For that sign, put LEDs along the outside of the sign so they shine through the clear acrylic layer behind the aluminum, should shine up the letters nicely without any spots!
SMD LED strip on the top should light that sucker up really well and because it's a side method of lighting it the light won't punch through the Blog letters that much.
13:11 No, not just rom! :D Old nes and SNES cartridges could contain anything from SRAM to backup batteries to co-processors, math processors, extra ram!
Dave, my first HP calculator was the 41CV and was bought in 1985 (I wanted an HP15C, but they had stopped making them, I think this was a better one!). I also had the math pack as well as an engineering pack and memory pack. Absolutely loved my 41CV. Its demise was the fact that it used N-Cells and those batteries were notoriously hard to find, and were very expensive compared to stanard AA or AAA batteries. My Keyboard finally died on it in 2001 and I replaced it with an HP48GX (which I still use today).
For the back light, could you take some of that film you harvested from the the LED lit LCD monitors some episodes ago? Spreading out light from an array of point sources is what that stuff is designed to do, right?
The wasted NES cartridge space is due to the front-loading design of the NES. The Japanese version was top-loading (with much smaller cartridges) but IIRC Nintendo wanted to avoid comparisons to the other crappy machines on the market and made it more VCR-like.
You should be able to light it pretty well through the frosted glass as that should diffuse the LEDs to avoid spots. Only problem then is that you'll get light leaking out in the glass.
The uARM annoys me to an extent mainly because of the servos they're using on it, making the arm an open loop system (yes, the servos themselves are closed loop, but the controller for the arm has to make assumptions), using stepper motors isn't going to make it a closed looped system either, not to say it wouldn't be an improvement. The robot arms my university had used regular DC motors with motor encoders (optical or quadrature encoders, I'm not sure, didn't have enough time to see if I could take off some of the covers) and limit switches. As I mentioned to Chris Gammell on twitter, it wouldn't be too hard to remove the servo electronics and turn it into a closed loop system. But will all that being said, it looks like a really nice simple design, and great as a toy. But if you wanted a pick and place machine, a SCARA arm would be a better choice ;)
Which country did the Sinclair TV come from? As far as I'm aware, in the UK, we used UHF for TV signals, whereas in Australia (and South Africa), VHF is/was used, so to get something from the UK to work on the TV radio waves there, it needs a fix to alter the frequency range first. Nice sign, I really hope your double sisded tape holds up well. Would be a disaster to find it on the floor one morning because of some dodgy tape.
23:43 I ate a huge amount of KarlFazer in Finland when I was there on a scholarship for 4 months. Strange to see the logo from Australia through youtube on eevblog :).
Yes it's a real good thing, I got that game for my B-day one year(Did not ask for it), and in my family we only got games on B-days, Christmas, or we earned the money ourselves, so I was stuck playing that POS!!
Also, NES games typically use the TV refresh rate as its clock, do even if you bypass the region lock, playing an NTSC game on a PAL console would be slower than usual.
Hey dave or anyone reading, I recently purchased a security camera and it uses a phone cable, i figured out that it uses component cables as an output, so i made an adapter with a prototype pcb that has a phone jack, 12v jack and rca component video out and audio out, the adapter works but when for some reason the internal mic on the camera starts making noises like when you hear somebody talking on a stage and it makes a really loud noise that type of noise. i thought it might of been because the signal lead is close to the power tracks on the pcb but when i moved them it still did the same thing, as you may know rca component cables have 2 cables one for ground and the other for the signal. I have both video and audio grounded together with the 12v ground i think that is what is causing the noise, what do you think i should do?
I actually like the tight fit for the headers. I have some adaptors with much larger holes, and the headers flop around so much it's difficult to solder them so they are 90 degrees to the board.
The sad thing with these smd2breadboard adapters is that there are just too many possible ones to stock up on them all, and just in the moment you need one, you don't have the right one. Wish that mail had gone accidentally redirected to me ^^
My dad had one of those HP calculators! I remember finding it in the attic, when I was a kid. The batteries where dead, so I never saw it function. It's probably still around here somewhere.
You can use woven fiber mesh backlight on the logo with a diffuser, i think a few years a go i got some samples from a company. One high power led on the diffuser and you are set to go.
Dave, don't you have a heap of old 15-17" monitors in the lab? Steal the CCFLs/LEDs from one or two of 'em, and use that for the sign. Hell, you could maybe slap on a whole backlight panel as-is or cut to size, or just scavenge the diffuser/fresnel sheets to even out the lighting regardless of its source. On the other hand, you've already got the sign mounted on frosted glass, right? How would it look if you just used that to diffuse the lighting? Might make a bit of a halo effect around the sign too :)
The nxp.com links for SMD package posters in description are no longer working. I found alternative locations here: www.bdtic.com/DownLoad/NXP/Discretes_package_poster.pdf www.bdtic.com/DownLoad/NXP/Discrete_Flat_No-leads_DFN_package_poster.pdf
I've got that same Microsoft Lifecam webcam. It takes decent quality video but the software that controls the autofocus function is terrible. Every time you move it even a bit, the auto focus goes in and out over and over until it finally finds the focus. Luckily you can set it to manual focus so that may not be a problem with this microscope version.
