New and Exciting

Hey DAB , maybe this one will be suitable for you? https://www.bigscreenvr.com/ sorry to hear about your injury.

For £379 that certainly borderlines on the "am I going to make any money from learning this and get this cost back, or is it something for a hobby I can kick down the road of time and instead move onto something else or replace the item I was diagnosing entirely?". 

I have hundreds of those!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMjhJ9kcaU4 

After a few months away from electronics, I'm trying to pick up again what I was doing with DSP on FPGAs.

Finishing the fast CORDIC, doing a project of some sort with it, trying out the iCEstick, and all that.

I'd like to try designing a specialised co-processor in an FPGA. I've tentatively thought of trying for something that could work reasonably efficiently with binary quadratic forms to do simple number theory stuff; maybe implent Shanks' Square-Forms Factorization on it. I don't suppose it would be much of a speed-up over what could be done with a modern, high-end PC, but I'd be doing it for the interest, to learn the theory better, and to improve my VHDL coding.

I'd also like to do more with the ADALM1000. Maybe try and extend the capability of the pin driver, or something along those lines, as well as more experimenting with analogue electronics generally.

scottiebabe said:

I have hundreds of those!

LEDs or wire bonding machines ? 

Re: the interference on the record player - about the only thing I can think of that could do that is the slightly increased load on the motor each time the 'sensor' for the velocity-trip mechanism is moved. This happens once per rev until the music stops and the tone arm moves inwards quickly. At that point the auto-change is kicked into motion. But - while the music is playing, the tone arm is only moving inwards very slowly, the velocity-trip is very light, and there should be no problem with increased load on the motor. Unless...  The trip mechanism needs to be almost frictionless. Any trace of oil in any wrong places may prevent it functioning properly and increase the load on the motor at that point; grease is even worse. This includes the thingummy-jig that goes up the centre of the record-stacking spindle on auto-changers, but that part of the cycle is only invoked at the end of the record. Any earth-loop problem will probably be inaudible at that time above the noise of slipping pulleys, the clanking of levers, the grinding of gears, and the deafening stereo 'thud' as half-a-dozen LP's drop down the spindle, squashing the stylus into the record that has just finished playing, etc....  Sometimes I get carried away... 

Some kind of earth loop between the motor and the trip mechanism could also be responsible, but why would there be a broken earth lead in that area, let alone an intact one?

I used a combination of a PC, a Raspberry Pi, and Audacity to add metadata to all the digitised vynyl tracks that I recorded some years before using a semi-professional digital recorder. I find it quite amusing to see all the info scrolling across the display on the car radio while the thin weedy voices try to sing louder than the shellac-induced snaps crackles and pops!

LOL neopixels/WS2812Bs... When I decide to splurge I think I will go for a nice metallurgical microscope before the wire bonding machine.

Interesting idea! Knitting, but with nichrome wire, a cardigan with a pocket in it for a 3Ah battery. For a quick stroll to the corner shop in winter, or for watching TV in the living-room when it becomes too expensive to run the GCH.

Jan Cumps said:

Else we'd all be knitting.

Now that would be scary...

Or LED factories?