Got myself a USB powered UV light. It came with a few tubes of solder mask:
I’m gonna keep this in my booth where it will be used. Don’t want to use it anywhere near where I keep my UV solder mask because I don’t want to accidentally cure it!
Thanks to my mate Bruce from Branchus Creations and his wire size suggestions I got a bunch of bodge wire for doing PCB repairs, being 1KG Enameled Copper Winding Wire 0.05 0.06 0.1 0.13 0.2 0.4 0.8 0.5mm 0.65 1.0 1.4 1.3mm Cable Magnet Wire Winding Wire Coil red. I got:
It would have been more convenient for me if the 0.07mm wire had have been on a smaller roll like the other two, but we can’t have everything. I’ve been thinking I might get some sort of wire rack, but I’m not sure where I would keep it.
I wasn’t sure exactly how I would go about cleaning enamel off the wire for soldering, so I asked ChatGPT, which gave me a number of options:
I think what I will actually try is just tinning the ends with my soldering iron and some fresh solder and see if that will burn off just a little bit of enamel on the tips, leaving me with a tinned wire I can easily solder into place.
I’ve made arrangements to hang my Xbox Torx drivers (you need T10, T15, and T20 drivers, I got this HORUSDY 12-Piece Magnetic Torx Screwdrivers Set, S2 Steel T5 – T40 Torx Star Screwdrivers with Demagnetizer and Storage Pouch) on the side of my table:
I used 30mm nails but they’re not quite long enough, so I got some 40mm ones which I will upgrade to when they arrive.
Also I moved my old laptop off the music stand to make room for my bodge wire and Kapton tape dispenser:
Decided not to do an “unboxing” for this bit of kit which arrived this arvo. But my new tape dispenser arrived. It’s for my Kapton tape.
I was at the thrift store the other day and I found this retro gaming system for AU$15 (US$10). Haven’t had a play with it yet, I’m saving it for when I have some time to do the unboxing. And I didn’t want to do that until I had my new HDMI recording setup installed, but that’s done now, so I AM READY BABY.
I’ve installed my two new microscopes, the TOMLOV DM602 Pro which arrived today, and the Yizhan Microscope which arrived yesterday.
Using my new 8K 5-in 1-out HDMI 2.1 Switch I can put either of the microscopes on the top display. I can also put the Rigol MSO5074 scope and an Xbox on the top display. There is one spare HDMI port which is on the front of the device which I can use for ad hoc purposes.
Before the HDMI switch output runs into the top display (a Teac TV) it runs through a 4K Audio Video Capture Device which allows me to record the output for inclusion in my videos.
I purchased some high-precision tweezers which arrived today. I got these ones: TOWOT Industrial Tweezers (SA11-15) from Amazon for AUD$58.95. Haven’t used them in anger yet but they look pretty good. I got these because I tried working with my cheapo tweezers which I already had, and they weren’t up to the job. So hopefully I have better luck with these ones.
I got my new UNI-T UTi260B thermal imager installed on my bench:
I’ve been meaning to make this change for a while now, and finally got around to it this evening.
I started blogging at blog.jj5.net back in November 2003 and continued through to May 2005. After that I stopped blogging for a while, but I started again at progclub.org in August 2011.
The ProgClub blog was imagined to be a group blog, my plan when I set it up was to have all the ProgClub members have an account on the blog, but that turned out to be a pretty poorly received idea. Eventually, and for a long time now, it has just been me (your host, jj5) over on the ProgClub blog.
Since this has become a personal blog, I figured it was time to move it from ProgClub back to blog.jj5.net, where it all began.
The transition should be seamless, old links should be properly redirected, old logins should continue to work, but if you run into any problems please let me know.
The computer I’m using to do the recording for In The Lab With Jay Jay is called ‘wonder‘ and it only has six USB ports. I currently have ten USB cameras, and I’m getting more, so I don’t have as many USB ports as I can use. Also ‘wonder’ only has 2TB capacity (non-RAID) for storing the videos I record, which will probably get used up fairly quickly.
So I have been planning an upgrade for ‘wonder’ known as ‘victory‘. My new studio workstation ‘victory’ will have 52TB of RAID storage for video data, 2TB of SSD RAID storage for video recording, 12x USB ports on the back panel, and 4x USB ports on the front panel.
Along with this new studio workstation I intend to get a new camera, a Canon Rebel SL3.
Now all I need to do is save up a cool eight grand!