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posted by martyb on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:19AM   Printer-friendly

There were a lot of folks chiming in with alternatives due to the sad demise of Fry's electronics.

So what are we all doing with all those fun components?

What's your project, Soylent?

Doesn't need to be related to electronics, if you're painting a portrait or drafting a treatise on the heliocentric nature of the Solar System let's hear about it!


Original Submission

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Fry's Electronics Going Out of Business 73 comments

Report: Fry's Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores

Fry's Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, appears to have gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry's will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer will reportedly make an announcement at some time on Wednesday via the Fry's website.

Rumors began flying on Tuesday in the form of anecdotes from alleged Fry's employees, who all reported that they'd been summarily fired earlier in the day with zero notice. One anonymous report posted at The Layoff alleged that every remaining Fry's store in the US was "permanently closing tomorrow," and that sentiment was echoed hours later at a Fry's-related Reddit community. The Reddit post included the allegation that one store's staffers were tasked with shipping any remaining merchandise back to suppliers during their final day at work.

From the Fry's web site:

After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry's Electronics, Inc. ("Fry's" or "Company"), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Company will implement the shut down through an orderly wind down process that it believes will be in the best interests of the Company, its creditors, and other stakeholders.

See the site for contact details.

Also at The Verge and Newsweek.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:31AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:31AM (#1117786)

    Imma nail janrinok for shilling for systemd. Fo sho.

    To the moon, jan!

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:12PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:12PM (#1117959) Journal

      What on earth are you talking about - do you care to provide a link to the relevant comment?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:33AM (3 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:33AM (#1117787)

    I quit even thinking of building stuff when Ball Grid Arrays got to be the thing. To be honest, I quit several years before that when ICs were the size of your pinky nail but had 64 connections.

    I watch these youtube vids of people fixing PS2/3/4 controllers and machines and jeez. Have you never in your life consumed a cup of coffee? Because before I retired I was usually first in the office. I made the coffee at home to drink on the drive to work, I made the coffee at work, and I usually consumed the first pot before anyone else showed up.

    I just watch in awe as these guys with hair dryers on steroids both remove bad chips, then replace them.

    / side note: I got more done before that coffee was done than most of my co-workers
    // the problem is interruptions. Can the interruptions (meeting, co-worker asking a question, etc)
    /// there have many studies that I'm too lazy to google where interruptions suck the productivity out of a day

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:17AM (#1117807)
      The way things are going, I’m thinking of saying fuck it and just enjoying retirement. After all, why not enjoy life by doing something different?
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:08AM

      by RS3 (6367) on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:08AM (#1117856)

      There are surface-mount to through-hole adapters for most surface-mount IC sizes. Not shilling for Digi-key- just was an easy web search. Most electronics distributors have them. https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/l/logical-systems/surface-mount-adapter-kits [digikey.com]

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:11PM (#1117942)

      Seems to me your new hobby is shitting on everyone you work with in order to bask in the barely concealed self-praise. How delightful.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:38AM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:38AM (#1117789)

    I wish there are DIY auto garage renting - autoshop rented out for DIY mechanics.

    Just a simple garage space with pneumatic lifters would be awesome for me.

    • (Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:47AM (13 children)

      by Frosty Piss (4971) on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:47AM (#1117792)

      Liability. But being retired military, I use Auto Hobby Shop on base...

      • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:05AM (6 children)

        by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:05AM (#1117799)

        Made heavy use of the one on Fort Hood, Texas in the mid 80s. I was highly impressed by how well equipped it was.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:48PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:48PM (#1117933)

          Of course it's well-equipped. We've got folks literally starving and freezing to death in the streets, but the military gets funding increases whether they ask for it or not. There's always money for the war crimes that our troops commit overseas, but never any funding for constructive purposes like health care and a real social safety net.

          • (Score: 3, Touché) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:32PM (1 child)

            by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:32PM (#1117982)

            Well, just think of how many times having that auto shop kept me from fulfilling my base freetime desires for dropping diphtheria bombs on orphanages and boiling cute kittens so I could grind their bones to make my bread.