Dave I have an idea on how to light up your new sign that might work. Why not rip the backlights out of some of our dumpster dive monitors and use those? That should provide even coverage and a nice bright white light.
Jammy bugger, I have been after an HP-41 for years! :D I suspect the makers of that robot arm are just using Kickstarter as an alternative to Ebay, it doesn't exactly look like a technological breakthrough. Stuff like that was being made back in the 80s.
Nice to see you've got a 41 Dave! I have a 41C,41CV and 41CX! (I'm a fan) Mine are in mint, and I even have a several HP-IL devices you can control using that (HP 3468 multimeter and HP3421 data acquisition module. With a little imagination it's amazing what you can get that combination to do! Greatest calculator ever made. Have fun!
I had one in 1984.. Awesome calculator until my wife threw it out a few years later due to a broken battery wire. sigh.... Anyways I had bought a book about hacking your 41cv. Pretty odd procedure which involved pulling the memory card while the calculator was powered up.
Dave, try backlighting it with an EL-panel! :)
Glad you like the sign.
Yeah first thing I thought when I saw the clear sides of the letters, backlighting should work.
Christian Gerefalk Yeah, and EL-panels would make a good video of their own. :)
Only problem is that they have quite a short lifespan.
Send all future packages to:
Dave Johns,
That Crazy Austrian Guy
3-)
Great Idea Bruce
It's Dave Jones and he's from Australia, not Austria.
That's the point
Matt Warne
You knew there'd be at least one... it's the literal internet, after all...
Yeap Gotta love them Thomas Couey
For that sign, put LEDs along the outside of the sign so they shine through the clear acrylic layer behind the aluminum, should shine up the letters nicely without any spots!
I love these mail bag segments. It shows how large and enthusiastic the EEVBlog community is.
28:10 My suggestion on 'backlighting' the sign: "side-light it" with bright LEDS on each side with the light filling up the background
That EEVblog sign was beautifully made. A+
SMD LED strip on the top should light that sucker up really well and because it's a side method of lighting it the light won't punch through the Blog letters that much.
Dave: lighting up the sign, hit the light around the edges with led strip lights, then it should make its way out of the edges of the letters.
13:11 No, not just rom! :D Old nes and SNES cartridges could contain anything from SRAM to backup batteries to co-processors, math processors, extra ram!
Dave, my first HP calculator was the 41CV and was bought in 1985 (I wanted an HP15C, but they had stopped making them, I think this was a better one!). I also had the math pack as well as an engineering pack and memory pack. Absolutely loved my 41CV. Its demise was the fact that it used N-Cells and those batteries were notoriously hard to find, and were very expensive compared to stanard AA or AAA batteries. My Keyboard finally died on it in 2001 and I replaced it with an HP48GX (which I still use today).
A whole 48 minutes! Way to go. Thumbs up. Thanks
About the HP41. All I know about their serials is that the first two digits is the manufacturing year, in number of years since 1960. This one 1988
Why are you not able to easily get an analog video signal Dave, you have an analog transmitter in the corner ;-)
For backlighting your sign, use some of the diffuser board from the backlight of one of those extra LCD monitors that you seem to have too many of...
In the 1980`s the hp41 (with hp-ib aka ieee 488)was used on the space shuttle ,thanks for reminding us!!
DC 'servo' motor on your JohnsBot seems like motor for suction pump...
He said "Guten Tag". Awesome :)
Vielen Dank :-)
Dave Johns is my favorite EEVBlog host.
maybe if you mount a strip of LEDs behind the wall, the milk glass will sufficiently diffuse the light?
Perhaps roughing up the rear surface of the sign and and then a shot of aluminium rattle can to diffuse any side lighting forward?
For the backlighting I'd go with an EL panel (or several small ones) rather than LEDs. You keep uniformity this way.
For the back light, could you take some of that film you harvested from the the LED lit LCD monitors some episodes ago? Spreading out light from an array of point sources is what that stuff is designed to do, right?
The wasted NES cartridge space is due to the front-loading design of the NES. The Japanese version was top-loading (with much smaller cartridges) but IIRC Nintendo wanted to avoid comparisons to the other crappy machines on the market and made it more VCR-like.
21:46 what's the bookmarked page on the amp hour notepad? I noticed the bookmark on the bottom of the book
You should be able to light it pretty well through the frosted glass as that should diffuse the LEDs to avoid spots. Only problem then is that you'll get light leaking out in the glass.
