New Crops 2011

Spring is up, time for some new balcony crops! This year, broccoli, turnips and carrots.. They're already sprouting (due to the fantastic weather we've been having in The Hague...
These are my carrots for this year (the clay ball is 1cm diameter).

Just noticed that I need to clean the lens, probably the "little camera devil" touched it...
This is a beetroot that survived the winter.

Hopefully it will grow to "edible" size in these next few months.

SBC6120 - Power Supply Board

It had been planed for ages, but I never had the time or a technical "consideration" delayed me. I finally decided to just do it (after reading the "cult of done" manifesto), the board with the Laser Toner Transfer and HEMA inkjet photopaper, this was probably the biggest board and with the least detail I've ever done (160x120mm).

The board needed only to fix the connectors, the power switch and a switching power supply. I didn't have much space available on the top side, so I went through my "pile of components" and found a couple of single IC switching power supplies (the National LM2575-5V), I also had a SMD version of it (or so I thought) and some SMD Schottky diodes. The board is also used to mechanically fix the 3.5 inch Harddrive.


The schematic was simple, just the switch, the connectors and the switcher, I added a turn on delay to let everything power up slowly (see the LM2575 datasheet).


The power switch (and the lever) are from C&K, but I had to buy an "old lever" as the new levers are much wider than what I could "afford" in terms of space on the front panel (there's no bezel for this older one though).
For the PCB I had some problems, but mostly mechanical. You can only see them when I show the pictures of the completed unit. I had to fit a 10mm inductor in a 10mm space and a 3.5 inch harddrive in 3.5inch (minus 1mm space, there's a screw on the harddrive I had to remove, otherwise the top would not close.

This is probably the only reason why I'll do boards at home, it must be a big board (>160mmx100mm), few tracks and single side, if it misses one of the tests, I'll go for a Fab. board.
After assembly... it didn't work... A quick trouble shooting revealed the cause... poor eyesight.
I had a LM2595S not the original LM2795 with which I drew the schematic and PCB. The pinout is very different. Then I found out I had no LM2975 SMD version. I had to improvise, a through hole package with bent leads and plenty of flux later...


After that mishap, I mounted everything back up and it worked. I formatted the drive and downloaded a disk image and now my SBC6120 boots!



It was done in two weeks! I'll try to keep this "cult of done" thing going on (but some of the tasks need to be broken in more than a couple of weekends).

Tot Ziens Stuut en Bruin

Last 26th of February one of the most iconic Electronics shops in the Hague closed its doors after 63 years... Stuut en Bruin you'll be missed. After two months open in 2011 (and some nice IC sales), they finally gave in to modern trends and closed the shop.


The picture above was take on the last Saturday, where the sign "there's still 1 day" was on the window.

Here is the google.maps picture

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We are now left with two other shops that are more focused towards other fields (satelite and consumer electronics and electronic/electric spares).
It is sad... but life goes on...

Chillies in the Wok

Finally it was time to eat my first chilli of the year! I let my jalapeno/piri-piri hybrid ripe until it was almost all red and then... to the pan with it.



It was not very big nor powerful, but a decent chilli!



Sliced and Wok with it...



Here's the dish next to the little Chilies vase...
Shrimps, Chillies, Peas and Udon noodles in the Wok are always a winning combination... Om nom nom!