Adventures of a Tech, avonturen van een techneut

In the CreateLab at Fontys-ICT in Eindhoven we play (and learn) about robot programming, behavior trees, ROS. This robot is part of professorship High Tech Embedded Software lead by Teade Punter. A late night experiment by Kris and Edwin. Empowering Students through Hands-on Learning and Repairing Robots At Fontys-ICT, we believe that hands-on experience in repairing equipment is not only an essential skill but also a powerful tool to inspire our students. Recently, an instructor and a student teamed up to disassemble and restore a Sawyer-Robot by RethinkRobotics to working condition. This collaborative repair process ignited enthusiasm and boosted the confidence of our young, aspiring engineers. Once the robot was reassembled and operational, the students quickly began exploring its capabilities. In no time, they were using its vision system to locate blocks on a table, pick them up, and stack them on a stool. This experience sparked a flurry of creative ideas, as students brainsto...

Ik heb een nieuw filmpje gemaakt.  Reparatie van printplaat van Brink Renovent HR uit 1997 met gedetailleerde uitleg en foto's. Voor #BarryV van repareerjeventilatie.nl heb ik weer een printplaat gerepareerd. Het betrof een print van de Brink Renovent HR deze hebben als motor : EBM R1G140-AW05-12 en deze vind je regelmatig in WTW installaties die door Brink zijn geproduceerd. Deze specifieke print had waterschade en hierdoor was bijna alles opgeblazen en kapot. - CPU, motor drivers, FET eindtrappen, weerstanden en dioden, en een op-amp. Ondanks dat is het toch weer gelukt om de print te repareren. Het wordt steeds belangrijker om zorgvuldig met grondstoffen om te gaan, onderdelen en nieuwe producten hebben lange levertijden. Reparatie en recycling is een goede optie, economisch en ecologisch en nu blijkt ook verstandig vanuit een geopolitiek perspectief, we zijn wel erg afhankelijk van een paar fabrieken geworden. Leerzaam voor wie wat wil leren over reparatie van elektronica en g...

I found this blog by accident in a search about generation of VGA signals with an FPGA. It is filled with fine information about technology and history and background stories. http://www.righto.com/ It is written by a person called "Ken Shirriff" and has topics on """Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever""" His twitter :  https://twitter.com/kenshirriff This person has a passion, you can learn from this guy. Check out his blog.

 I just received my second batch of PCB's from JLCPCB with components assembled in China. How good is it really, we will find out soon enough. Everything works fine. Need to wait on correct USB-C connector, UART works, no problems so far.

 I ordered these things on a Wednesday and now 6 days later I can assemble my product. This is how fast the world moves today. I designed the things in Fusion360 exported the STL files and sent the data to the Shapeways website.  That was the whole proces. They are really nice and fit precisely. I am very happy with this. #oetelx ahead of the curve.

NOTE TO SELF: change DNS on TransIP VPS machines. Today I got an email from TransIP. Nameservers are changed.  Please update your virtual machine. Old info :  80.69.67.66, 80.69.67.67,  2a01:7c8:a::c53,  2a01:7c8:b::c53 New info is : 195.8.195.8 195.135.195.135 2a01:7c8:7000:195::8:195:8 2a01:7c8:7000:195::135:195:135 Ok, now I have to get into my machine and update this stuff. I used my normal SSH login to get a prompt.  (user oetelx can use sudo because this user is in admin group ) I checked if the new IP adresses actually are running a valid DNS server before assuming anything. oetelx@www:~$  dig @195.135.195.135 www.oetelaar.com ; <<>> DiG 9.11.3-1ubuntu1.13-Ubuntu <<>> @195.135.195.135 www.oetelaar.com ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 3218 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDN...

DuoTank version of new TiMO tank monitor unit, approx 53x32x12 mm total size. The new version is the same size as a 9 Volt battery. As you can clearly see this latest one matches the DuoTank logo. (contact Duotank for purchase / implementation details) Screenshot of #ABI dashboard Timo Tank monitor, showing levels declining, speed and date. 2 early TiMO units on table, this version used a separate light source. Previous versions were reliable but fairly large. This one is still in operation. TiMO unit on tank, still operational on location. This is an early model. TiMO dashboard as used by customer, showing locations and online status/levels of all tanks. This data is pushed to brewery ERP system to automatically optimize route planning of tanker vehicles. Currently installed in 23 location in the Netherlands with 100% uptime. Find more content using hashtag : #oetelx

Just a short one. I bought one of these things. It can do 50 volt 5 Amp, I have not looked at the quality of the output (noise, overshoot all unknown to me)  but should be alright to control a lamp, a battery or a strip of LED's is my guess. You can easily control the current and voltage output using a serial port. (a usb-serial-rs485 was provided) I seems to talk modbus protocol. To change the baud rate and modbus-slave-address, keep POWER button pressed during power on, this will enter you into the configuration menu. register list here : Register Map for this device. Function Description Number of bytes Decimal places UNIT Read/Write Register address U-SET Voltage setting 2 2 V R/W 0000H I-SET Current setting 2 3 A R/W 0001H UOUT Output voltage display value 2 2 V R 0002H IOUT Output...

I have made my new cortex M0 based microcontroller board operational with FreeRTOS. The chip is a W7500P - a cortex M0 with 16KB SRAM and 128KB Flash - hardware tcp/ip stack incl mac/phy on board (P101G) This chip is a single chip microcontroller/ethernet/internet IoT solution, no software TCP/IP stack that can fail or hacked. For TCP/IP buffers it has another 32KB SRAM, this can be used by 8 simultaneous TCP connections (sockets open at same time). I like this chip because it eliminates a lot of other stuff on the board. It is fast, and has lots of IO. I added a SD-card connector for data-logging applications. My main application will be small measurement and control applications, adding network easily and securely, super fast bootup times (0.1 sec instead of 20 sec, no linux based board with large bodies of software) ADC : 12bit, 8ch, 1Msps DMA 6-channel DMA controller Peripheral supported: UARTs, SPIs GPIO 34 I/Os  Debug mode Serial Wire Debug (SWD) Tim...