_"Dave Johns"_ I had to laugh.
Having a rough day... seeing this in the sub box just made it a whole lot better. Much love from 'Murica (U-S-A, U-S-A!)
The uARM annoys me to an extent mainly because of the servos they're using on it, making the arm an open loop system (yes, the servos themselves are closed loop, but the controller for the arm has to make assumptions), using stepper motors isn't going to make it a closed looped system either, not to say it wouldn't be an improvement. The robot arms my university had used regular DC motors with motor encoders (optical or quadrature encoders, I'm not sure, didn't have enough time to see if I could take off some of the covers) and limit switches. As I mentioned to Chris Gammell on twitter, it wouldn't be too hard to remove the servo electronics and turn it into a closed loop system. But will all that being said, it looks like a really nice simple design, and great as a toy. But if you wanted a pick and place machine, a SCARA arm would be a better choice ;)
Which country did the Sinclair TV come from? As far as I'm aware, in the UK, we used UHF for TV signals, whereas in Australia (and South Africa), VHF is/was used, so to get something from the UK to work on the TV radio waves there, it needs a fix to alter the frequency range first.
Nice sign, I really hope your double sisded tape holds up well. Would be a disaster to find it on the floor one morning because of some dodgy tape.
One of the best mailbag videos ever! Nice job Dave.
a steel ruler and a sharp stanley knife will separate those adapter boards, a nice deep score either side and snap.
I think AVGN demo'd the BTTF game if you want to see, I remember it was pretty naff
23:43 I ate a huge amount of KarlFazer in Finland when I was there on a scholarship for 4 months. Strange to see the logo from Australia through youtube on eevblog :).
Oh Dave, I like your videos before watching it, and as always it's such a pleasure to sit and watch you, please keep the good work, thx
Dave, use some laptop screen backlights for your sign and it'll be a beeuuty!
The Back to the Future time clock was the best mail bag item, the new sign is a good second place.
Good as always. Dave, what a pity no one sent you a knife sharpener!!
Oh I forgot, someone did. Cheers.
"I don't have a nintendo entertainment system"
Uh-oh. Prepare thy mailbox, the nintendos are coming.
"I didn't know there was a Back to the Future game!"
Yeah, that's a good thing.
Yes it's a real good thing, I got that game for my B-day one year(Did not ask for it), and in my family we only got games on B-days, Christmas, or we earned the money ourselves, so I was stuck playing that POS!!
That's why I warned him not to play it, lol
Can confirm:
Cold as f*** in Minnesota.
Today's low is -27° C...
4:57 this board design is really beautiful
Also, NES games typically use the TV refresh rate as its clock, do even if you bypass the region lock, playing an NTSC game on a PAL console would be slower than usual.
24:55 I said "No way!" at the same time as Dave :-) What a beautiful gift!
Australia, not Austria... and Jones, not Johns :-)
I would have liked to have seen some kind of DaveCAD logo on each page of the notebook. :D
Pretty sure that 'servo motor' you showed at the end is in fact a suction motor for the cup at the end of the arm.
Hey dave or anyone reading, I recently purchased a security camera and it uses a phone cable, i figured out that it uses component cables as an output, so i made an adapter with a prototype pcb that has a phone jack, 12v jack and rca component video out and audio out, the adapter works but when for some reason the internal mic on the camera starts making noises like when you hear somebody talking on a stage and it makes a really loud noise that type of noise. i thought it might of been because the signal lead is close to the power tracks on the pcb but when i moved them it still did the same thing, as you may know rca component cables have 2 cables one for ground and the other for the signal. I have both video and audio grounded together with the 12v ground i think that is what is causing the noise, what do you think i should do?
I want to know where I can get that lab notebook thingy, scourged the links and nothing :(
rule number one never eat stuff random people send you. be on the safe side dave.
not everyone out there is a good person .stay safe
1:30 tagete??
use an EL backlight its a flat plastic sheet that emits light when energised the same stuff they use in watches
Dave: Please sharpen your knife...
If anyone is interested in the SMD Adpater PCBs from Moritz Augsburger, they are online on github.
I actually like the tight fit for the headers. I have some adaptors with much larger holes, and the headers flop around so much it's difficult to solder them so they are 90 degrees to the board.
The sad thing with these smd2breadboard adapters is that there are just too many possible ones to stock up on them all, and just in the moment you need one, you don't have the right one. Wish that mail had gone accidentally redirected to me ^^
Ah - the famous Finnish chocolate. One of my favorite ones. Maybe use diffused SMD led's, LCD screen backlight assembly or EL-foil for backlighting.
