To solder the boards there were few SMT (surface mount) components (mainly diodes and resistors) and some THT (through hole). For SMT usually you will have a stencil, pick and place machine, reflow oven to do all of that automatically but in my...
Two GAGG(Ce) and three LYSO scintillator crystals next to a TO-92 transistor for size comparisonPhysics overview When a high energy photon (a gamma ray) is absorbed by a scintillator some visible photons are emitted. These visible photons have a fairly...
Physics overview To convert the small number of optical photons into an electric signal a photodiode is not ideal. Short of using a photomultiplier tube (PMT) the best option is a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). These are arrays of thousands of cells,...
This is my collected data from Aliexpress inductors I have in my parts bin. The link displays the oscilloscope screen shot for that inductor test. The worst inductors where the SMD 1210 sized inductors, which probably were not meant for switching power...
I have an old 3D printer, an UP3D mini to be specific. It has a build volume of just 10cm x 10cm x 10cm. That's pretty small by modern standards.Additionally, the bed-heater is fixed at 60 degrees centigrade and in it's original factory state, it only...
After creating this project and receiving a certain amount of likes on it, I could say it was a success! Of course, I have to step it up somehow with upgrades, and I did exactly that. So, I just want to share that the Companion Light v1.5 is out! Check...
A prototype design for the probe was created that will clip loosely around the effector platform. Springs will force the probe assembly downward into the bed as the platform is lowered. A 15mm x 15mm copper plate will be used as a capacitive...
An Arduino ESP32 was setup using touchRead() in the main loop to toggle the onboard led and stream the read value out over Serial. A single 15mm x 15mm x 1mm pad was tested with dial indicator to get a feel for the trigger range. The led...
A digital bubble level was built to measure the platform tilt over the travel range. This consists of an ESP32 dev board with 1.9" LCD and Sparkfun ICM-20948 breakout board. The base was small enough to mount on the effector...
A Y-shaped section of black mylar was cut on the laser cutter with some holes to attached to clips printed from PLA. A section of copper foil tape was placed in center of the Y for contact with the nozzle. With the probe clipped onto the...
The new version of the Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) as I mentioned above now uses Wayland rather than X. Consequently the config.txt hdmi commands recommended by WIMAXIT to configure their display for a Raspberry Pi no longer work. The display still...
I’ve seen a lot of robotic lawnmowers over the years, but I wanted build something that was capable of more than just mowing the lawn— the ability swap different attachments for various jobs. Something more like a lawn tractor. The primary missions I’m...
First Light accomplished. What did I learn?The circuit in its current iteration,1: gets hot alarmingly quickly2: is trying to draw more power than I can actually supply. Those seem related, yeah. apologies for the excessively american temperature...
Revision 0.3 of the induction driver creates a plasma toroid that's stable and controllable, and does so without overheating. I'm closing in on a finalized version of the driver. Soon, both the induction coil and driver circuit will be unified into a...
While I am waiting for the boards to arrive, the time could be spent explaining the idea behind a separate programmer/debug board. As mentioned in a previous post, there is no way of programming the microcontroller while it is installed on the...