what projects have you guys been doing

[Neutrideo]

What have you guys been doing lately, I personally have worked on my raspberry pi being a low cost mysql server for multiple purposes(dont roast me, one is for a minecraft server).

[Guest]

Planning for my next pc build. When you cant afford it xd.

[Neutrideo]

1 minute ago, TheBeastPC said:

Planning for my next pc build. When you cant afford it xd.

I know the feeling. I got a build waiting to happen, I can chuck you a few build ideas if you want!!

[Guest]

Yeah, that would be great! I have a budget of $500 and I live in Australia for your convenience.

[Neutrideo]

1 minute ago, TheBeastPC said:

Yeah, that would be great! I have a budget of $500 and I live in Australia for your convenience.

500 dollars in Australia, I live in Aus as well. Can you stretch you budget to around 700, 800. I will post some links when I get on my pc!!

[Guest]

$800 would be ideal, since it would provide me with slightly better performance in terms of gaming and also it will limit the costs of upgrading my components further down the line.

[Salacious B Crum]

Fooling around with an Arduino Uno R3 haven't had much time with it yet also converting an old ATX power supply into a bench top power supply for the Arduino and learning to solder for the first time seems to be going well

[Neutrideo]

2 minutes ago, TheBeastPC said:

$800 would be ideal, since it would provide me with slightly better performance in terms of gaming and also it will limit the costs of upgrading my components further down the line.

That's great, I think I have the perfect build!!!

[Neutrideo]

4 minutes ago, mrbilky said:

Fooling around with an Arduino Uno R3 haven't had much time with it yet also converting an old ATX power supply into a bench top power supply for the Arduino and learning to solder for the first time seems to be going well

Nice, I've been wanting to pickup soldering, might try to repair a pair of old senheisers with a dead cheap skill, eh!!!

[Guest]

Just now, Neutrideo said:

That's great, I think I have the perfect build!!!

Thanks for your help! Much appreciated!

[Salacious B Crum]

1 minute ago, Neutrideo said:

Nice, I've been wanting to pickup soldering, might try to repair a pair of old senheisers with a dead cheap skill, eh!!!

Yeah I'm finding it much easier than I thought I'm just waiting on a resistor to place a dummy load on the power supply to keep it stable during idle and I'll be able to devote more time with rapid proto typing I like that its open source so you can obtain code for a project that already has proof on concept tackled for you my first project of course will be RGB as we all know that improves performance!

[Neutrideo]

Just now, mrbilky said:

of course will be RGB as we all know that improves performance!

Course.. I don't really have time due to my school being silly and being a term ahead of everyone, so I got my yearlies, and I gotta study even though I know I'm not gonna do to well in general, my name at school is doctor 45%. 

[Hackentosher]

I'm building a bigass 18650 battery (4s14p) for field charging drone batteries. I haven't taken many pictures of it, but I'm almost done building. 

[mariushm]

2 hours ago, Hackentosher said:

I'm building a bigass 18650 battery (4s14p) for field charging drone batteries. I haven't taken many pictures of it, but I'm almost done building. 

 

You shouldn't solder wires to batteries.

 

You should use strips of copper or aluminum and spot-weld the batteries.

And ideally you would leave maybe half an inch between the rows of batteries and place some fans on the side to blow air through them so that when they don't overheat when charging or discharging.

 

Yeah, it would work but how many times would you actually recharge the drone batteries from this pack?  Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a 100-200$ power generator and carry it with you? Such a power generator would only weigh around 20 Kg (less than 50lbs, not that heavy), and you can do 400-600w for around 5 hours from maybe 5 liters of gasoline mixed with maybe half a liter of oil.

 

Here's an example in my country from a store specialized in building tools and equipment and crafts and hobbies : https://www.praktiker.ro/generator-de-curent-raider-rd-gg01.html

 

About 100$, does 650w for up to 6 hours on a full tank, about 0.67 liters/h (about 1.05 gallons of gasoline + some oil you mix in the gasoline for 6h of running) and it weights 16 Kg (~ 35lbs) without fuel

 

Lots of energy density in gasoline...

 

 

 

[Hackentosher]

Soldering to these is fine. It's not like I'm using a blow torch to melt the solder. Keeping in mind that these batteries survived abuse in their original home, I think they can take a 20 seconds or less of heat. I have also tested 3 out of the 4 cells (1s14p) and they are all within a few hundred mah of their expected 28,000. The cells are fine. 

