I have finished (mostly) the leakage tester project, the final video is scheduled to go live on Saturday morning.
I had a couple of weird issues I had to resolve, I was seeing skewed voltage and current readings at higher levels. The zener diodes that I was using to clamp the inputs of the Arduino as protection were turning on too soon and starting to clamp, effectively changing the resistor divider ratios, I ended up removing the voltage sensing ones, and changing the current sensing one to a 6.2V instead.
The final design will need avalanche diodes, probably 5.6V rated.
I just purchased a 2010 Mac Pro to replace my 2008 Mac Pro (which I had upgraded with a pair of 3.2GHz CPU’s), the machine looks the same outside, but on the inside is a lot better suited to doing videos.
I transferred the various cards into the new machine, and the SSD etc.
The new machine transcodes video in half the time of the old machine, so it was worth the effort and expense.
I did a 46 minutes long test video on both machines, the old machine transcoded it in 65 minutes 15 seconds, the new machine did it in 32 minutes 40 seconds!
The new machine has dual 6 core, 2.93GHz CPU’s, with the possibility of upgrading it with 3.46GHz versions.
I spent several days roaming around the Gold Coast with my wife, then we flew down to Sydney today and dropped by the EEVBlog lab and spent a few hours chatting with Dave.
Dave was kind enough to run me through his production process and even bought us lunch!
It was great to be able to meet Dave and we had some good conversations.
Whilst we were there Dave recorded a video on a calculator I had gifted him, it will be interesting to see the final edited video when he publishes it.
The ability to drop by the lab and spend so much time chatting was especially appreciated as Dave was still getting over being ill.
We drove over the harbour bridge on the way to our Airbnb, I got some video whilst we drove over, it is smaller than it looks!
I had to work on my dads Mac Pro today as it wouldn't turn on, he was panicking a bit as he had work which he had to do on it (he is a typesetter and printer).
Symptoms were a rapid flashing power LED (approx 1 pulse per second), no startup chime, no screen coming on.
I diagnosed it down to a bad DIMM module, after a lot of swapping modules I was able to determine which one it was.
The modules are installed in pairs, so it had to lose 4GB of ram as they are 2GB modules, fortunately it had 12GB installed (4x1GB and 4x2GB) and he doesn't use it for anything that requires all of the ram anyway, so 8GB will be OK for the time being until I get OWC to send a replacement.
I purchased the modules as a set of 4 in 2013 from OWC, and they have a "lifetime warranty", we shall see if they follow through with it !
I am sort of back in my house, I am in the process of moving everything back in, and trying to set up my lab, which includes re-organising how it is setup.
There are still things that the builders haven't finished, such as the kitchen! they haven't shown up for two weeks so far... to do a days work to finish it.
The new scope arrived today which I won from Keysight!
It was a prize as part of the Test to Impress section of the 2018 Wave event, I was a finalist in the test to impress contest, they liked what I am doing with my YouTube Channel and wanted to reward me (and the others that were finalists) with a new scope.
My house is almost ready to move back into, I installed a new ranch slider the other day (after the builders failed to show up).
I then had to buy and install new skirting and door trims so the painter could finish his work (again the builders failed to show up to do the work they missed, see a theme here?)
Now my flooring is being laid, so if all goes to
plan I will be able to move back in within the week.
I recently did some live streaming on my YouTube channel, they always seem to go on longer than I planned, I was intending to only stream for about an hour each time, but they seem to stretch out to a few hours at times.
Had some good chats with people and got some tips for my new 3D printer, which was great.
I also did some diagnostic work on the HP4261A LCR meter, manage to narrow the fault right down, and fixed it later on that evening (videos will be published for it soon).
Dave Jones selected one of my videos for his guest appearance spot!
He liked the content of the video and thought it would be a good fit for his channel, needless to say I am thrilled about being chosen as it gives great exposure!