            You'd really be horrified by the time I spent in the base library, or playing Dungeons and Dragons in the Rec center to say nothing of the (horrors) movie theater (watched The Black Cauldron there).

            Puritanism: The mortal fear that the wrong person might be having a good time or even worse repairing a bad clutch in a piece of crap Pontiac Sunbird.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:14PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:14PM (#1118073) Journal

              or playing Dungeons and Dragons in the Rec center

              I'm deeply envious of the trillions of dollars they no doubt spent on your D&D habit. Those dice better be gold-plated!

          • (Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:11PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:11PM (#1118018) Homepage

            If those fucking bums got a shave and off the dope, instead of going balls-deep into the street life, they too could walk into a recruiting office and make something of themselves. Especially during wartime, they hire all kinds of pieces of shit like known gang-bangers and other convicted felons. In the post-9/11 era you had motherfucking Bloods and Crips shooting each other on base and committing armed robberies with their own service weapons.

        • (Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:09PM (1 child)

          by SDRefugee (4477) on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:09PM (#1117941)

          hehe I made use of that very same auto crafts shop in the early 70s.. I came back from Vietnam and was assigned to Hood. I bought my first car from the cash I saved in Vietnam, a 1966 Ford Mustang. The car was the base model, with a 3 speed tranny. For some reason, the damn transmission would frequently chew itself up, causing the tranny to get stuck in 3rd gear. Once I was on my way back from Dallas, a 170+ mile drive down I35, and the tranny stuck in 3rd. I wound up driving back, slipping the clutch when I had to stop. I'd take the car to the auto shop on base, pull the transmission, get a friend to take me and the tranny downtown to a shop who'd fix the problem, which was because the brass syncro rings were chewed up. After it was fixed, back to the shop and reinstall.. This happened about 3 times over the 14 months I was stationed at Hood. We finally figured out the reason for the failures. The stock Ford shifter had VERY worn bushings and the shifter arms on the tranny were not going from 1st to neutral then to 2nd to neutral then to 3rd, but being partially in the previous gear while engaging the new gear. An aftermarket Hurst shifter fixed the problem for good..

          --
          America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
          • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:55PM

            by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:55PM (#1117990)

            Helped another guy on my communications team replace the clutch in a lemon flavored Pontiac Sunbird he'd gotten from some shady dealer just outside of Killeen there.

            Also pulled the auto transmission out of a 76 Chrysler LeBaron I'd bought as a bank repo. Took it to the place that rebuilt it on my 450 Suzuki. I had the dent in the gas tank from that till I junked the bike.

            The LeBaron unjustly made me hate the Chrysler 318. It had the first year Electronic Lean Burn Engine version. Gads what a pig. Timing that shifted around so badly at idle that experienced mechanics would guess that the timing chain was slipping teeth and pre-igniting constantly. After messing with it for a couple years, I finally swapped out the ignition computer for a point type distributor and suddenly it was a different car that ran very well. It was a demonstration that bringing out a new technology before you get the bugs worked out can be hard on your customers.

            They moved the auto shop from wooden buildings on the North side of the base near all the motorpools to a new building while I was there. Not sure, but looking at google maps, it looks like it's been moved again. Memories slowly fade.

      • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:39AM (5 children)

        by krishnoid (1156) on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:39AM (#1117810)

        They let you use base facilities as retired military? What other kind of stuff can you do?

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:56AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:56AM (#1117816)

          The US military personnel get lots of perks, a reward for having had to put up with so many knucklehead lethernecks.

          VA medical care is a clusterfuck, though.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:13PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:13PM (#1117943)

            > VA medical care is a clusterfuck, though.

            Let's take it away and let the free market find a solution.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:57PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:57PM (#1118230)

            Civilian military don't get these perks. They're not considered "real" military people and they don't let them use the exchanges unless they are overseas. Imagine working a career coming up with better armor plating, head protection, sensor development, post traumatic care, all in support of the warfighter, and your paycheck is from the same employer, and you present the same DoD ID badge that says "Army" or "Navy" or whatever on it, and you're told that you aren't really a military employee.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:57AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:57AM (#1117817)

          There are "sponsored" military IDs too, that allow family members. No sales tax on base!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:14AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:14AM (#1117897)

          Everything is cheaper at the PX.

    • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:00AM (1 child)

      by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:00AM (#1117797)

      Back in the 1970s, there was a place just like that in Champaign, IL called Gasoline Alley. They lasted a few years, mostly on the trade from the local university students who were living in the dorms or apartments. Afterward they became a more traditional auto repair place.

      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:58PM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:58PM (#1117991) Homepage Journal

        And there was also a newspaper comic called Gasoline Alley. Over the decades it followed a family through generations.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:04AM (#1117889)

      A auto repair co-op? I think there are such things.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:11PM (#1118004)

      they have those in some places.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:55AM (3 children)

    by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:55AM (#1117794)

    A psychological study of me grumping about a delayed delivery of a replacement for the failed wheel hub of my truck that was supposed to be here tomorrow and I just got an email that it won't arrive till Monday.

    Will I vacillate back and forth between deciding to waste another hundred fifty bucks on one I can get tomorrow or waiting till likely Tuesday night to install the one coming? If I go with the latter, will I shrug off the consequences or moan like a small child in my own head about the hundred miles or so of motorscooter ride in the cold over two days that it will lead to? If I go with the former, will I manage to get the delayed one returned for credit, or will it still be sitting somewhere a couple years from now, and how much buyers remorse will I subject myself to?

    Your guess is as good as mine.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:07AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:07AM (#1117801)

      Eh, you'll get lucky and the delayed shipment will arrive tomorrow...

      Well, it has happened to me (but not very often).

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:54PM (1 child)

        by Hartree (195) on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:54PM (#1118000)

        You called it in one. Just got the email that it was delivered half an hour ago. With it having been in Kansas City last night, I put the chances of that very low.

        "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:45AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:45AM (#1118119)

          Well, you are very welcome! (the AC who predicted overnight delivery)

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:00AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:00AM (#1117796)

    waiting for Biden World to come tumbling down around my ears.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:08AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:08AM (#1117802)

      you be waiting 4 years (or more).

      • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:15AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:15AM (#1117864)

        I'd go with "or more", but then Biden is already at a certain age.
        In any case, Drumph's a gonner by the time he'd have a chance to step back into the arena - he'll be 82, if he doesn't croak before.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @06:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @06:54PM (#1118252)

          I'd go with "or more", but then Biden is already at a certain age.

          It's not about age, it's about dementia. That mental decline is too quick, too sad, and so brutal. Check out his speech of a couple days ago in Texas...

          "Lizzie Panilli, uh, excuse me, Pannill, and uh, what am I doing here? I’m going to lose track here. And, uh… Mayor Turner… My family spent a lot of time here in Houston by the way. And, uh, hey John Eddy, how are you buddy I didn’t see you there?… I could be known for as president. I would be the end, the president who end during his era ended cancer as we know it." (cough)

          Of sound mind?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @06:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @06:04PM (#1118243)

      Biden promised he'd do everything within the first 100-days. Assuming his string-pullers can keep him vertical. For example, ask Joe to say "next" and "eager." Bigger concern is after those 100-days, when Kommie Harris takes over... she's a gangbuster of a string-puller, all by herself.

      My project is avoiding watching regular TV. I'll show "The Plainsman" (1936) to my mother, this afternoon. Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. We had "Union Pacific" (1939) yesterday, with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. Tomorrow "American Pickers" is on The History Channel, so she doesn't get a classic movie.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:49AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:49AM (#1117813) Journal

    Yeah, sure, I've breadboarded a few devices, most notably, a chess clock, since back in the day, the only chess clocks in use were sucky, inaccurate mechanical ones. Also for a class project, made a very simple computer, really just a simple CPU. Had a couple dozen breadboards, a few hundred wires, and a hundred or so 7400 series TTL chips for the logic gates.

