Mail Call #10: Thanks Craig! Also loot from AliExpress | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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In this video I receive Engineer’s Mini Notebook Volume II – Science and Communication Circuits & Projects all the way from the USA from my friend (and mentor (and reader (and viewer (and patron (and Lisp hacker))))) Craig. Thanks Craig! <3

I mention that the October 2024 edition of Silicon Chip magazine is out.

I mention that I recently got my symbol keyboard working on Linux! Pretty happy about that! These are the extra keys that I have at my workstation now: ° ± § λ Δ Σ Π Ω ε µ π θ

I also get a bunch of stuff from AliExpress, including:

And yes, despite confusion, I did get three lots of two different kinds of hard brushes, and yes, I did end up saying the wrong thing in the video! Can’t take me anywhere.

Oh, and as I mention in the video I am from a beautiful part of the world known as the Blue Mountains. It’s pretty hot here today!

In the end my collection of Arduino boards includes:

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!

Wozniak Solder LugsThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!

JMP001 Symbol Keyboard now on Debian Linux

Thanks to my mate @edk from IRC I learned of the compose key. I configured my KDE Plasma desktop to use Right Alt as my compose key in System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced. Then I updated the firmware and deployed a .XCompose file that I generated, and now I have a symbol keyboard on my Debian Linux workstation!

Electronics Project #8: Debugging the Symbol Keyboard Mini Project JMP001 | 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

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.

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

Let’s go shopping!

Symbol Keyboard | Mini Project JMP001 | Learning Electronics 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

This is the inaugural Mini Project! I introduced the Mini Projects recently. They are developed and published by Silicon Chip magazine, and sponsored by Jaycar Electronics (which is an Austrlaian electronics store, similar to Radio Shack in the USA, hopefully it doesn’t end up suffering the same fate.)

In this project, codenamed JMP001, we develop a USB keyboard which can send interesting and unusual symbols (which aren’t usually available on a keyboard) to a Windows computer using the alt-codes that it supports in a typical codepage.

For this first Mini Project I felt it was important to actually buy my components from Jaycar which I did for roughly eighty Australian dollary doos. Approximately US$50. The parts I ordered were these:

Belatedly I did also search for rubber feet.

There was quite a lot that went into the production of this video, and we accumulated a lot of links. Those are here:

In the end this first project was relatively successful, and we did get it to work fairly well on one of my Windows computers. As for the rest you can find out for youself in the video!

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 HSC8 6-4A Ferrule Crimper KitThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!