I'm in the habit of being consistently unsatisfied with my own work. Even by achieving my initial goals, I learn new ways it could have been better, and it instantly becomes mediocre in my eyes.
I think this is a good habit of mine, but it requires that I attempt to accomplish meaningful work constantly. It doesn't matter too much to me exactly what I make, as long as it's something (sometimes it's code, but sometimes it's a nightmare of brass and iron and science).
Coding is not the only thing software needs. It needs bug reports, documentation, graphical designers, funding, how-to videos, and so on. There are many problems to solve and many ways to contribute, requiring a diverse set of skills!
There's a neat math proof that proves you can code if you can follow a flowchart. However, if you don't like coding, it's unlikely to be of particular interest and perhaps those other methods of contribution would bear more fruit!
Creating new content to share on Lemmy is another way to help it grow! Tell us worthy tales, share your best thoughts!
In my experience, if they don't include the conductor in the connector, there will generally not be a wire for it in the cable. So replacing the USB-C connector is probably not going to add any functionality.
I have a stack of USB-A to USB mini/micro cables that are a bit like this. Two conductors, only do charging. So if I replace the connector, there's no wire to connect the D+ / D- lines to. It's quite possible the manufacturer of your cable had some similar or otherwise reduced feature set in mind, and wanted to save 5 cents of copper.
I also have some cursed cables that have normal ports, but only two wires inside the cable (power/ground), or are otherwise out-of-spec in ways that make the data lines mostly fail. These have wasted quite a bit of my time over the years.
Grind it into dust, add sand, pour molten non-recyclable plastic into it (e.g. recyclable plastic with too many impurities). Market it as a weighted ballast material e.g. for the base of IKEA lamps.
Mostly I just work in a well ventilated area. Oh and for sure disconnect power before desoldering anything.
Other than that, I avoid taking apart microwaves (beryllium, high voltage), anything with a CRT (imploding glass, high voltage), and high voltage transformers (transformer oil, high voltage). Also any medical equipment (chemical hazard, radiation hazards, biohazard, high voltage, imploding glass). Oh and no unexploded munitions for reasons that should be obvious (people still salvage these in my country and it sometimes doesn't end well).
I find a hot air rework station+tweezers a much faster way to salvage than jamming a hot iron into boards. Also lets you salvage SMT components, which are most of the better parts these days. For 1970s stuff, it's mostly through-hole, I'd test the parts before trying to reuse them. Capacitors especially. Got to love those big transistors from our side of the Iron Curtain though.
Hey I messaged them a bit, this is an undergraduate project with no budget (so a MOSFET tester is out of budget). I also suggested a sort of sweep method using an MCU and some op-amp glue, but I don't think they have sufficient background to get this kind of thing working yet (in fact I barely do, so probably it won't 'just work' with whatever I came up with off the top of my head).
What I was thinking is perhaps they can set Vds and Vgs to fixed values such that a particular MOSFET conducts a fixed current, e.g. 100mA, somewhere near-ish the start of the linear region. Then record the Vgs required to achieve this current for each of a set of MOSFETs, say a few dozen (because of part variation).
Then after exposing them to varying amounts of radiation (a few for each exposure level), put them back in the same test conditions and measure how the output current has changed, what Vgs will restore the same current, draw some graphs, discuss the advantages and disadvantages relative to the Vth method with regards to radiation dosimetry, conclude, and call it a day.
Think it would work? No need for an MCU or signals processing this way, so the science can get done with the tools they have.
Also I never had free access to strong radiations sources in undergrad, so am a little jealous. I barely got to use tritium, and that sparingly.
Interesting, I've never thought of doing it exactly this way. Usually I see high surface area PIN junctions used to detect particle impact either by reverse biasing the junction or by directly measuring induced voltage. The amplification stage is not so easy. This is for particle counting and energy measurement though.
What kind of radiation are you measuring? Gamma I guess?
I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that for a given signal, as Vgs increases perhaps the on-resistance at a given voltage does too? If so, it might be easy to measure the voltage drop across the MOSFET on resistance and how it changes with dose.
If I think of anything else though, I'll let you know!
Edit: I suppose you could also use an R/2R network to provide an increasing voltage to the MOSFET base, and measure the point where the output reaches some threshold, a direct measurement of Vgs. That should be pretty easy using one full output port of an Arduino and one of the ADCs.
I immigrated to Vietnam in 2012. Even though government and society was much more welcoming than this case, the overall experience was... not that different!
Maybe immigration is just a pretty awful experience overall.
Maybe someday, but it's exhausting. I would probably be much happier if I just closed shop and went to do a PhD. I might even be able to afford to, in a couple of years.
Then maybe teach engineering in some unknown university in the countryside. Or run a machine shop that helps artists make things. Or just build alarmingly large robots for no reason at all.
Haha...yeah. I'm an academic at heart and my first few years at running a business were a complete disaster. I've since graduated into being a mediocre businessperson, which is probably about as far as I intend to get.
I mean, it would have been better if they didn't go out of business, and paid my invoices. Barring that, at least I'm left with something to laugh about!