Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it
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@Polygeekery The timer function like you do is super helpful
A mechanical timer is just as effective and doesn't risk leaking your personal data outside the house
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@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
A mechanical timer is just as effective and doesn't risk leaking your personal data outside the house
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Well, of course I have privacy concerns. But unless I want to go back to a flip phone that ship sailed a long time ago and there's fuckall that I can do about it unless I want to be a troglodyte.
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@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
My dad did follow through on it. He doesn't believe in empty threats.
Neither do I. I like to be known as a person of my word, even if you don't like those words.
Yeah, me too
The meta, too strong, too much meta (dies)
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
unless I want to be a troglodyte.
Hey, there are advantages to that. Caves can't be set on fire.
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@HardwareGeek said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
unless I want to be a troglodyte.
Hey, there are advantages to that. Caves can't be set on fire.
Except for the parts that are filled with explosive gases just waiting for the slightest spark.
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@HardwareGeek said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Caves can't be set on fire.
Not with that attitude
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@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@HardwareGeek even as a kid I knew that was a threat that was never going to be followed-through on
Solution: follow through on it. Just once should be enough.
My wife has a story about a disastrous trip to Disneyland. The kids were squabbling in the back, and eventually, dad threatened "if you don't quiet down, we're turning around and going home." The kids continued to squabble. The gates of Disneyland came into view.
And at that moment, dad had enough, pulled the car over, spanked everyone, and they went home: another 2.5 hours of driving with sniffling kids in the back.
The kids never assumed anything was an empty threat ever again. My wife and her siblings were, of course, scarred for life, and are now fine, upstanding members of society. What a waste!
(From the parents' perspective: if the kids are that much of a handful on the way in, you just know it's going to be a bad day of squabbling, whining kids. Just give up early.)
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@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@HardwareGeek even as a kid I knew that was a threat that was never going to be followed-through on
Solution: follow through on it. Just once should be enough.
...for your wife to get furious at you.
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@PotatoEngineer said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
(From the parents' perspective: if the kids are that much of a handful on the way in, you just know it's going to be a bad day of squabbling, whining kids. Just give up early.)
And way less expensive as well. Disneyland tickets (and the ancillary costs) aren't cheap.
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@Gąska said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@HardwareGeek even as a kid I knew that was a threat that was never going to be followed-through on
Solution: follow through on it. Just once should be enough.
...for your wife to get furious at you.
This would happen soon enough anyway.
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@Benjamin-Hall don't you have to pay for the tickets in advance, though?
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@Gąska said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Benjamin-Hall don't you have to pay for the tickets in advance, though?
Never personally payed for it--the only times I ever went to Disneyland was as a kid, and we had free tickets from my grandpa's work, back in the days when that was a thing.
I do know from my friends who are Disney fiends that generally the cost of the tickets is only the beginning. Everything in there (other than the rides) costs tons of money. Like movie concessions, that's where the big profit margin is for the park.
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@Gąska said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Benjamin-Hall don't you have to pay for the tickets in advance, though?
No.
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@Gąska Last time I was there (which was at least 15 years ago, so things may have changed), you could walk up to the ticket booth at the gate and buy tickets on the spot. There may (I don't remember) have been a discount for advance purchase, and there definitely was for multi-day passes, and some special events/activities needed advanced booking, but that wasn't required for general admission.
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@loopback0 said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I mostly use them for cooking timers but yeah.
How do you cook a timer, anyway?
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I think you have to mash it first.
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@Zecc said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@loopback0 said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I mostly use them for cooking timers but yeah.
How do you cook a timer, anyway?
Quickly before it realises.
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Wuss.
OK, I have to actually keep the work-issued XCover4 on me too, since the only indoor range that's been open all the way through the rona-panic has app-opened (-only) doors.
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@HardwareGeek said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Gąska Last time I was there (which was at least 15 years ago, so things may have changed), you could walk up to the ticket booth at the gate and buy tickets on the spot. There may (I don't remember) have been a discount for advance purchase, and there definitely was for multi-day passes, and some special events/activities needed advanced booking, but that wasn't required for general admission.
