WickTek MIDI2CV new build rather profesh board!

Thought I'd beat Wickham to posting a pic of his nicely made new MIDI2CV board.

1/12 Tamiya Honda NSR500 (Wayne Gardner 1986) Plastic Model Kit - old skool fun!

The stores guy at work collects these model bikes, he has a few on his shelf in the stores. I decided to build one for shits and giggles, then stick it on the shelf. It began as a comedy, do-a-crap-job thing, but I got carried away as I do with everything and ended up sinking 20 hours into building and painting it. Sadly, this made handing it over to the stores guy slightly homo-erotic and smug, rather than tongue in cheek.

Exploding Macbook Pro power adapter!

We've all heard of the fake iPhone and iPad chargers going boom, but this was a 'budget' one I bought for my Macbook Pro. Had I not been sat next to it and seen the black smoke rising, it could have torched me room!

Amazingly it still works, as in supplies power to the laptop, but ejects a shower of sparks from the hole every time it is plugged in. It then glows red and after 10 minutes the plastic begins to melt and bubble, but the fuse does not blow and it continues to get hotter...

Apple needs to take note of this in the same way as the fake iPhone/iPad chargers - looks like they're all  dangerous... Is this an unwanted side-effect of Apple doing something to devices to prevent the use of imitation accessories?!

Rather than buy another cheap imitation charger, I opted to once again repair my original Apple charger, pictured below, which now has exposed wiring and must be the crudest fix in the history of electronics - yet it has been working fine now for 6 months... eclipsing the entire working life of the fake charger by 5 months!

The next time this breaks, I'll be removing the split cable entirely and soldering in the intact one from the burnt-out charger - I would advise doing this from the word go if you buy a fake charger.

Wickduino Revision 1 in the etch tank!

Knocked up a single sided Arduino Uno clone in eagle. It should be 100% compatible with two small caveats:

1. It can only be powered from USB as there is no voltage regulator or external power connector on board. Because of this the VIN connector just goes straight to VCC so definitely DO NOT connect an external voltage to this unless it is a regulated 5v.

2. There is no secondary chip to handle USB/Rs232 conversion, so the chip must be flashed with USBaspLoader firmware. This firmware emulates the USBasp in system programmer on the boot section of the chip's flash, allowing you to write to the remaining space using AVRdude, Arduino IDE or any other AVR programming software that supports the USBasp interface.

 

There's a Zip file on the way with all the schematics, layout etc. Just waiting to get it set up and running so I can include the pre-configured bootloader firmware.

MkII power supply layout

had some issues with the power supply board, think a couple of the tracks were dodgy. Here's the layout for second iteration with fatter tracks and third regulator for a 5v line:

Think I'm gonna tin the tracks on this one to make it a bit more resilient...

PCB Fabrication up and running

Designed new PSU for the WickOSC, Just etched it now, seems like a complete success. Whether or not the circuit actually works it yet to be seen. Expect to get it drilled and populated in next couple of days, full write up will appear on Analogablog. Pics for perusal...(notice the fine detail achievable with this method: those voltage labels are tiny but perfectly legible!)

CAD: Drag-Kart Update - Front Suspension, Steering + Stuff

Get on! Drag-Kart design exercise is coming along nicely. The frame is taking shape, although looking a little heavy, and the seat is currently a surface-mesh translated from a Google's Ketchup model of a Lancia by ..., which I'm gradually building into a set of solids so I can round the edges off and generally give it a more Bride LoMax shape. Adding detail from front to back, the suspension setup is finished, complete with silly negative-camber, but I have made a 'shim-block' to bolt between the shocks if you wanted less angle on the wheels, which you probably would. The steering is also complete, minus the steering-wheel [that dark bar isn't connected to the frame] and the pedals are inwith the beginning of the throttle + brake cable ready to be run back to what they control... A brake-caliper is nearly ready, but the engine will be the final task. It's not clear yet whether it will be a single or twin-cylinderbadboy, but it WILL be 2-stroke, elaborated from the TurboCAD tutorial for, well, some kind of engine, maybe even a pump-housing or whatever it is.