    I have also experienced the thrill of frying all my chips by accidentally wiring in a dead short, and having it lead to a catastrophic failure. Yes, you can of course check that the resistance between hot and ground is not zero, which means you have a dead short, but it's very tedious to constantly check for that. And the power supply was supposed to be protected against that. Like, by blowing a fuse. Instead, the power supply fried in such a way that it still apparently worked, except it was putting out 25V DC instead of 5V DC like it was supposed to. I did not check that the power supply was still okay, didn't check that it was still putting out the correct voltage, just carried on. By the time I figured out why nothing was working any more, and why the chips were all very hot, it was far too late, the 25V DC had fried them all.

    Today, no one does it or should do it that way. Way better to simulate it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:09AM (#1117821)
      Well, you know the old story - expensive power supply self-destructs to protect a 10 cent fuse.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:44AM (14 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:44AM (#1117829) Homepage Journal

    Right at the moment? The same shit I've been doing for what feels like the past 900 years, finishing up renovating the basement of a church into a home so we can live there while we make the ground floor badass as all fuck. We're pretty well down to the wire finally though. We still have a hot water heater needing installed (gas, electric, and water are already run for it), some painting and trim work left, a few doors to hang, and a bunch of minor things that won't take a lot of time individually but will take a couple weeks all together. Then it's inspection time and moving time.

    After that? Lots of Soylent coding for half a year or more. Then moderate amounts of Soylent coding, chemistry, making bronze in a furnace and then forging stuff out of it, making a voice recognizing media server with wireless speakers and microphones in every room, trying out a new recipe for tin pants, continuing my quest to document and collate every potentially relevant condition under which I catch or fail to catch fish, making a vacuum press, and making skateboard decks. That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:58AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:58AM (#1117835)
      For all that energy, why not just make a better system from scratch? It’s sometimes better the second time around, but version 3 is traditionally the sweet spot.
      • (Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:16PM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:16PM (#1117917) Homepage Journal

        From scratch would make for an epic shitload of work instead of a normal shitload. I do have some strong inclinations to throw out Apache/mod_perl (mod_perl is extremely slow to get updated to current Apache/Perl versions) and write the thing as a Perl application server though; possibly with some of the slower bits rewritten in Rust or C. Most of the code could remain entirely as it stands since very little of it is Apache-specific though.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:19PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:19PM (#1117963)

          Slow bits? Maybe compiled perl (perlcc)-> libraries? "parse tree" / "optree"?

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:00AM (6 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:00AM (#1117836) Journal

      What are you making with bronze?

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:17AM (2 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:17AM (#1117865) Journal

        A better default theme for S/N, the current red one is boring after a while (grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:22PM (1 child)

          by RS3 (6367) on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:22PM (#1117967)

          Over time, bronze will develop a warm inviting green patina.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:27PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:27PM (#1117996)

            It's not easy being green - Kermit

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:24AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:24AM (#1117887)

        We all know it is not for Medals, . . .

      • (Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:18PM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:18PM (#1117919) Homepage Journal

        Oh, probably weapons, armor, and anything that sounds cool at the moment. I mostly just want to learn to make and work bronze.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 4, Funny) by mhajicek on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:40AM (3 children)

      by mhajicek (51) on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:40AM (#1117859)

      Having all that room, seeing as how ya took out all the pews, I figure you don't have to take out the garbage for a long time.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:49AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:49AM (#1117831)

    I used to build all kinds of things, but in recent years I seem to have enough stuff. Building more things (unless very small) comes with the requirement to find a place to keep them (or someone to give them to).