My wife's family is Navy, so they almost certainly had discounted tickets bought on the Navy base. This story is decades old, so I'm not sure if they were bought for a specific day or just as free-form use-anytime tickets, but they were probably use-anytime tickets. At any rate, my wife's father had the conviction to turn this car around, and that's all that mattered to the family.
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@loopback0 said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Who the fuck wants Alexa to read them a story?!
My kids use "tell a bedtime story" sometimes. If you get it wrong and say "play a bedtime story" it opens audible instead. The Echos are linked to my wife's Amazon account, which has one audiobook on it.
And that's why we sometimes check on a sleeping child to find they were lulled off to sleep to the dulcit tones of the psychopath test by Jon Ronson
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@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery The timer function like you do is super helpful
A mechanical timer is just as effective and doesn't risk leaking your personal data outside the house
Can you (with your hands full because you're busy cooking/working/whatever) set a timer, or, more importantly, shut one off?
Because if not.. it's not as effective
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@sloosecannon said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
shut one off
Easy if I'm using meat tenderizer at the time
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@sloosecannon When you're cooking you don't have both hands full all the time. My parents have a mechanical timer by the stove (or most modern electric ovens will have a manually operated electric one built in) and it's great.
And yeah you can shut those clockwork ones off by winding them back to 0 if you need to.
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@sloosecannon said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@bobjanova said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery The timer function like you do is super helpful
A mechanical timer is just as effective and doesn't risk leaking your personal data outside the house
Can you (with your hands full because you're busy cooking/working/whatever) set a timer, or, more importantly, shut one off?
Because if not.. it's not as effective
I usually use electronic ones rather than mechanical, but being kitchen timers, they accumulate ... stuff, let's say, on and around the buttons(1). Nevertheless, they continue to function well, and I can cancel them by just pressing the start/stop button.
(1) By their very nature, you don't operate them with 100% clean fingers. At the very least, your fingers will have traces of whatever you're preparing. OK if it's hard cheese and suchlike, not so OK if you're preparing dough or other squishy/sticky stuff. And avoid touching them with fingers that have been manipulating high-Scoville chillies... (I'm currently up to bird's-eye chillies, which are substantially hot. Disposable gloves recommended when preparing them.)
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
By their very nature, you don't operate them with 100% clean fingers. At the very least, your fingers will have traces of whatever you're preparing. OK if it's hard cheese and suchlike, not so OK if you're preparing dough or other squishy/sticky stuff. And avoid touching them with fingers that have been manipulating high-Scoville chillies...
Raw meat/salmonella and the like really should have been first on your list.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
substantially hot. Disposable gloves recommended when preparing them.
Infinitely more so if you wear contacts. At the very least you should lightly oil your hands.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
At the very least you should lightly oil your hands.
Sometimes I post things in the morning without thinking about whether they would make sense to someone not in my head.
Capsaicin is an oil. If your hands are dry, as mine usually are, and you handle sliced hot peppers (or God help you if they've been processed more finely, like once happened with my molcajete) the oil soaks into your hands. Then many hours later you're removing your contacts and congrats, you just maced yourself.
If you don't have disposable gloves handy you can rub some olive oil into your hands, which will help prevent the oil from absorbing into your skin. It only works for short term exposure. If you're processing a lot of peppers you can still have issues.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
At the very least you should lightly oil your hands.
Sometimes I post things in the morning without thinking about whether they would make sense to someone not in my head.
Capsaicin is an oil. If your hands are dry, as mine usually are, and you handle sliced hot peppers (or God help you if they've been processed more finely, like once happened with my molcajete) the oil soaks into your hands. Then many hours later you're removing your contacts and congrats, you just maced yourself.
If you don't have disposable gloves handy you can rub some olive oil into your hands, which will help prevent the oil from absorbing into your skin. It only works for short term exposure. If you're processing a lot of peppers you can still have issues.
Uh-huh. Capsaicin.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I usually use electronic ones rather than mechanical, but being kitchen timers, they accumulate
I finally cleaned mine this past weekend. When the grunge starts to sneer back at you... yeah, it's time.
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@dcon said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I usually use electronic ones rather than mechanical, but being kitchen timers, they accumulate
I finally cleaned mine this past weekend. When the grunge starts to sneer back at you... yeah, it's time.
Pshaw. It's only really necessary when it threatens to abscond with its home to greener pastures.
