Cleaning Out Some Folders

Bit busy of late, besides Chaunukkah/Thanksgiving and Henry’s birthday, we had the unusual cold snap before Christmas (snowpocalypse) with sustained temperatures well below freezing, snow and cancelled school. Then of course the holiday and all that it entails. And of course our jewelry sales which kept us hopping in the month leading up. But I found time for fun of sorts as well. Here are random pictures in rough order. I’ve been working on a few projects but nothing is really done.

I picked up this Itron frequency counter – timer at the OSU sale. It was silly cheap and has nixie tubes. I can’t find a manual or much else about it online.

An HP 100LX Palmtop computer. Another thrift store score.

Henry had a Minecraft party for his birthday.

Another OSU surplus sale find, a Hitachi 20Mhz oscilloscope for $10.00!
Henry had been playing with Snapcircuitsand I showed him how to probe the circuits with the oscilloscope. This is a good loaner scope. I have a long story about my Rigol scope needing warranty service that will get posted later.

During the snowpocalypse I went slightly crazy. Suffice to say this is my analysis of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate.

Then there was the free pickup truck load of Atari computers, disks and such. This is going to take a while to sort out.

My shop got a little messy.

Tree.

Presents from the kids.

I bought myself an Aoyue smoke absorber for soldering. It was cheap and it seems to work fine.

I also splurged and bought a Hakko 808 desoldering gun. It’s pretty spiffy.

The solder collects in the tube.

A pile of components salvaged during testing.

Solder pile.

Apparently I collect staplers now.

I don’t know why I bought this.
Happy New Year!

Betsy’s Glasses

My sister sent me a broken pair of folding reading glasses to fix.

The link broke.

So I super glued it to a piece of aluminum.

And scribed around it.

Started filing.

The drill aligned the old part as a guide for the final shaping.

Now it folds in.

And folds out.

Obligatory Xmas List For Nerds & Busted Pipe.

We’re having a snowpocalypse here in the Willamette valley, so I haven’t been doing much beyond keeping warm and bypassing frozen pipes…it was down to –7F at one point making it colder than Ukraine.


Busted pipe…sediment/iron seems to settle when the water is slow & cold which is why it looks like root beer.

A female/female hose adapter I whipped up…hooked to the internal hose bib happily installed above the shutoff for the house.


A hose from the pump house to the house…

And through the windows (towel&duct tape block the cold air…redneck fix), connected to the cold water supply in the laundry room. I’ll do a proper fix when it warms up in a couple of days.

Now the list of stuff you can buy on Amazon and send to your boring friends:

• The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics)
  My current reading, by this guy, humorous and philosophical.
• The Middleman: The Complete Series
  I can’t believe there people who haven’t watched this show, just brilliant.
• To War With Whitaker: Wartime Diaries Of The Countess Of Ranfurly, 1939-45
  I like a woman with spunk.
• Hakko 808-KIT/P Self Contained Desoldering Gun with Internal Vacuum Pump and Carrying Case, 120V AC
  I just bought one for myself but haven’t had time to try it out. Going by reviews it will be pure luxury when replacing components in repairs.
• B&M Brown Bread Original, 16 Ounce Cans (Pack of 12)
  Go ahead, you know you want bread in a can.
• Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Solid State Drive MZ-7TE500BW
  I need one. You should buy me one.
• Probe Master DMM Test Lead Kit, Softie, Rt. Angle Safety
  These look like really nice leads.
• Hosa Cable D5S6 Deoxit Contact Cleaner Spray
  This stuff has “repaired” a bunch of balky devices of late.

Fluke 39 Power Meters, Battery Corrosion Fun, Part 2

More fun with Fluke Power meters... Part 1 here.


Cleaned up the last (or first) terminal. It had pretty bad pitting but not in the area of contact with the battery.

Just some more PCB pics.

I bent up a crude replacement for the “SPRING, BATTERY” from .040 music wire, by hand. Yes, I’ll probably buy a replacement from Fluke but they only handle orders over the phone and that’s my least favorite way of ordering replacement parts. Just let me shoot you an email, Fluke. Better yet, let me send you a link to this 2 part blog post.

Dear Fluke, 
I need two of MP8 “SPRING, BATTERY”, two of MP9 “COVER, BATTERY (OVERMOLDED)” and two of BP1 “UNNAMED FLAT SPRING BATTERY CONTACT THAT CORRODES IF YOU GLANCE AT IT WITH A WRY EXPRESSION”.
Love,
Pregnant Walrus Man
The signature will make more sense in a couple of pictures. Anyway, I digress.

Seems to work.

Three working meters!

My test setup. A 60 watt bulb in a light plugged into a Tekpower M920 AC Line Splitter. I bought it because it was the cheapest one on Amazon that would ship via Prime, the more expensive ones didn’t seem like they had better functionality or quality.

Clamp on the X1 coil, leads (not Fluke leads, I didn’t get this type with the meters…) held against contacts on the line splitter. I’d love one of these that just had banana jacks for voltage.


I tested all three meters, just checking Volt, Amp and Watt readings.  They all agree to within .3V, .01A and 1W. Not bad. I imagine they are all out of calibration though.

I look like a pregnant walrus. Felice always takes flattering pictures of me.

So this is a better shot of the test setup.

Now let’s test a APC ES-550 UPS! Fun!

On line power.

On battery power. A square/trapezoid wave with lots of ripple.

Line voltage, 2.7% THD.

Battery voltage, 48.5% THD.

How about a Cyber-Power 585AVR? Line voltage.

Under battery power.

After a minute it dropped 2 volts and then stayed pretty stable. I didn’t run the test for longer as this was more of a lazy Sunday entertainment.
In any case it seems like the meters work. Yay me.