    Instead I've chosen to fix all kinds of things, the "no user serviceable parts" labels look like an invitation to me. This is hardly cost effective, but very satisfying to keep perfectly good things out of the landfill.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:03AM (6 children)

      by Tokolosh (585) on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:03AM (#1117838)

      Entropy is real, my friend. I spend my time fixing stuff that breaks around the house. No counting motor vehicles and computers:

      Washing machine
      Furnace gas valve
      Dishwasher
      Gutters
      Door locks and hinges
      Flooring
      Ice maker
      Blender
      Blinds
      Electric toothbrush

      Does taking things like a microwave to the dump count?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:44AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:44AM (#1117843)

        Nearly all of your list and a few more:

        Toaster oven
        Microwave oven door spring
        Boiler igniter (house heat) - every 2 years like clockwork
        GFCI circuit breaker (house came with the basement panel directly under a sink on the main floor)
        Clothes Dryer
        Oven (re-wire bake element)
        Vacuum cleaners (multiple repairs on an old Miele)
        Various bits of furniture
        Faucet & toilet leaks/clogs
        Leach field filter (on septic tank outlet)
        Knife sharpening
        Fireplace andiron
        Bicycles (free to very high-end)

        • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:25AM (4 children)

          by RS3 (6367) on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:25AM (#1117858)

          I'm in your club, mostly, and fix tons more things like so many of us.

          Boiler igniter: if it's an oil burner, buy yourself a sequential / "interrupted ignition" "primary control". There are several made, and all new burners come with them. I got a really nice one on ebay. You might want/need to buy an oil flow control solenoid valve. The controller will start the blower for 10-30 seconds to get draft going, then start spark, then open oil valve. After yea many seconds (10 - 30) it'll turn off the spark, saving the points and igniter. If flame goes out (wind, draft problems, too much air, etc.), it'll turn on spark to try to restart flame before giving up (I forget how many retries). At shutdown it'll cut the oil flow first, and run the blower for some seconds to clear out exhaust. Beckett calls it "clean cut".

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:24AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:24AM (#1117878)

            Bunch of fukin' dads... Love ya dad!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:00AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:00AM (#1118122)

            > Boiler igniter: if it's an oil burner,...

            Natural gas boiler for hot water heat, cast iron Peerless. Already has a modern control that sequences the start along the lines you mention, and shuts off power to the ignitor once the burner is going. The problem seems to be that the original 110VAC ignitor isn't available, so it was converted (before my time, with a little sheet metal bracket) to a White-Rogers universal ceramic ignitor. This may be in the wrong location--too far into the flames? At any rate, after about 2 years, they develop a crack and either jump in resistance (new=10 ohms, intermittent-starting=50 ohms) or crack outright leaving the heater cold.

            Next one I install, I'm going to back out a quarter inch, or maybe more, and see if it still gives the same nice smooth ignition that it does at the current location (when the resistance is 10 ohms).

          • (Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Sunday February 28 2021, @11:17PM (1 child)

            by VacuumTube (7693) on Sunday February 28 2021, @11:17PM (#1118310) Journal

            Like most everyone around here, I can fix just about anything. Most of the work I've done has been on cars and home appliances, to include:
            Too many tune ups, brake jobs to count.
            Did a valve job and head gasket on an old Dodge D50 pickup truck with a cracked cylinder head.
            Repair a stripped spark plug socket on a 300ZX after the threads came out along with the old spark plug.
            A microwave oven control transformer, a high voltage diode on another.
            An electric water heater, a gas water heater.
            Irrigation pumps and plumbing.
            In and act of desperation I once solder-repaired a leaking garbage disposal. (It was Sunday night and I had to leave town the next morning.)
            The one that got the most notice was the refrigerator cold water dispenser after the lever broke. Changing it would have been a big disassembly project and expensive beyond reason. I noticed that the dispenser had a light that was never used, so I switched the wires for the water to the switch for the light. It was noticed because people had to be told how to operate it.
            Repaired at least two refrigerator ice makers.
            Squirrel cage blower for a central AC unit.

            • (Score: 3, Funny) by VacuumTube on Sunday February 28 2021, @11:23PM

              by VacuumTube (7693) on Sunday February 28 2021, @11:23PM (#1118312) Journal

              One more I really should add is the repair of an old Magnavox color television with vacuum tubes. I pulled them all out and took them to a drug store to test them. I found the bad one and replaced it, fixing the set. I mention this because I did this when I was in high school, and in spite of my name around here, it's the only thing I've ever done with vacuum tubes. (I've been feeling guilty about keeping this secret for so long. :o)

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:51AM (1 child)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:51AM (#1117832) Journal

    drafting a treatise on the heliocentric nature of the Solar System let's hear about it!