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@Rhywden said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@dcon said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I usually use electronic ones rather than mechanical, but being kitchen timers, they accumulate
I finally cleaned mine this past weekend. When the grunge starts to sneer back at you... yeah, it's time.
Pshaw. It's only really necessary when it threatens to abscond with its home to greener pastures.
It was close. Didn't quite need the hammer and chisel. Just liberal use of Dawn dish washing liquid.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
someone not in my head
Of all the places someone could be, not in your head is the best.
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@HardwareGeek said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
someone not in my head
Of all the places someone could be, not in your head is the best.
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@HardwareGeek said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
someone not in my head
Of all the places someone could be, not in your head is the best.
WRONG
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
By their very nature, you don't operate them with 100% clean fingers. At the very least, your fingers will have traces of whatever you're preparing. OK if it's hard cheese and suchlike, not so OK if you're preparing dough or other squishy/sticky stuff. And avoid touching them with fingers that have been manipulating high-Scoville chillies...
Raw meat/salmonella and the like really should have been first on your list.
You're not wrong, but my point was more about them looking yucky, and potentially getting that stuff (whatever it is) coming back onto your hands.
Have you ever prepared high-Scoville chillies without wearing gloves, and then inadvertently touched anywhere near your eyes? I recommend strongly against doing that, even if you don't wear contacts.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
At the very least you should lightly oil your hands.
Sometimes I post things in the morning without thinking about whether they would make sense to someone not in my head.
Capsaicin is an oil. If your hands are dry, as mine usually are, and you handle sliced hot peppers (or God help you if they've been processed more finely, like once happened with my molcajete) the oil soaks into your hands. Then many hours later you're removing your contacts and congrats, you just maced yourself.
More to the point, perhaps, you've permanently maced the contacts, although with the modern trend toward single-use contacts, maybe that's not so much of a problem anymore.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
By their very nature, you don't operate them with 100% clean fingers. At the very least, your fingers will have traces of whatever you're preparing. OK if it's hard cheese and suchlike, not so OK if you're preparing dough or other squishy/sticky stuff. And avoid touching them with fingers that have been manipulating high-Scoville chillies...
Raw meat/salmonella and the like really should have been first on your list.
You're not wrong, but my point was more about them looking yucky, and potentially getting that stuff (whatever it is) coming back onto your hands.
Have you ever prepared high-Scoville chillies without wearing gloves, and then inadvertently touched anywhere near your eyes? I recommend strongly against doing that, even if you don't wear contacts.
I think the hottest I've done that with was California reaper. It burned like hell for a minute and then annoyingly much for 10-15, so not too bad.
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@loopback0 said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Who the fuck wants Alexa to read them a story?!
Only if read in the character's (synthesized) voices. It's hard enough to follow along, requiring small amounts of time travel and backtracking most times people speak, but when things go back-and-forth without hints it gets pretty maddening...
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Want to know something that really annoys me? Lots of the "modules" you can purchase cheaply off of Amazon and eBay and the like are not nearly as modular as they should be.
I am making a lighting controller for my kid's aquarium. It has two 30" LED light bars over it. Until now I have had them hooked up to an outlet where both of the outputs are controlled by a Sonoff Basic. Either all on or all off. And the lighting bars have blue "moon lights" in them, but there is no easy way to control them as they come from the factory and they are also way too bright. I'm wanting a very subtle glow, now a shit ton of blue light keeping our oldest up and he already has enough issues sleeping. It would also be nice to be able to schedule the two lights for a simulated sunrise-sunset sort of arrangement which is nominally better for fish and plants. Basically, for the first hour or so run only the rear light bar, then both light bars for the majority of the day, then turn off the rear light bar an hour or so before they shut off at night. As plants can efficiently uptake blue light, I could run the "moon lights" at full brightness over the course of the day and then cut them back to a lower voltage as a night light for a few hours.
