Recent content by John West

You will be pleased to learn that all of his Picaxe projects and chips were boxed up and sent to someone in Ohio who will appreciate them and continue to use them, including a project of his I enjoyed that reads the temperature and broadcasts it acoustically in Morse code every 30 minutes from...

I am an old friend of Premena's, and I live about a mile away from him here in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Please consider this an official announcement of his passing. I believe he was 88 years old. He was an amazing, knowledgable and caring man, and he particularly cared a lot about the Picaxe...

The heat will only drop a couple of volts maximum from the panel's output, and typical panels for 12 V systems are built with enough cells to still charge a 12 V battery when they're hot. One thing you have to be aware of is that PV panels are essentially current sources, meaning that without a...

Thank you, Jack. I'll dig into it.

Thanks AlleyCat. Excellent work. This may be part of the answer to my PV panel sun tracking needs. In order to use minimal energy and have minimal wear and tear on the positioner, I want a tracker that knows where the sun is supposed to be. I don't want the tracker wandering around chasing...

I repair test and measurement equipment, and I learned early on that understanding what a meter is actually measuring, (instead of what the indicator indicates,) is the most important aspect of using a meter.

I think that every time I hear the word 'Gerber', ever since the first time I heard it in 1980.

With little essential circuit info to go on I will make an educated guess that you didn't provide bulk and noise (large and small) input capacitors on the 5 Volt regulator, nor modest sized filter capacitors on the output of the regulator on the Picaxe circuit board itself. So if that's the...

Thanks for this, Manuka. I always like your highly detailed work.

270kA at what voltage? Just curious.

Another thought to add to the mix. I would use a FET or single-ended op amp circuit with as high an input resistance as practicable, (add small filter capacitors.) That limits current flow between the probes. You are likely getting some degree of electrolytic deposition occurring, so the less...

Just a note on design philosophy. If space and cost (large-scale production) considerations are not critical, I always try to do all signal conditioning off-chip, and not rely on built-in chip protections. I consider them a 'last resort' function that is best not counted upon on a constant or...

Good. It went to a good home. :)

Did you ever find a home for your Lowe HF-150, Jeremy?

Just an aside. I've been known to use appropriate back to back diodes with pull-down resistors in order to get an output to read effectively zero volts.