Thank you for providing more information and an update!
Do you have any means of testing it if it actually works? Also, it seems that the bottom right text on the PCB is not etched fully, so I assume you made the board yourself? I also notice you have a Hong Kong coin, so does that mean you are based in Hong Kong? If you are, then are there not as easy ways to get PCB's for a reasonable price in small quantities, hence you etching the PCB yourself? Also, is there a specific reason you are sticking with a linear voltage regulator instead of a switching one? I assume to keep complexity low so you can have the project done quicker? It would have kept heat dissipation much lower though, going from 12v down to 5 volts at so much current.
Hopefully tests come out positive for this project! While a few members may have responded negatively, keep in mind that DP surely has a large amount of lurkers eagerly looking at your project. Again, thank you for updating! :)
Edit: woops, I re read and noticed that you said you ordered the PCB's, not made them, so excuse that quick lapse of thought. :P
Oh god yes!! I absalutly love the old Intel 4004, 8004, 8008 stuff! I actually learned most about computer architecture and MCU nitty gritty things from old books about the Intel 8008.
It is cool, isn't it, to work with chips that used to cost hundreds of dollars many of years ago, when a full McDonalds meal cost only 50 cents. I am looking forward to more progress being posted on this project! :) Also, for the DC-DC converter, if you cannot find a suitable one, I can design a board for you which would take 3.3v and boost it to 15v. Good luck!
While I started to dabble in my next project, I realized that I did not post up my most recent project! I wanted to get some better experience with the new hot air station, and the only way to get that is to actually de-solder some stuff, so here it is! It is not fully done yet, but I would like to post what I have so far for any possible comments or mention of something not working for someone.
Any specific reason why you bought it from bdent instead of amazon? They both have free shipping and the same price, but amazon has legendary customer service and most likely no tax in this situation, unless you are in California.
For some reason, I can't get around the coloring making it look like a toy. I am still using a cheap $15 soldering iron from radioshack! :)
O_O This guy has some very steady hands, and a steady mind. I would have gone crazy over loosing count of which ball I should have soldered too after a while, shorting something, causing days of misery trying to find out what went wrong.
While not directly related to your project, I absolutely LOVE the way you wire up circuits without making a full fledged PCB! the absolutely tiny board you made by cutting the copper for a dual fet SOT-563 is fantastic. Lots of respect towards someone who can do that by hand. :P
I have just found this project here in project development (so busy lately!) and I would like to say that the schematic itself looks nice, visually. I did not know that you can make an Altium schematic so good looking. :P
Anyways, how did you find such a high bandwidth led? I remember a few months back looking at LED data transmission using cheap off the shelf leds, but couldn't find anything that listed possible bandwidth of 1 Mhz or up. Also, I am confused as to how you are not killing the leds with so much current, even though the duration is only 83 ns. Did you get any dead leds? Also, any pictures, they are always welcome in threads! :)
And lastly, I did not see the original posts so I do not see the arguments made, but I would really like to chime in on this. While the legality of operating such a device on a vehicle is questionable in (I assume) many countries, the OP did not say he/she was going to use it on a vehicle. Maybe it was done out of curiosity, to see if such an implementation would work, which in turn could mean that it was meant to advance the OP's knowledge on the matter, and knowledge alone should never be impeded because of someones opinion on said knowledge. This project was not doing any harm to anyone, other than hurting the feelings of others through offense, so I don't see why it would have been needed to take it down. Just because information goes against your opinion or beliefs, does not mean the information should be blocked. Not to mention that if a police radar gun can be defeated so easily, then the guns were very poorly designed or planned out, showing a need to get a much more "secure" and "proper" means of measuring speed. After all, security through obscurity has never worked, is not working now, and never will work.
Thank you Ian for keeping such a project up, it is probably one of the many reasons this site is held in high regards among many hobbyists everywhere.
[attachment=0] Yaehhhh!!! This bad boy runs Planetside 2 maxed out, BF3 maxed out, realflow runs like a charm on it, and the boost in ram from upgrading my entire lets me alt tab with no remorse. Heck, even cycles has improved a bit when running on the GPU. Cinebench gives me a bump from 2.57 to 5.65. This is not even overclocked! Currentl I am using the lame stock cooler, need to clean my water cooling loop first and make a mount for LGA 1155, as my super old apooge GT was designed for LGA 775.
