Electronics Project #8: Debugging the Symbol Keyboard Mini Project JMP001 | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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Silly Job Title: Component Wrangler

In this video I add improved debouncing logic to the inaugural Silicon Chip and Jaycar Mini Project: JMP001.

Shout out and thank you to Tim Blythman for developing this project.

You can see Tim’s original code and my updates which improve the debouncing implementation.

In the video I mention that we use the pgmspace.h header from Arduino.

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Maxitronix 500 In 1 (500in1) Electronics Project Lab KitThis is an image of the product.notes

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Interlude #10: Take Three: Improving My Maker Faire ‘Here There Be Makers’ Badge | In The Lab

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In this video I have a third go at my Maker Faire “Here There Be Makers” badge. You can see my previous attempts here and here

Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Scotch Titanium ScissorsThis is an image of the product.notes

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Interlude #9: Making a Power Breakout Box | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

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In this video I make a power breakout box. This is for use in testing my new multimeter, but it will be good to have for other uses in future too.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Maxitronix Electronic Metal Detector Kit Electronics ProjectThis is an image of the product.notes

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Interlude #8: Making My Maker Faire ‘Here There Be Makers’ Badge | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I fix up and reassemble my Here There Be Makers badge which I received from Maker Shed in California.

John's Makers PCB badge

This electrified badge was made by lectrify.it and PCBWay.

Previously I had installed a single 3mm LED in the top of this thing, but in this video I remove that (so I can use the hole to hang it) and install two 3mm LEDs on the front instead, which is my best guess as to what I was supposed to do with this thing, which didn’t come with instructions.

There is some information about their Maker Faire event on in San Fransisco later this year over here: https://make.co/welcome/

And also, yes, I should have combed my hair before making this video. :P

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

JST XH2.54 Connector KitThis is an image of the product.

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Mail Call #7: Books from Amazon, Cables from AliExpress, and a Fluke Meter from eBay! | In The Lab

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I take a look at some new books and equipment which has arrived in the mail:

I mention in the video that I recently organized my USB cables.

There’s some more information about where I found and purchased my Fluke multimeter over here: Fluke 17B+ Multimeter. Shoutout to my mate @ElectrArc240! When I release the unboxing video for this meter I will update this page with the link.

At the end of this video I put together my “Maker Faire: Here There Be Makers” swag but I actually revisit this and do it better in another video released as an interlude on the channel, so stand by for that (it will come out tomorrow, I will update this link when it’s out).

John's Makers PCB badge

This electrified badge was made by lectrify.it and PCBWay and it was sent to me by Maker Shed.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha 3pcs Drill Scrub BrushThis is an image of the product.notes

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USB Cables Drawer

I organized my USB cables drawer. Left is USB 2.0, right is USB 3.0. Front is Mini-B and iPhone cables (including Lightening cables), middle is Micro-B (5-pin and 10-pin) and Type-A, back is Type-B. Conspicuously absent are Type-C which are filed in a different drawer. Also front-right are adapters, switches, hubs, and there’s even a USB light in there.

John's USB cables drawer

My use case for git submodules

I have been chatting on IRC about how I’m learning git so I can use submodules and my friend @indigo wants to know my use case, so this post makes some effort to explain that with reference to one specific example.

I have a web framework/toolkit I am experimenting with called Mudball which is here: https://github.com/jj5/mudball

I use Mudball in (some of) my web projects, for example: https://github.com/jj5/www.jjlab.net

In the main project (in this case www.jjlab.net) I have a copy of Mudball in the ext/mudball directory. At the moment ext/mudball is setup as a git submodule.

I open the main project in my IDE (or text editor) and I want to be able to work on both the main application and the web framework/toolkit at the same time. Then when I’m done with some changes I want to run my `gui` script (it stands for “git update interactive”, not “graphical user interface”) which will increment my version numbers in inc/version.php and ext/mudball/inc/version.php and then add/commit/push any changes in both the main project and the web framework/toolkit.

The code for the `gui` command is here: kickass-libexec/bin/lx-gui.sh, it mostly just defers to lx_vcs_sync() which is here: kickass-libexec/src/2-module/vcs/vcs.sh.

The code which updates the version numbers is here: kickass-libexec/bin/lx-version-increment-patch.sh, it mostly just defers to other modules which are here: kickass-libexec/bin/libexec/version-increment-patch.php and here: kickass-libexec/bin/libexec/inc/version.php.

I have been using a similar setup for a long time with Subversion which uses the svn:externals facility (in place of git submodules) and I have a few scripts which help me manage that. My main tooling for this is known as svnman which is a bunch of scripts I wrote myself: Svnman.