While 60/40 is a joy to work with, I gave SAC305 a shot and it’s been totally fine for my uses with hobby electronic projects. You need to run your soldering iron hotter so it’ll be rougher on your iron’s tips, but I haven’t noticed much difference in ware, etc.
As a hobbyist, contributing to junk with lead in the world is something that’s been bugging me for some time. Additionally, it feels silly but there’s also a certain relief in not having to worry as much about contamination between my workbench and the rest of my environment.
If you haven’t already I’d also suggest getting some good flux. The Amtech NC-559-ASM has been working great for me.
That makes sense! In my case I actually needed to turn down my iron temps for the lead-free solder, previously had it ridiculously high from when I was trying to work with the cheap no-name solder.
This new lead free stuff is great, it comes with a price tag but it’s eons better than the no-name stuff IMO.
I have flux (syringe type) but I have no idea if I’m using it correctly, or if it’s just not that great. Haven’t noticed too much of a difference when soldering with it, apart from needing to brush off the circuit board with some contact cleaner to remove the residue
For something that’s not switching at a high frequency, slow rise and fall times are fine as long as you are staying within the safe operating area of your MOSFET. A 10K gate resistor could certainly work, but it will depend on your MOSFET and load.
That’s good. My switching frequency is a few times per hour.
I am a little bit concerned that the slow rise/fall time make the MOSFET go outside its operating parameters for a fraction of a second. The resistance gradually changes meaning the mosfet will dissipate more power but also less current will flow.
So if you switch many times per second the gate capacitance with the resistor acts as a low pass filter reducing the gate voltage.
I think it’s the your synapses you need to worry about, but I forget, I love my 60/40 too. Still have a couple big rolls from RadioShack.
Really though if you wash hands after handling it, and use it in such small hobby scale quantities as most, it won’t matter. The smoke from the burning rosin is probably more dangerous.
I got some cheap solder with my solder station and it was the bane of my existence. Found some leaded solder I think I got from radio shack years ago and it works so well. I hate to say it but I haven’t yet had good success with unleaded solder. Someone please save me from the brain damage.
You might want to check out OpenMV Cam which does some cool machine vision stuff and runs MicroPython.
I would probably start looking at OpenCV software for RasPi if you need more processing power.
I’ve been playing with ESP32 lately. I’m frankly kind of shocked at how well documented the API is and how well it all works. And it’s mostly open. I haven’t done anything with ESP32 Cams I bought, yet. No idea what is possible there or where to start.
Hopefully that helps.
Meanwhile I’m over here trying to wrap up a simple Bluetooth-enabled amp project for the last couple months lol. I should do more with machine vision.
I’ve noticed that outside of the fixed use cases and their combination, it is surprisingly difficult to make ESP32 do something. For example, i wanted to crop and apply simple filters on videos being streamed from an ESP32 Cam. Should be doable for a setup that can do facial recognition and AI stuff, right? Clearly not without writing your own libraries.
PS: to me RPi is overkill for all but the most intense compute requirements. So is the esp32 to a lesser degree. Don’t always need 240MHz dual core RISC with FreeRTOS and 2.4G radio…
I default to Arduino, usually attiny devices for simple, low power stuff. I am really liking the new TinyAVR line. Quicker programming, way more functionality, etc.
Now suddenly, there are embedded Raspberry Pis and ESP32s doing realtime facial recognition and video feeds.
Oh yes, you can buy an ESP32-S2 for 2$ and run with Python or something higher level than C and get something that would’ve done with an AVR in days quickly up and running in hours. It is the brand new world of hardware is cheaper than developer time and nobody knows how to code anything and read datasheets anymore. Also there’s the trend of cloud-backed platforms like PlatformIO that essentially make it so you can’t ever develop anything completely offline and become hostage of some provider, ecosystem etc.
Something that might interest you is ESPHome and HomeAssistant. Heads you, you can now flash a microcontroller (be ir an Arduino/AVR or ESP) from a Chromium browser :).
and nobody knows how to code anything and read datasheets anymore.
You seem a bit bitter which I can relate to. As someone who cut his teeth writing assembly for an 8051, I remember feeling a bit cheesed by people using arduinos to do what could be done with a 555.
My career has gotten comfy, but I can feel my skills stagnating with all this new stuff coming out. I of course would never ship a product with a Raspberry Pi embedded in it, but I’d like to have a feel for how to solve problems using newer more advanced hardware. With that in mind, do you have any recommendations?
Honestly… I kinda think three microcontrollers is way overcomplicating things preemptively. I would try just a single MCU first, and see if the response time is adequate. If there’s any sort of noticeable input lag or delay, then try the multiple MCU route.
Quartz heating elements are also resistors that emit light, but i’ve never seen anyone complain about them, people tend complain when they dont actually
The second issue could be a software issue and the first could be a driver issue, so I’d start by reinstalling Windows and installing the latest driver for your specific GPU
Unfortunately, the best method by far for identifying bad components is “have a spare you can try instead” or “take suspect parts and swap them into a known-good system.”
I.E. test your parts.
Memory and hard drive tests are the first thing you should run, for almost any problem, just because they’re so low-effort. Swap them into a separate system to test, if possible, and definitely make sure you’re running tests from a USB stick or CD-ROM, to help eliminate as many variables as you can.
PSU is a good bet after those, for intermittent problems, since the ENTIRE rest of the computer relies on it, and unreliable power can cause really weird and unpredictable failures. But there really isn’t much you can do to TEST a PSU without buying an electronic load tester that’s gonna cost you more than a new PSU itself. If you don’t have anyone to borrow from, a spare PSU is really a solid investment.
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