Category Archives: Diary

Electronics Project #30: CD4017 Colorful Voice Control Rotating LED Light Kit | In The Lab

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

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

Silly Job Title: Circuit Sorcerer. I am the Circuit Sorcerer!

In this video we assemble the CD4017 Colorful Voice Control Rotating LED Light Kit Electronic Manufacturing DIY Kit Spare Parts Student Laboratory.

The notes are on the wiki, over here: CD4017 Colorful Voice Control Rotating LED Light Kit.

I am planning to come back and review this circuit again in future. I have three spare kits and I’d like to understand the circuit better, particularly the filter and how the transistor controls the clock signal.

We use the METCAL PS-900 Soldering Station to solder.

We use the AiXun H314 Hot Air Gun for heat shrink.

We use the MUIN Solder Fume Extractor to clear the air.

We use the Tenma 72-10505 Bench Power Supply to provide 5V for testing.

We use the Fluke 17B+ Digital Multimeter to check our resistors.

We use the Bysameyee Head-Mounted Magnifier for magnification.

We use the Scotch Titanium Scissors for snipping.

We use the Hakko CHP 3C-SA Precision Tweezers for tweezering.

We use the Plato Model 170 Wire Cutter to trim component leads.

We use the Kaisi S-160 45x30cm Repair Mat as our workspace.

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

Schematic for this circuit

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 IC Extractor Claw IC Chip Pickup ToolThis is an image of the product.

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Learning the Art of Electronics: 1W.1 Designing an Ammeter | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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

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

Silly Job Title: Electronics Guy. I am the Electronics Guy!

In this video we continue working our way through Learning the Art of Electronics and begin working through 1W Worked Examples: DC circuits. Particularly we design and implement the 1A ammeter. Next week we will do the voltmeter.

I measure the internal resistances of my various analog meters, which comes out like this:

Meter Resistance (Ω)
100 µA 2,271
1 mA 239
10 mA 27
100 mA 7
1 A 2
5 V 4,916
10 V 9,150
15 V 13,010

We use the METCAL PS-900 Soldering Station to solder our 222 mΩ resistor.

We use the AiXun H314 Hot Air Gun for the heat shrink.

We use the MUIN Solder Fume Extractor to clear the air.

We use the Riden RD6006 Bench Power Supply to provide test voltages and currents.

We use the EEVblog BM2257 Digital Multimeter to measure various things, particularly resistance.

We use the Sharp EL-546L Scientific Calculator to crunch a few numbers.

We use the Carpenter Mechanical Pencil to make notes.

We use the Hakko CHP 3C-SA Precision Tweezers for tweezering.

We use the Plato Model 170 Wire Cutter to trim component leads.

We use the Kaisi S-160 45x30cm Repair Mat as our workspace.

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!

MECHANIC UV Curing LightThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!

Electronics Project #27: Space Drop Handheld Game | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

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

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

Silly Job Title: Current Curator. I am the Current Curator!

In this video we follow the instructions to build the Space Drop handheld computer game which you can buy in kit form from here: Space Drop Solder Kit.

The kit comes with the software preinstalled on the D1 Mini microcontroller, but in this video we replace the code with our own version of the code just to see if we could. And we could! Our code is here: Space_Drop.ino.

We use the METCAL PS-900 Soldering Station for soldering.

We use the Pro’sKit SS-331H Desoldering Pump to remove the OLED screen which I accidentally installed without the spacer.

We use the MUIN Solder Fume Extractor to clear the air.

We use the Bysameyee Head-Mounted Magnifier for magnification.

We use the Scotch Titanium Scissors to chop up the packaging for scrap-booking.

We use the Hakko CHP 3C-SA Precision Tweezers for holding solder off cuts.

We use the Plato Model 170 Wire Cutter to snip off component leads.

We use the Kaisi S-160 45x30cm Repair Mat as our workspace.

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

p.s. today I added OLED to my spell check.

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!

DUTRIEUX 14pcs Hexagonal Socket SetThis is an image of the product.

Let’s go shopping!

Voltmeters and ammeters

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In this photo we see three voltmeters (across the top) and five ammeters (across the bottom) attached to a voltage divider connected to a load.

30 V is applied then 2 mA flows through R1 and then splits with 1 mA going through R2 and 1 mA going through Rload. 20 V drops across R1 and there is 10 V across R2 and Rload.

