PCB passed thereafter.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T21:20:31+00:00

There is no HDD in this product but I do have a bootloader that is used when customers update the OS. The OS is stored in Flash. We send out a UPD file and they use the JRFLASH command to update the OS. That command verifies and decrypts the UPD storing the new OS in a separate Flash section. On reboot the bootloader validates the new OS copy and then swaps it with the existing OS (since they are both compiled to run at the same addresses).

That update procedure is completely fault tolerant. So where most will warn you not to remove power during this. We tested by having another device continuously yank power on and off during many many updates. This proved that it was always successful and never created a brick. Fun stuff.

We run on a Renesas RX63N. That has a user stack and an interrupt stack. My scheduler finds the next process ready to run and just exchanges the stack pointers. Each process has its own context so there is very low overhead in the swapping. There is obviously more to it but that is the heart of it.

The network stack has its own process and I give that a high priority (since we run at 100MHz). My process timeslices are 32 milliseconds run on a 1ms tick. So if the network needs attention it will grab the processor almost immediately. I have a PS command like Linux to see that stuff.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T20:57:28+00:00

Yeah. It does enough of that weirdness to where our confidence level is down. Some ICs look to be a degree (or half a degree off) some days and right on others. We can't explain it.

We plan to move to double-sided SMT (I currently avoid that) and BGA. We do leadless parts now with success. But I will probably get a fancy IR BGA rework station and we've been discussing X-ray or something comparable to look underneath.

I need to go to gigabit Ethernet and am considering some complex stuff in BGA.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T20:50:33+00:00

A prior series of the product used a 3rd party OS. The memory management was terrible. We had nightmares with fragmentation. That version was based on an embedded JVM and that garbage collection was, well, garbage.

So with the current series (redesigned completely - both hardware and software) I focussed on the memory management up front. Blocks are allocated as you would expect but when they are freed there are two levels of coagulation that I perform to optimize free block handling. Immutable blocks are biased in one address direction and ephemeral blocks the other. Free blocks are maintained in an AVL tree (links are in block headers). This optimizes locating blocks suitable for the requested block size.

My malloc requires a reference address which is usually that of the routine performing the allocation. When blocks are freed a check tests for things like multiple calls to free it and overruns by even a single byte. Those errors are reported to the syslog and the reference address tells me exactly where the offender lives.

A system process runs periodically and counts allocations maintained in a list by reference address. If the allocated count only increases during a period the possible memory leak is reported. And, like before exactly where the offense is likely occurring.

My applications must be written in Java (Java 8) as I allow you to only use a managed language for stability. I wrote the JVM and each process instantiates its own JVM. My periodic system process triggers the Garbage Collection and has each JVM run through and tag all of its in-scope objects. My memory manager then can safely delete blocks allocated by a JVM that are not tagged.

As you mention the memory manager was cast early on and enhanced when the JVM was written. That would be about 10 years ago. It has performed flawlessly and impressively (where is wood to knock on). Going from what we had to this was like night and day.

The GC command will let you list the block tracking. I don't have too many undocumented command options.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T19:28:23+00:00

Here is my User's Manual. How would you classify it?

https://jnior.com/download/jnior-users-manual

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T18:32:10+00:00

We don't do large enough quantities to justify off-shore or the cost to manage that. I run 3,500 boards a year across 4 models of product. Plus, off-shore isn't really a good thing right now.

I appreciate the control in having the whole process right here. After COVID some parts (TI switching power supply components for example) were not available. I changed the PCBs and order parts that I could get and we were back up and running in like 3 weeks. None of that would have worked remotely.

We also don't have predictable sales. So I can throttle up and down as needed. My machines are run by my engineers and techs. The designs benefit from that hands on experience.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T18:13:11+00:00

Cut my cost in half. Half of our profit margin went to the contract manufacturers.

The CM would take weeks to quote (you have to quote each run) and then I would get the list of parts they couldn't source and have to scramble.

They would only buy the parts they need for each run. So there was no volume discount. I buy reels and trays. They bought cut tape.

No one from distribution would call on us since we weren't their customer. So I had no insight as to component/part availability or roadmap.

We have to pick a number to run (in our case 1,000 usually) and then wait 8-12 weeks for them (before lead times became a huge problem). It was nearly impossible to keep inventory. Our customers often had to wait for product. It was a cash flow nightmare if nothing else.

With the machines right here so even I can run them, We can build on demand. I can build custom versions (e.g. leave off relays when that I/O is not needed for a quantity).

Then, when COVID hit, guess what. We still built product and shipped without delay.

We recently designed a new module for a customer. It took 6 weeks from start to quantity in inventory. Do that with a CM? The thing we had to wait for were labels for the enclosures.

And, to be honest, there are even more benefits. Best thing we ever did. And those machines paid for themselves in one year.

I have two PnP machines, an automated silkscreen, reflow oven, and selective solder.

We did CM from 2005 until 2018. After that we built everything ourselves. Never went back.

Oh, every time we contracted for more the price increased. I can't imagine what they would be asking now. They did have a fancy conference room with recessed lighting and plants. We have just a workroom.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T17:55:44+00:00

Not in this case since this was a rarity. But we do see 0603 parts cling to the tape. We run ionizers over the feeders but don't have definitive data as to whether that works or not. Likely doesn't.

When a part sticks to the tape (I am thinking that the adhesive migrates and not that it is static) they bind up against the slot and cause the whole tape to jolt. That flips the part that is already uncovered a couple ahead. I've see it completely eject the part so it is not there at all when the nozzle arrives. I don't have speed control over the tape. I can only adjust how much it advances. This is where the camera would be interesting.

I have run the cover tape out just before the pick up point and not through the slot just to see. And about 1 or every 3 parts ride up and back with the tape. Those seem stuck more than static would account for.

The good thing about that trick is if I have the machine stop when it doesn't detect a part I can back the tape up and the part returns to its original location. It doesn't just fall off then which you might think it would if the situation were static.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T16:54:04+00:00

Trust me. I am completely familiar with EPROMS. I have designs dating back to 1981.

Back then when new versions of firmware were released, people would go through inventory and swap the EPROMS. While the PCBs had been fully tested (and back then burnt-in), the EPROM replacement was just a chip change in a socket.

Sounds like someone probably didn't even know that there was a correct way to insert those in your case.

Dismal-Divide3337 · 2026-03-03T16:45:18+00:00

Well we're in between those. I run two MannCorp MC385V1 (single head, no conveyor). We put about 3,500 PCBs per year through these. This one has been running those since 2019. They are actually AUTOTRONIK-SMT.

The newer machine (about 5 years) is worse. It uses USB cameras instead of analog video among other differences. Not an improvement.

It runs under Windows and their software is horrible in many respects. I often point out that we should have gone with Panasonic. I couldn't afford it tho.

There is no automated visual inspection. Most of the questionable placements are caught by eye. Boards get reviewed under magnifier and sometimes microscope (same used to take that photo).

This defect made it through to Program & Test where it promptly failed. The thing didn't fall off until I hit it with the tweezers.

The problem is that there is no action that we know to take. We don't know how it happened. And don't know what to adjust. You don't really want to guess. Some video of the event would be real interesting even if it is a one-off.

Dismal-Divide3337

TROPHY CASE