I’m still in the process of building my electronics lab. After two years of acquiring test equipment, it will still take some time to get it to a satisfactory level. The measurement capabilities have been extended to electrical quantities such as voltage, current, resistance, impedance, capacitance, inductance and frequency. Unfortunately, I’m reluctant to buy new general-purpose parts like BNC connectors or electrolyte capacitors. Luckily I was able to find some useful components in the dumpster, which is currently my main source of electronics components. The components are still useful and of value. Those were doomed of being thrown away.

I have few days off right now and some spare time to desolder and sort the components. They will be very useful for future my projects! It’s been a while since I’ve been (de)soldering and this takes forever. It’s hard to forget how to solder but if one doesn’t practice, it takes some time to get the muscle memory back.

I shot some oscilloscope images yesterday with my smartphone and I was really wondering about the bad image quality of the 10 MHz sine wave. Today I tried to repeat the experiment and unfortunately I got the same results. As it seems, the bad image quality is the result of using the “Night Mode” and simultaneous digital zoom-in. The image shot took 5-8 seconds in a motion stabilized environment. However, the heavy compression artifacts are still there.

After tinkering around with the camera app, I discovered the “Pro” Mode where the user is in control of camera parameters such as ISO, focus, camera lens and exposure time. The results are much better – sharper image and no compression artifacts. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22 with Android 11 operating system.

The results are comparable to my Nikon D7200. Unfortunately, the workflow from shooting photographs to transferring to the PC is a horror. I’m currently trying to figure out how to shoot quick photographs, process them and upload them as quickly as possible.

Just writing some text and uploading a picture for testing purposes 😉

Unfortunately the quality of this picture isn’t good.

…aaaand hitting that PUBLISH button! Yay!

During the past year and a half, I’ve build my electronics lab. I’m able to measure many electrical quantities like voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, inductance, frequency, spectra and much more. I surely am suffering to the Gear Acquisition Syndrome and I’ve already posted some pictures inside of the TEA-thread (Test Equipment Anonymous) of the EEVBlog. I wasn’t kidding when I posted that I have sold my soul for Tektronix. I’d like to start restoring/repairing/calibrating/maintaining the older Test Equipment in order to do be able to do some exciting electronics projects in the years to come!

After half a decade of changing jobs, cities, apartments, relationships, … — I think it’s time to finally follow my passions and share them with like-minded people 🙂

Happy New Year 2022 and see ya around!

vy 73 de Denis (DH7DN)

Siffing through junk, I found few memorabilia.

…

Lost & FoundRead More »

Hello there!

During the past few days I’ve made some progress concerning the design and functionality of this blog. I think I’ll use the current dark theme called “Astra”. Although the “Pro” version of this theme is quite expensive, the functionality is far better than other minimalistic dark themes.

LaTeX and Python code

Let’s test some Python code highlighting. For example…

# Useless code snippet
k = [1, 2, 3]
for i in k:
    print('Hello World!')

And now one famous equation written in \(\LaTeX\)

\( E = mc^2 \)

Alright, this stuff seems to work! 😀

I’m testing some stuff with piwigo, a very nice and easy to use photo gallery written in php.

Let’s see, if the picture is parsed correctly:

Unfortunately, the WordPress Media Library is not suitable for sophisticated photo management. I’m planning to publish high quality photographs of test equipment and repairs.

Another nice picture…

This Tek plugin was kinda expensive but worth it. I’ll use it to adjust and calibrate my Tek equipment soon^tm.

1st post in months, I kinda had a writer’s block.