Remnants of The Past: The First Project, The First Tesla Coil

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This is a Remnant of The Past, the first project that started my journey on the road of electronics. The thing you see above is the first Tesla Coil I ever built, and the first project ever having to do with electronics. This project started sometime after I started my first year in high school, looking back it has already been 5 years since then. It all started when the younger me had watched Read More

Divergence Meter releases the Magic Smoke

Well all of you know that the Divergence Meter runs on Magic Smoke right? Well somehow today for some reason it has let it out…. After running for 3 months or so continuously on a plug-in Power Supply, I wanted to change the batteries and bring it outside for someone to see. And so I did. After leaving from a  show and tell session in which it ran somewhat perfectly, the voltage regulator namely the TPS62160 5V DC-DC converter IC turned red hot and poof…..*insert poker face* well I don’t know the cause but all I know is that it broke and I have to fix it….or remake the main circuit board altogether. Thank god I designed it with a somewhat modular design or else I would have to replace the whole freaking thing =___=

On the bright side, I have a chance to video record the assembly of the the new board if I choose to remake it. But still *poker face x1000* -______________-

Nothing beats some molten BBQ Voltage Regulator
Nothing beats some molten BBQ Voltage Regulator

Well if you look closely you can see the molten blob of metal where it burned red hot 🙈 and wow I really didn’t notice the amount of flux still on the board :/ I’m pretty sure I washed it all off with alcohol and water after baking…well anyways I definitely can conclude this is the organizations doing….

El Psy Congroo,

waicool20

Blast from the past hardware: Nixie Tubes

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Taken from: http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/nixieclock/images/nixieclock01.jpg

According to personal experience, Nixie Tubes are really awesome. My Divergence Meter Project made me realize that. But what were they exactly?

Basically a Nixie Tube was a type of Cold Cathode Display, so unlike most cathode displays ( e.g tungsten light bulbs ) they didn’t rely on heat to create their light, but instead it uses a process called glow discharge. Though of course this didn’t mean they stayed cool during their operation, if the current were to go over allowed ratings for prolonged times then it could potentially heat up the tube.

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