My dad had one of those HP calculators! I remember finding it in the attic, when I was a kid. The batteries where dead, so I never saw it function. It's probably still around here somewhere.
You can use woven fiber mesh backlight on the logo with a diffuser, i think a few years a go i got some samples from a company. One high power led on the diffuser and you are set to go.
Hi Dave , do you still have your HP 41CV that you may want to let go?
48:15 aw sweet, I have the same memory card for my cam
Dave, don't you have a heap of old 15-17" monitors in the lab? Steal the CCFLs/LEDs from one or two of 'em, and use that for the sign. Hell, you could maybe slap on a whole backlight panel as-is or cut to size, or just scavenge the diffuser/fresnel sheets to even out the lighting regardless of its source.
On the other hand, you've already got the sign mounted on frosted glass, right? How would it look if you just used that to diffuse the lighting? Might make a bit of a halo effect around the sign too :)
The nxp.com links for SMD package posters in description are no longer working.
I found alternative locations here:
www.bdtic.com/DownLoad/NXP/Discretes_package_poster.pdf
www.bdtic.com/DownLoad/NXP/Discrete_Flat_No-leads_DFN_package_poster.pdf
I can confirm that the chocolate tastes really good. A friend from Finland sent me one of those chocolate bars once :) .
AMPHOUR engineering notebook just replaced Dave Cad gold edition.
I've got that same Microsoft Lifecam webcam. It takes decent quality video but the software that controls the autofocus function is terrible. Every time you move it even a bit, the auto focus goes in and out over and over until it finally finds the focus. Luckily you can set it to manual focus so that may not be a problem with this microscope version.
Could anyone explain to me why engineering paper only has squares in one side?
I had a fully functional 41CX but I lost it shortly after I bought it!
Tap the back of that perspex and throw some LEDs in there. Would make an awesome sign even more awesome, Dave.
The dc motor was for the suction pump not for a servo....
41:25 YU factory, where Yukkuri are made!!
Great video!! But I did not find the "Amp Hour" lab Notebook jet....but i do want one!
I'd backlight that sign with diffusion material from an old LCD and some white LEDs.
That was my thought too. He did a teardown of an LCD TV a while back. I wonder if he still has the parts?
Hp-41cv calculator I think. Still have mine.
Try some ccfl tubes and diffuser material from an lcd screen to backlight the sign. That should be a bit more even than the leds.
"Gold" foiling, I think it is just anodised aluminium but it looks sexy anyway.
Great video Mr. Johns!
24:10 QUALITY EEVBLOG TIME
Dave I have an idea on how to light up your new sign that might work. Why not rip the backlights out of some of our dumpster dive monitors and use those? That should provide even coverage and a nice bright white light.
Love the Les Stroud style sendoff :)
Try EL panel. It will light up evenly, so you will have a gorgeous sign.
the amp hour notebook looks great, I definitely need one
Jammy bugger, I have been after an HP-41 for years! :D I suspect the makers of that robot arm are just using Kickstarter as an alternative to Ebay, it doesn't exactly look like a technological breakthrough. Stuff like that was being made back in the 80s.
Your glass wall is already diffused. Try some lighting from behind the wall
Btw yes, Fazer is great and famous Finish chocolate, I am quite surprised that you never heard of it...
Do you have an weblog pool room?
Do not clean your Nintendo cartridge with benzene! Love that warning.
Light it through your diffused glass on the lab ;)
It's beautiful but I'd gone with a blue or red instead of a black for EEV. Black contrast great with white but horrible with metallic.
LJN game. I guess we all know what that means...
Hi Dave,
Please, please use that sharpening stone I sent you last month,
that Swiss Army Blade is DULL.
Regards,
James in Raleigh, NC
Nice to see you've got a 41 Dave! I have a 41C,41CV and 41CX! (I'm a fan) Mine are in mint, and I even have a several HP-IL devices you can control using that (HP 3468 multimeter and HP3421 data acquisition module. With a little imagination it's amazing what you can get that combination to do! Greatest calculator ever made. Have fun!
Makerbot style? Have you seen the latest makerbots?
I had one in 1984.. Awesome calculator until my wife threw it out a few years later due to a broken battery wire. sigh.... Anyways I had bought a book about hacking your 41cv. Pretty odd procedure which involved pulling the memory card while the calculator was powered up.
what kind of calculator is that in the thumb nail? It makes 7s and 3s upside down.
Dave, come back! You forgot to lock your office door!
and he left his camera in the hallway with the SD card in, must have picked up the wrong card !
25:08 OMG an EEVBlog sign!
You should check out the price of the Karl Fazer chocolate. Ouchio.
the choklate is called fazerin sininen and its real good
I love that EEVBlog sign the finnish guys can manufacture great things, dave what about adding a nice background light to the letters if possible? :)
That sign looked awesome! Wow !