Lego and 3D

I started to "play" with Lego. Well not because my friends doing this in the spare time, just because I needed something. :-)

GitHub - Making order

I started to make some order in my things. As part of this moved some of my electronic projects to the GitHub. Three project was published newly:
My KiCAD libraries: https://github.com/sufzoli/suf-electronics-KiCAD-lib

The voltage reference: https://github.com/sufzoli/suf-electronics-vr001
The UV Lightbox: https://github.com/sufzoli/suf-electronics-lb001

LED Blink 3. - Finished

I owe to myself (and to my little son) with this for a while. I've finished the Lego-sized (Lego brick not included.Some glue still needed to it) LED blink. Tonight I finally took the time to solder the remaining two parts. The two LEDs.
Here are the results:

(my first self made YouTube video)

Windows 8.1 - mired "freedom" 2.

Previously, I wrote about the problem in the Freedom Freescale development tools do not work with Windows 8.1 here.
Sience I know about the problem I wanted to jump on it with a USB logger and solve it from the Windows side.
To do this, I began to gather the necessary tools, but did not get further.
Yesterday I read here that P & E eventually solved the problem.
If there is a solution already available, use it!
I collected all the Freedom boards in the house.

And exchanged all of the software.
Together with the bootloaderrel the debug applications also new. The latter is now supports the storage and the debug functionality at once, so in the future there is no more application swapping.

Photovoltaic course 4. - Certificate

And finaly the certificate is arrived. I finished the course.

Ultrasonic cleaner

This morning I set the start my ultrasonic cleaner. 

I had a major concern with it.  If the LCD display survives the operation. If I go back in time to the appearance of quartz watches sometime in the beginning of the 80s. As I remember, the simple monochrome LCDs of this watches do not really stand the water.
It seems it the mean time this issue resolved, because the display survived cleaning.
Pictures:

Before 

 

 After

Frequency counter V2 9. - Prototype finished

This morning (started to write this three days ago, but just finished now), I came to the end of what planed in the prototype.The device works measuring frequency, period of time and is able to display time period value as frequency with three decimal places.It already meets (and in some ways outperforms) the customer's demand.Of course, this does not mean the end of the project . I'm trying to summarize what's left:Hardware:

• The current design has a jumper/dip switch block what works, but something is not as good as it should be, because I did not think this originally well over .
• Should be handle the future expandability. This is mainly for to the control switches and feedback of those.
• It should be think over what can be done with an MCU has two timers instead one.
• I should plan some add-ons . They can also be combined circuits of the following: OCXO , power supply, input signal conditioning , input divider, control panel
• Create the plans of the production PCB.

Software:

• It should be handle if we are outside of the measurement range. Counter overflow, missing gate signal, etc. .
• Fix the time period display to always print out nanoseconds.
• Measurement of the fill factor.
• Managing different time base (eg, external 10MHz. For the OCXO it will be needed)
• Automatic measurement type selection (for low frequency period of time, for high-frequency frequency measurement)
• Displaying more accurate measurement result using averaging
• The code for the add-ons.
• Employing the WDT+ for the display handling/multiplexing

That's all for now. Question when I can deal with it again. Within a few days for sure.

ARM Cortex-M4 course 1.

Two days ago arrived the first letter about the ARM course what I mentioned here.
It was also clear when I applied that I have to get a TI Tiva C Launchpad what they are using for the course, but it somehow I postponed the order.
The letter gave me a boost, so I ordered it.
Today It arrives. Here it is:

Frequency counter V2 8. - Another error

Unfortunately, I was not managed to figure out the fault of the input protection circuit, instead, I noticed that at the measurements the last decimal point is not blinking.
Here is fed up with the errors of the display, so I wrote a quick bit of code that turns on all segments.
Here I figured out that the last decimal point is certainly incorrect. I corrected it. Here are the results:

Frequency counter V2 7. - Problems

Unfortunately, the things are not going as smooth as I'd like.
Last night there was not much time to deal with the circuit. This morning I started it. First, it is one of the display segment was not working. It was very difficult to find the problem under magnifying glass, resoldered several tings until the error corrected. After it the counting not started. There was a 4MHz oscillator output. As it turned out, the problem was not the oscillator itself, but the output. There was a short to the ground. When these was solved, turned out to snag something with the input protection, because if I tie directly to the MCU input leg the signal is good, but not at the circuit input (I get something around 10KHz instead of the 4MHz). 
There are we  now. Unfortunately, it seems that I'm going to slip a few days with it.

English posts

I was not writing here for a long time now. I realized that I need more and more the english language posts.
From now on I'll translate and publish my older posts here. It will go out backwards. This means I'll start with the newest one and go back in time. The new posts will come out in parallel with the Hungarian version.

Frequency counter V2 6. - Populated

On Thursday evening, Friday at dawn, last night and this morning finally managed to drill, cut, tin and populate the new frequency meter prototype. Took a long time. I hate to solder jumpers, and this has plenty of it.
I did not tried yet, but if it works then only 10-20% of the software and the calibration is left as to do.
It would be nice if I'm able to finish it tonight / tomorrow dawn to be able to send it as soon as possible.

I want something like this

I don't see the spare time for this but I'd like to try it sometimes. Homebrew LCD:

Frequency counter V2 5. - PCB

Last night I finished a surprisingly early the solar curriculum. Therefore, I had time for another "deadline" project to deal with. I printed, ironed, washed of the frequency counter's PCB.
This morning I corrected the errors and etched it. I making two out of this, because the software will not be completely finished by the time I need to send (the customer's needs will be fulfilled, but I've lot more in my head right now than what be finished within a few days.)
Here's the PCB:

Photovoltaic course 3. - Finished

As of today, I finished the photovoltaic course. Maybe it's not a bad result.

Likely there will be practical use for assembling of my home solar system. I do not think that any installer can screw me from now.
I like this type of learning. Therefore I choose the following course:
https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx-ut-6-01x-embedded-systems-1172