Five ammeters and three voltmeters connected to a voltage divider attached to a load

The circuit on the left in the schematic below is the one being tested. In this case R1, R2, and Rload are all 10 kΩ. As R2 and Rload are connected in parallel their effective resistance is 5 kΩ. R1 being 10 kΩ gets two thirds of the voltage because R2 || Rload is 5 kΩ getting one third of the 30 V being 10 V.

The schematic of the voltage divider being tested

Homework

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This is a part of the homework feature of my blog, which is an ongoing conversation with my mate S.F.

Hey mate. Lovely to see you again, as always. Can’t wait to do it all again soon!

A film to check out is Materialists, it’s a bit of fun. Another interesting film is Conclave. And also The Green Knight.

The video where I explain my maths homework is here: Channel News #10: Happy New Year! | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay.

This song by the Sex Pistols from back in 1978 is Friggin’ in the Riggin’. Everyone should know this one!

You mentioned Blue Velvet by David Lynch.

I thought it was Cars that was by The Wachowskis but the film I was thinking of was Speed Racer.

You explained lens speed to me.

You mentioned about the film Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I created a bunch of applets to help me practice my arithmetic:

I mentioned about Chase Hughes. He has a bunch of interesting videos. I particularly enjoyed this one: How to WIN the Game of Earth. If you have more time this one is also good: How They Broke us All.

I mentioned I am reading the “classics”. In this case classic open source software, the details are here: Classics.

I mentioned about Ryan Bush who is the person behind Designing the Mind.

The word superordinate means both “of higher rank, status, or value” and “of or being the relation of a broader category to a narrower category that it encompasses, such as metal in relation to iron.”

I mentioned this comic about David Hume: David Hume on Creativity. The idea is that all ideas are combinations and relations of antecedent ideas and there isn’t any genuine “creativity”. Of course that would imply some type of axiomatic ideas or else you could never break into the system…

Reporting in on vibe coding experience

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I was chatting to some friends on IRC about my experience vibe coding so far. Figured I might as well take some time to check in about that. I suppose first I should say that I am definitely not an AI coding guru, I have pretty minimal experience with it so far.

On some of my computers I have vscode configured with Github Copilot which gives me some auto-complete type support using AI technology. This is sometimes useful and sometimes not. I am yet to use Claude in vscode.

Mostly when I’m vibe coding something I am using ChatGPT via its web interface. I have a “Plus” account with them that I pay for each month. Usually I will ask it to do something for me, it will give me a pretty useful response, then I might get it to tweak a thing or two, or I might edit myself for a few tweaks, and we’re done. Following are things I have done like this recently.

Times Tables Practice. This was an app that I got ChatGPT to help me write. You need a large monitor to view this, it won’t work on your phone. This actually evolved in stages. First I got the 15 x 15 grid on the left working, then the visualization in the middle, then the visualization on the right. It was pretty ugly integrating those bits and pieces, I just copied-and-pasted them into one big file but didn’t take any effort to make them mutually consistent. I have been debating myself about what I should have done here. Maybe I should have used separate JavaScript and CSS files for each major feature so it was clear which code was generated with each feature, or if I should do what I did and just paste it all into the same HTML file. I’m still not sure about that, but the mono-HTML file does work.

Mental Arithmetic Practice. These are practice questions mostly to help me learn my fifteen times tables, but they have simple addition and subtraction questions too. This was pretty much one shot, I asked ChatGPT to make it and I got this result pretty much on the first try. I needed to make a very small edit to make “Random” the default choice instead of “Addition”.

Arithmetic Practice. These are longer arithmetic practice questions which require a pen and paper to figure out. ChatGPT got this pretty much right first go, but I made some minor tweaks to improve legibility and the results when printing on A4 paper.

Thevenin Equivalent Practice. This was my first go at generating practice questions for Thevenin equivalent circuits. This wasn’t quite what I was after so I gave it anther go.

Thevenin Equivalent Practice v2. This was my second go at Thevenin equivalent circuit practice. The visualization as given is pretty shit and I kinda gave up on this. Now my plan is to work through example problems I found elsewhere on the internet: Thevenin & Norton practice problems.

So that’s three successful vibe coding projects and two failures.