 

This battery when complete will be a little over 470wh of energy. My LiPos are about 20wh a piece allowing me to recharge all 6 of my 4s LiPos about 4 times. That's not bad if you ask me, and I'm more than likely going to break both my quads before I fly 26 packs. 

 

As for your generator, yes that is a more energetic solution, but I am building this to be portable. I want to be able to throw the battery in my backpack with all my other gear and go on a hike. All 56 cells weigh somewhere around 2-2.5kg which is a hell of a lot lighter, cleaner, and quieter than a generator and a gallon of gas. 

 

As for cost, all of  these cells were generously donated buy @iamdarkyoshi

[Hackentosher]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Snip

 

 

 

Whoops, forgot to quote you. 

[mariushm]

12 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

Whoops, forgot to quote you. 

I have auto notify (or auto follow, i don't know the exact term) on threads i post to, so i got it, no worries.

 

Yeah, makes sense when you put it like that, obviously can't shove that generator in the backpack.

 

As they're recycled batteries, I'm worried that those batteries aren't quite all the same level of quality, some having less capacity than others so they'd charge unevenly.

Also, I wonder about the efficiency of the charging, since you say you're making 4s and that would be around 10..12v DC ? Is your charger designed to take in 12v from let's say a car and charge those drone battery packs? You need higher voltage than the nominal voltage of your battery packs to charge them... i hope that ~12v is enough.

 

Either way, you'll have to be careful to insulate the ends of those batteries, you wouldn't want to short inside your backpack and get it burning... Good luck, that's all I can say.

 

PS : we need something like this : https://www.wired.com/2011/06/tiny-rotary-engines-could-power-gadgets-with-gasoline/

 

[Hackentosher]

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

I have auto notify (or auto follow, i don't know the exact term) on threads i post to, so i got it, no worries.

 

Yeah, makes sense when you put it like that, obviously can't shove that generator in the backpack.

 

As they're recycled batteries, I'm worried that those batteries aren't quite all the same level of quality, some having less capacity than others so they'd charge unevenly.

Also, I wonder about the efficiency of the charging, since you say you're making 4s and that would be around 10..12v DC ? Is your charger designed to take in 12v from let's say a car and charge those drone battery packs? You need higher voltage than the nominal voltage of your battery packs to charge them... i hope that ~12v is enough.

 

Either way, you'll have to be careful to insulate the ends of those batteries, you wouldn't want to short inside your backpack and get it burning... Good luck, that's all I can say.

 

PS : we need something like this : https://www.wired.com/2011/06/tiny-rotary-engines-could-power-gadgets-with-gasoline/

 

@iamdarkyoshi tested all of these batteries for me and wrote their individual capacities on the side. They range from 1700-2300mah.

 

My hitec x2ac charger takes 11-18v DC. A fully charged 4s pack is 16.8v so it's perfect. I use a cx430 with some 12awg wire connected to the 12v rail to power it right now. 

[Unimportant]

• Designing the power stage for a semi-discrete 1000W class D audio amplifier I'm trying to develop. Semi-discrete as in allowed to use chips (op-amps, gate driver, ...) but no all-in-one class D chip. Having issues with ringing on the FET gates. Gate resistors dampen the ring but makes the switching sluggish. Jury's still out on what to attempt next.
• Multi-cell balancing Li-ion CC-CV charger using semi-discrete buck converters.
• Repairing a Philips LED tv with a SMPS problem.
• Designing a PCB to replace the defective membrane keypad on my Fluke 99 scopemeter.

 

 

[Maxpphire]

The things that are stopping me from doing all of this right now is money.

 

• Building 3 new computers (One for PC Gaming, One for Music Arcade Gaming, and another for not music but arcade gaming) while using my old one as a media station
• Replacing all the buttons in my Pop'n Music controller with Sanwas
• Building this to play NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Game Boy Advanced games https://learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-raspberry-pi-gameboy/

[Neutrideo]

9 hours ago, TheBeastPC said:

Thanks for your help! Much appreciated!

I got some lists

If you want cheap like heck: 

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/RVcmhq

A better one

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/VmgpYr

Thats it

i got some over 1000 if you want, just hit me up

[Neutrideo]

Anyone think this should be an ongoing thread??

[Hackentosher]

53 minutes ago, Neutrideo said:

Anyone think this should be an ongoing thread??

Yeah man, it's the hobby electronics section. A thread like this should be pinned in this subforum. 

[Neutrideo]

@LinusTech please pin this thread or @nicklmg

[Hackentosher]

41 minutes ago, Neutrideo said:

@LinusTech please pin this thread or @nicklmg

You need a few pages before the thread can be pinned.