Blog - All Comments

RE: Researchers Create a New Technique That Produces MXenes with 160x Conductivity

DAB — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:11:52 GMT

It looks like they might be able to use this to detect some of these gases to make inexpensive gas sensors.

RE: SHAHE Wireless Bluetooth Digital Calipers – A Quick Review

shabaz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 23:26:28 GMT

Updated the app for speech (this works on mobile and desktop). This actually suits me better, because now I don't need to move eye focus off what I'm measuring at all (and works left-handed, where the caliper display is upside down and not visible).

[View:https://youtube.com/shorts/NGeA4aQq0pk:360:640]

RE: Short Circuits and Continuity: Building an Easy Continuity Tester

shabaz — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:29:39 GMT

I'm strongly considering doing a version 2 of this project. It works well so far, but I was wondering if I ought to have added a couple of TVS diodes at pin 1 and pin 5 of the quad op-amp. Also, I was thinking of a larger PCB, with mounted right-angle banana sockets, to eliminate annoying need for off-board wiring. Any suggestions for a low-cost plastic enclosure would be appreciated. I'd also move to AA cells (the AAA last forever but may as well make use of a larger size enclosure).

Also, it would be nice to have an adjustable frequency tone, and maybe even amplitude.. could use an audio amp and a larger speaker. This would make it better for people who cannot hear certain tones easily.

Another important requirement is an LED indication (sometimes audio cannot be heard in a noisy environment) - don't know how to best design that, maybe just driven from the same monostable, or a separate monostable with a longer period?

I want to keep it non-microcontroller based.

Any suggestions/ideas welcome!.

EDIT: Might also be worth swapping out power switch to a rotary knob, with settings: Off-LED-LEDplusLowVolume-LEDplusHighVolume perhaps..

RE: SHAHE Wireless Bluetooth Digital Calipers – A Quick Review

kmikemoo — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:11:13 GMT

Cool tool, [mention:b0bc65b9ecdc4307bd967592f00e340a:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] . Thanks for sharing. The fractional inch conversion would be helpful. [emoticon:fbd079a1c4f748c5a234faee215de9cc] My "calibrated eye" has never been very accurate so I even use a cheap set of calipers to know what size wrench to use.

RE: SHAHE Wireless Bluetooth Digital Calipers – A Quick Review

obones — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:07:46 GMT

Thanks a lot, it describes what I noticed with my digital calipers, the battery gets drained quite fast doing nothing.

And the Bluetooth connectivity opens the door for lots of nice things, like automatic measurement storage

RE: SHAHE Wireless Bluetooth Digital Calipers – A Quick Review

DAB — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:29:53 GMT

Good review.

RE: Pico SCPI labLib now has configurable USB IDs

Jan Cumps — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:11:48 GMT

Michael added configuarble parameter for the last 2:

        FW_VER_BCD=0x0100
        FW_VER_STR="01.00"

RE: Pico SCPI labLib now has configurable USB IDs

DAB — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 19:07:06 GMT

Very cool Jan.

RE: Pico SCPI labLib now has configurable USB IDs

shabaz — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:10:30 GMT

That's very useful!

I'm still using this software in my bench supply, which didn't have SCPI prigrammability, but now does!

RE: Fast Response Light Sensing with Photodiodes: Building a DIY Radiometer!

stanley1O1 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:52:00 GMT

[mention:b0bc65b9ecdc4307bd967592f00e340a:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] I was hoping to build the S5973 version. Also, what program did you use for visualizing the data? I was hoping to use it to test lost frames and timing of stimuli in experiments I conduct.

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

shabaz — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:11:35 GMT

I wanted a simple graphical way to manage all the VHDs.. this app took 27 minutes to create and debug using AI! It seems to function. I will tweak it a bit further and then place it on GitHub.

Clicking on the bullets will toggle between mounted and unmounted states (saves me having to launch Disk Management, or to remember the PowerShell commands..).

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

obones — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:29:49 GMT

Nice idea there, I did that with virtual machines but never thought of doing it at the OS level

RE: UNI-T DMM USB adapter compatibility with Windows 10

johangrimm — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:58:42 GMT

Looking in to this right now, I wonder, can you clarify how you actually connected your wires? 3 and 8 on chip, yes, but what else to make it work?

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

DAB — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:20:11 GMT

Interesting idea.

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

dougw — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:01:51 GMT

Definitely a problem. I was hoping to go the larger SSD route, but as you point out, memory prices have gone haywire. For now I am splitting tasks between 2 computers while waiting for memory prices to subside.