[attachment=2] I am loving the SMD LED display, anyone know if these are available for a reasonable price off Digikey or Mouser?
[attachment=1] Seems to be a current sense resistor of sorts, it looks very nice though.
[attachment=0] And lastly the new electronic design magazine. Do they usually make them in squares? If you guys are interested, the magazine is free and quite good. The writing is top notch, very few advertisements compared the monstrosity of an obnoxious advert per 2 pages like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, or even Wired.
You can also arrange the machines in a triangular fashion and stick a piece of plywood on top and live in the most precisely engineered and awesome house ever. :P
How much did even one of the machines cost? Were they sold as is or working? And yes, you win. :(
If we are indeed having a competition here, we shall not go down without a fight! [attachment=5] I wonder what this is ... :o
[attachment=4] First up is some RAM. It may look flimsy and cheap, but thanks to Samsung's 30nm process used for these DDR RAM chips, you can easily overclock them to at least 2 ghz with a small bump in voltage and still have tight timings. This is a little secret of the RAM world, as these are also rather cheap.
[attachment=3] And the second box, looks good!
[attachment=2] Here is the second box. I won this from a giveaway on OCN, overclock.net and free shipping was included. MSRP? $200 USD :D
[attachment=1] All the paper that comes with it
[attachment=0] And the really nice looking motherboard itself. The lame picture which was shot quickly does not do it justice, it really does look amazing.
I am eagerly awaiting a review of the power supply, and hopefully a teardown of sorts! :P Do you have an oscilloscope, and if so, will you use it to see the ripple on the power supply?
For the headphone amplifier, do you use any hi-fi ish headphones like the 595's? The THD seems a bit low, at 0.01 %, but I have yet to actually test if I myself can hear the difference between 0.05% vs 0.002%.
And for the microscope, I feel terrible for having such a bad picture end up on the front page of DP! I will try to get a better picture later today when I get back from class. The DOF seems to be perfectly adequate for soldering, though at 20x magnification your hand jitters become a major visible problem. So, the DOF seems to be maybe half thickness of a plain 0603 resistor. I will give you a measurement later today if you want me to. the FOV is not too large, but you can move your eyes a bit to see everything. It is nowhere like looking through a soda straw though. Off the top of my head, I think the FOV would be maybe 2/5th of what is possible with one eye looking forwards. I don't really know how to give you a FOV number or comparison, sorry. But it is enough to easily see a good bit of a 0603 component and the surrounding PCB.
For reading the letters on IC's I do not think a stereo microscope is what you want. A major component of seeing the letters is the angle of light, and with this microscope that I bought you can change the angle of light only a little. I use this, http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Microscope ... =loupe+60x, for magnification of letters and small stuff. The working distance is horrific, but the light is extremely powerful and magnification is quite high, so it is worth a shot to try out, especially given how cheap it is.
I want to be able to eventually look at chips I decap. :P Besides, I will still have the 5x eye pieces, so I can use that for more general stuff. Not to mention that I have a larger interest in photo lithography for not only PCB's but super small stuff, in the hundreds of nano meters
Though, I think I may need even higher magnification for that...
I agree with all the light comments, the included light is more useful as a hand warmer than an actual light. :P I mean, it gets hot, VERY hot, after only ten minute of use. I am going to stick a high power led in there or make my own led ring thing for this microscope.
Also, one bad thing about this microscope is that it falls over if you rotate it too far. I will also think up of some extremely advanced method of keeping it up right! And for some reason the left eyepiece fogs up after a few minutes of looking through, while the right one stays fine, it is so weird.
How much did you guys pay for yours? Mine was $200, hopefully I did not get ripped off, but it does seem to be high quality, with the all metal construction and whatnot.
And lastly, I got the one that has the 5x eyepieces and 10x eyepieces, but I will email the company in hopes of exchanging the 10x eye pieces for the 40x eye pieces, which cost only four dollars more.