    Problem is, just doing the project does not mean anyone is going to listen! But now I am working more on the metaphysics of conflict and violence, the associated concepts of identity and value, from the stand of a non-substantial ontology. Oh, and working out this Big Bang thing. Kalpas upon kalpas.

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:11PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:11PM (#1117958) Journal

      But now I am working more on the metaphysics of conflict and violence, the associated concepts of identity and value, from the stand of a non-substantial ontology.

      It seems to me like there wouldn't be much metaphysics to conflict and violence. The nature of reality would manifest in the layers of systems that define the parties, goals, and actions with which conflict and violence would be possible or about. That is, to even get to the point where you can speak of conflict and violence, you've already imposed substantial preconditions on reality, making the metaphysics about the preconditions rather than conflict and violence.

      As to identity and value, it's naturally described in terms of relations, which what non-substantial ontology covers, right? I know that economics has an ongoing problem with this. I routinely run across models with absolute valuation. For example, someone was trying to apply gauge theory to securities markets. Gauges are just another name for local symmetries under which a physics-like model such as a Lagrangian remains invariant/unchanged. Aside from being a background against which to act on with the gauge, there's not much point to the valuation functions used here.

      Another example is models which manifest some degree of the prisoners' dilemma. That is, if the market participants act independently, without cooperation, then they reach a suboptimal solution (suboptimal in the sense that cooperation would result in gain for all participants. One naive approach is to ask each party to report its valuations and then pick a point that is Pareto optimal (that is, there is no way to change the parameters of the system so that all participants can gain - when someone gains at this point, another has to lose) and equal value returned to each. But of course, the participants can lie and exaggerate their valuation in order to get more stuff (a Pareto optimal isn't unique and isn't necessarily a fair optimal!). Thus, once again, we demonstrate the fragility of assigning an absolute value to valuation.

      In practice, few people actually think that way. If I go to the store for orange juice, I don't think "I'm leaving if orange juice is more than $8.16 per gallon". But I might think "Hey, this cranberry juice is a lot cheaper due to this sale. I'll get that instead." Even in the securities world, it's common to see trades based on relative reasoning rather than absolute reasoning. "I need to generate some cash. I'll sell my holdings with poor future prospects till I have enough money for that trade I want to make."

      Even in the above gauge model, trading wouldn't happen until the perceived value of the trade was substantially greater than the perceived cost of the trade and there weren't a bunch of much better trades around.

      Value is naturally relative, making it a great target for a relationship-based study. Identity is even more so. It naturally implies an identity relation to distinguish when two things are identical or not. More general is the concept of the equivalence relation which is one of the most powerful tools available to mathematicians.

      For example, you may want to consider looking at equivalence relations formed by a symmetry action (everything that can be mapped to each other by a symmetry is in the same equivalence class) [congruence [wikipedia.org] (symmetry is a subring), matrix normal forms [wikipedia.org] (symmetry is change of coordinates [wikipedia.org], the construction [wikipedia.org] of a Grothendieck group (for example, a way to construct integers from natural numbers or rational numbers from integers), and the already mentioned gauge theory [wikipedia.org] (which when applied to economics is one way to mix both valuation and equivalence)]. Then there's homotopy [wikipedia.org] homology [wikipedia.org] which are used in combination to help classify topological and geometric spaces.

      The idea here is that these examples show both how to build equivalent relations and the power one can get from exploiting them.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:32AM (2 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:32AM (#1117841) Journal

    I've 3-d modeled the simple demonstrator Liquid Piston Stirling Engine from the 1980's book of the same name. When I get the parts in from the laser cutter, if it works, I'll upload the model to thingiverse and the video to Youtube.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:21AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:21AM (#1117866) Journal

      Linky please?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by shortscreen on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:51AM (7 children)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday February 27 2021, @04:51AM (#1117845) Journal