The LED light bars come with 20V power supplies. The white lights draw right at an amp. The "moon lights" draw 100ma, but testing with a bench power supply shows that they will light all the way down to half the normal voltage and draw basically nothing when under driven. Laptop chargers are nominally 19.5V and 3ish amps, close enough so I can gut one of the many I have around here to get me from wall and plenty of amperage to drive the lights. A Wemos D1 Mini, some LM2596 voltage regulators, a 4 relay module I have laying around from 3D printer projects, some perfboard, a potentiometer and a laptop charger, a wee bit of programming, send control events through MQTT and Robert is your parent's brother. I even have extra pins I can use to monitor tank temperature via a DS18B20 sensor that I have leftover from my 3D printer enclosure projects.
The thought was that I could use one LM2596 to supply 5V to run the D1 Mini and relay board, the D1 Mini is 3.3V logic, which works, but I can also invert the signal, run the relay board off of the 5V supply and switch low on the relays, sinking the 5V supply to ground. The second LM2596 I can remove the potentiometer from and mount an external potentiometer to the outside of whatever enclosure I mount all this shit in and be able to adjust the voltage to the moon lights. I can use the four relays to run:
- Front light bar white lights
- Rear light bar white lights
- "Moon lights" at full brightness
- "Moon lights" at reduced voltage as an ambient glow night light
Should be easy peasy.
Here's the relay module I am wanting to use:
I was hoping that I could remove the pin headers and wiring screw terminals and use some 0.1" male and female pin headers to mount everything down, then route all of my circuits to the edge of the perfboard. terminate everything with JST connectors (also from 3D printer projects) and all of the wiring should be super clean. Much better than the normal bird's nest of bullshit I tend to jam inside of project boxes and hope that it doesn't catch fire.
So I need to desolder these items:
You would assume that those items, being perpendicular to each other and all being 0.1" pitch would all be aligned to the same 0.1" grid, right?
I wish. They are both offset in both X and Y by roughly 0.05", off by half a module. The spacing between the output terminal blocks is also off ever so slightly so instead of using a single row of male headers I have to break that in to two strips. So no matter what I do they just won't align for soldering. Well, I can sort of get them to line up, by rotating the module slightly and leaning all of the headers, but then it would look like Ray Charles soldered all this shit with his feet.
These are the kinds of things that happen when you start mixing metric and Imperial measurements. I would bet that the pin headers are 0.1", but laid out on a metric grid as none of the mounting holes even come close to aligning with anything either so I will have to drill holes for standoffs in between perfboard holes so this whole thing is going to end up looking like someone I would make fun of put this whole fucking thing together.
One amusing note: While going through my selection of perfboard I noticed that one variety is branded "Radio Shaek". I should probably buy better quality perfboard and probably explains why some of it smells like smoldering fish oil when I solder to it.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
These are the kinds of things that happen when you start mixing metric and Imperial measurements.
Yes. Most thru-hole components and larger surface-mount ones have pins matching an imperial grid, while smaller surface-mount components tend to have pins matching a metric grid. Which means alignment issues on boards that use both, unless you're really careful.
In addition, those blue terminal blocks? Both metric (5.00 mm pitch) and imperial (0.2 inch / 5.08 mm pitch) models are common. The difference is tiny, but it's cumulative, so that's an easy way to screw up.
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@Zerosquare said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
In addition, those blue terminal blocks? Both metric (5.00 mm pitch) and imperial (0.2 inch / 5.08 mm pitch) models are common. The difference is tiny, but it's cumulative, so that's an easy way to screw up.
Nifty. I learn something new everyday. Measuring across six of the holes I get .984"/25mm. Also, there is an additional 1mm of space between the two blocks themselves which throws off the modularity that much more.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
hope that it doesn't catch fire.
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I mentioned in a privileged area that we are on vacation this week. I received a pretty high compliment from my wife today.
"I didn't realize it until now, and honestly I thought it was all a silly project of yours, but all the home automation stuff really is convenient."
"I know."
"Seriously. You have done it all here and there, a weekend at a time and a room at a time and I haven't really been able to notice it because the changes were so slow and gradual, but it really is convenient."
"I know."
"I really miss it even though I thought it was all silly to begin with. Like, you've set it all up so seamless. I just switch a switch and all the stuff I used to do after just happens. Now we are at a rental condo and I have to use several switches to do what takes one switch at home."
"I know."
"Don't be a smug dick. I'm giving you a compliment on your work."
"I'm not being smug."
"You have seriously done a good job on all of it. I just haven't realized until we spent time somewhere else."
