Sporniket's B-Side - electronic stuff but not retro

[sporniket]

I'll start here a little blog about electronic stuff, but nothing to do with retro stuff.

For this first post, here is a contraption I made after my little one (8 and half y.o.) laid out some LEDs and some push button. Then she told me what it has to do.

2022-03-15--led-chaser.jpg

So, there is one yellow push button to switch on, one yellow to switch off, the blue/green/red push button should trigger an animation of the led (only the green leds are done). I will post the schematic later (work in progress).

The double push-button on-off is done with two transistors (one NPN, one PNP), the clock is generated with a '555, and the LED chase is using a CD4015 (dual 4bits shift registers). This is the circuit that made me realized that I had forgotten a pull-down on the data input line triggered by a pushbutton.

[sporniket]

Done the schematics of this "triple led chaser"

triple-led-chaser.png

the project is here : https://github.com/sporniket/triple-tri ... -mainboard

next step is making a pcb

[JezC]

I think this will need a video once it's all completed!

Looks like a great way to engage our children in our hobbies!

:thumbup:

[sporniket]

I think this will need a video once it's all completed!

good suggestion :)

Looks like a great way to engage our children in our hobbies!

Absolutely !

[mrbombermillzy]

lol. This is great!

Maybe we can rope your daughter into helping with the twin shifter revisions! :lol:

[sporniket]

:D

[sporniket]

A little update : added a missing capacitor, some bypass capacitors, mounting holes ; and the routing is done.

triple-led-chaser (copie).png

overview.jpg

[sporniket]

Waiting next month to order pcbs (including the respin of the "Twin Shifter"), I am reworking my electronic board project (started around https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 120#p72944 )

It turns out that soldering the heatsink on the PCB is just not doable, even with my 80W soldering iron. Well I had carefully selected that heatsink for its quite low thermal resistance... :D

So, going back to square one, I will use small heatsinks screwed on each mosfet, and spread the load among a "mosfet grove" (I provision space for up to 16 mosfets, so that the current through each mosfet could be down to 1/4A for a total current of 4A). And deciding that a separated module for the power sink and one to bridge between the sink an a microcontroller is likely to be cumbersome.

2022-05-13-wip-electronic-load.png

[sporniket]

My little "mosfet grove" seems good to me.

overview-top.jpg

[sporniket]

And now a first variant ("lite") my latest design, loosely related to retro stuff, one of the reason I need an electronic load, dubbed "Delivery Of Power" (DOP) as an obvious wink to USB Power Delivery. So this "lite" version aims to use the 5V×3A to get a 12V rail with up to 0.5 amps, and the remaining power to the 5V rail.

The github repository : https://github.com/sporniket/dop-lite

It should power a stock H5 (with not too much add-on) with the legacy DIN-13 video port to a color TV. If one don't need the 12V, it should be able to power the H5 with some more little add-ons.

On a stock legacy ST(e), all should go well until one use the serial port too, I sense that it could be a little bit too much.

The PCB is 5×5 cm.

overview-top.jpg

dop-lite.png

Since this is the "lite" version, there will be a "regular" (4-4.5A on the 5V rail, 1A on the 12V rail), and maybe a "heavy" one (up to 6-7A on the 5V rail)