anyone else interested in (simple) electronics? By Deleted (Read 1,653 times)

[Deleted]

i got some more pics to post sometime in the next few days of some other things I took apart. Ive heard of the remotes you were talking about. seems like you could have problems with other sounds triggering it if they were the right frequency

[cyborg]

Jan 21, 2015 11:13:27 GMT -6 jct842 said:

When you talk remote on those old black and white tv's you were talking rube goldberg. Zenith was the first, they used a mechanical transmitter, a chime affair with 4 rods slightly different, about 1/4" in dia and maybe 3 1/2" long that were struck with a clicker affair. Magnavox used 4 ultrasonic whistles activated by a bellows. It was the start of fat america!

I was my dads personal remote,,,Channel, volume, rabbit ear adjuster,,, and beer fetcher,,,,

[jerryscript]

I've always torn things apart to see what makes them tick, and I'm glad I did. My father always made me fix them as well, no matter how long it took.

My fav repair job memory wasn't electronic, but it was electrical. I was installing my first car stereo in my first car. I had it all wired up, and was listening to it as I was screwing the dashboard back together. I had 4 or 5 screws left, when smoke started pouring out of the vents. I of course freaked out, running around the car yelling. My father calmly walked out and removed the battery terminal.

I pulled the dashboard back out, and found the wiring harness melted all the way from the center dash to the left side of the car. Turns out I had connected all the ground wires from the stereo and speakers together (old school wiring, no connectors like today), but I never attached them to an actual ground spot on the car. My father told me I could save up and spend $120 for a new harness, or $20 for new wires and fix it myself. I was a teen, I didn't have $120, so I did it myself.

30 years later, I'm glad I learned how to re-build a wiring harness, it's come in handy helping people out with the scooters they buy off craigslist!

[Bashan]

Reminds me of helping my son with his first tune up on his V8 Chevy Belaire. We got plugs, wires, cap, etc., and when we got back to the house I said DON'T touch anything till I get back from getting a beer. So I get back and he had pulled all of the plug wires off. I said "do you remember where those go?" He said "does it matter?" I said "yeah, quite a bit." He was just trying to help but he was clueless at taking things apart and figuring them out. He's a helluva cook though...seriously. Rich

[Deleted]

so I decided to post earlier than I originally was going to.

tore apart one of my older car chargers, heres pics of the thing itself (with tape residue!) and the spec tag



heres a shot of the board. you can see that we have more components, and a larger DC-DC converter I/C. there is a datasheet available and it has a supposed 1.5A output


this actually works quite well and doesn't get appallingly hot like the small one previously. the only complaint I have is the damn bright blue LED that they use for an indicator. distracting at night.

----
next we have a small SD-based security DVR I recently received.
whats the first thing we do with a new toy? tear it apart!
heres the thing itself.

and the front:
very simple controls.

the board removed. we have a few I/C's on top as well as a single cell LiPo battery for the clock. (this has a 12v AC adapter, the battery is for when its not connected.) the one near the battery is actually a Texas instruments video digitizer chip. I didn't bother looking at the others but the one on the left is likely a controller for the micro-sd card. maybe the other on the bottom left is a charge controller for the LiPo cell


the underside has more interesting stuff. the chip in the foreground is a 16MB RAM chip. No idea on the processor as the etch has been removed. theres also 3 crystal oscillators . the one closest on the left marked 32.768 generates the clock frequency. the other is probably for the processor and the one on the bottom right is maybe for the RAM chip. who knows.



heres the 16GB MicroSD I ended up getting for it.


after reassembly, I hooked it up and it works pretty good. has motion-detect recording as well as continuous and automatically rolls the memory over when full.

[jerryscript]

Have you thought of making a solar charging circuit? You can use 2-3 of those solar walkway lights you can find at the dollar store. For about $5 you can forget those car chargers and make a solar charger for your <1a charging devices.