"I know."
Seriously though, it was a pretty good compliment, and I did go for the "spouse acceptance factor" first so she was okay with all of it.
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Regarding the lighting controller I mentioned upthread:
I started on this before vacation but ended up running into some odd behavior that I was not able to figure out until now. I got everything together, but I was unable to ever get just one group of LEDs to light at a time. I could get all LEDs to come on dimly, or all LEDs to come on brightly. But no individual control of them. Without drawing up an entire circuit diagram, which any sane person probably would have started with and would have to post now, here is a rundown of what the 4 relays would do:
- White LEDs on front strip, 19.5V
- White LEDs on rear strip, 19.5V
- Blue LEDs on both strips, 19.5V
- Blue LEDs on both strips, reduced voltage for night lights
I put in diodes, thinking that maybe somehow ground voltage was making its way back through the LEDs. Actually, I ended up putting fucking diodes everywhere.
- 19.5V positive rail
- reduced voltage rail
- ground for white LEDs
- ground for blue LEDs
Nothing. It all stayed the same. Could not illuminate one set at a time.
Today I finally figured it out. The original "lighting controller" (it would only allow you to turn white and blue off and on, but did fuckall else) switches the grounds. The grounds are not commoned.
So now I have to redo a large part of the board, and relay wiring, and power rail wiring. But I should have it figured out now. The four relays will be:
- Ground for white LEDs on front strip
- Ground for white LEDs on rear strip
- Ground for both sets of blue LEDs
- Use NO and NC to switch between 19.5V and reduced voltage for night lights
It is also going to make the programming a bit more complicated since if I were to ground all of the lights while switched to reduced voltage I don't think that the LM2596 will appreciate the load all that well.
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Hmmmmmmm, I wonder if I could get an appropriate wattage buck converter or power supply with a potentiometer for voltage calibration and wire in a digital potentiometer and do the sunrise-sunset more seamlessly?
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You could. But to dim LEDs, a current source would be better suited. Or a PWM controller (but check the frequency ; I don't know about fishes, but some animals are more sensitive to flicker than humans).
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@Zerosquare the LED strips are internally current limited via resistors on the PCB. As such reducing voltage is roughly equivalent to limiting current.
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True, but the useful voltage range is limited. Below a threshold voltage, the LEDs will be completely off. So if you simply use the 0%-100% output voltage range, you're effectively wasting bits of resolution.
The current source and PWM methods don't have this drawback: 0%-100% input maps cleanly to 0%-100% light output.
Of course, that's not critical for what you're doing ; if you're going the digital potentiometer route, you can add an extra fixed resistor to match the useful range.
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Not really IoT or NIoT related, but a video came up in my YouTube feed today and it may be useful for someone at some point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpmVXWBJjrc
Well, the video is entertaining, but the relevant and possibly useful part is that car alternators are able to be repurposed as three-phase motors or generators. Remove the diode pack and do a little simple rewiring and maybe add an electronic speed controller (if you're using it as a motor) and you have a cheap source for three-phase parts.
I watched a video a while back where a guy used one with a water wheel in a creek in his backyard as an experiment in power generation. He did so by damming off a creek in their front yard, digging lots of their yard up in the process and generally acting like an insane person. I remember looking at his later videos and him mentioning his wife had moved out of the house. I have to assume that the weird dam project and underlying mental illness that led him to build it probably contributed.
There's no real reason for me to go into that much detail for this discussion, I just found it morbidly interesting.
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After watching the video I can be pretty certain what the issue is that caused him to quit. I would almost guarantee that it is the buck converter he is using. He mentions at the beginning that it will limit current, and he quits the project (for now) because it cuts out almost instantly, requiring him to turn it off and back on again for it to restart.
Well, you can't really limit current and keep voltage up. When a power supply "limits current" it does so by reducing voltage to keep the current below a set limit. So when the voltage collapses to limit current it is probably throwing the microcontroller or whatever circuitry in the ESC for a loop, requiring a reset.
Get rid of the buck converter and it may work. He added it to attempt to limit the speed for his kid. Or perhaps to accommodate the voltage requirements of the improvised three-phase motor or the ESC. I have NFC what the voltage limits are on an alternator converted to three-phase motor are.