    Connected an FPGA to a CRT monitor, just because. I tell ya, getting multiple pieces of pipelined logic to share a memory bus or two is harder than I thought. Couldn't figure out why operations were getting skipped or executing twice. Had to bite the bullet and do a simulation with icarus verilog. Oh look, it's trying to latch the next address one cycle too early and getting the old one again *facepalm*

    I bought a 25' drain auger to unclog the drain. These things are suprisingly cheap although not nearly as heavy duty as what a plumber would use. I tried feeding it up the pipe from the basement. Wouldn't clear the second corner. So I tried again, feeding it down from the kitchen, and made it around three corners. Surely it is unclogged now? Next day: nope, still clogged. Fed it down again, and put the entire length of cable in this time. It didn't go up the vent pipe and pop out on the roof right? No, so it's unclogged now? Yes, finally.

    Aging homemade cheese. I got a 14oz. cheese wheel from a gallon of (whole, pasteurized) milk. Seems like I should have been able to get more than that. Maybe next time I'll add the calcium chloride. Now my quest is to find the cheapest, laziest way to prepare it for aging. Some people vacuum seal it, but they say it comes out slimy and I don't have a vacuum sealer anyway. Some cheeses get bathed in brine or oil, or coated with wax. I don't feel like spending money on any of that stuff either. But if I just leave it sitting around naked then it will get moldy. Maybe I could coat it with honey? Too expensive... but what other condiment sits around for ages without turning green and smelly? Aha! I now have a cheese wheel coated with ketchup. Maybe it will work, who knows?

    I tried to fix the snow shovel by bolting on a piece of sheet metal. This didn't really provide enough reinforcement, so it's back to the drawing board. The shovel is made out of some kind of plastic. I could try welding the plastic with hot air, although I tried that on a garbage bin one time and it didn't go well. Maybe I'll weld more metal to the piece I already attached. Or maybe it won't snow that much and I'll worry about it next winter.

    Rewriting my text editor, because the original one uses FreeBASIC graphics library for rendering its window and will bring a Pentium III to its knees. A bit sad for a text editor. This time I will use my own library that I make up as I go along, and it will run on Windows, Linux, and... Amiga!

    Now why isn't my NES working? That ill-conceived cartridge slot has always been a pain, but now I am getting a white screen every single time. Time to start probing.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:02AM (5 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:02AM (#1117847) Journal

      I got a 14oz. cheese wheel from a gallon of (whole, pasteurized) milk.

      What's the simplest way to do that - or the process you used? I looked into making homemade mozzarella/ricotta before and it seemed like a hassle (compared to yogurt, which is extremely easy to make from that same gallon of milk).

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:25AM (1 child)

        by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:25AM (#1117867) Homepage
        Heat milk, add vinegar, collect the curds, salt to taste.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:58AM

          by corey (2202) on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:58AM (#1117893)

          Yeah I’ve made paneer this way. But using lemon juice instead of vinegar.

          When people started working from home at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, our work fridges were full of near expiring milk most Fridays. Because they never adjusted the milk order. So I’d come home with 6L of full cream milk and make 500g of paneer/cottage cheese from it. Really good way to use milk. Really easy too.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:03AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:03AM (#1117884)

        Ricotta is, if anything, easier than yogurt. I'll post a recipe later.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:10PM (#1117905)

          Actually, Fnord pretty much got it, you can use any food safe acid though. Buttermilk is nice, but more expensive. If you have citric acid or any other food-grade acid handy, a teaspoon or two will do the job.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by shortscreen on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:50PM

        by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:50PM (#1117987) Journal

        I am trying to make something that resembles cheddar, so the process went like this:
        warm to 86F
        stir in a packet of cheese culture, wait 45min
        stir in rennet, wait another 45min
        now that it is beginning to solidify, slice it up into chunks and slowly heat to 105F over 30min
        then pour it through a cheese cloth or scoop the curds out onto cheese cloth so it can drain

        Cream cheese is an easy one to make. Just warm it, add culture and rennet, then let it sit over night. Drain it the next day.

    • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:04AM

      by KilroySmith (2113) on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:04AM (#1117848)

      For the snow shovel, two pieces of sheet metal - one on each side of the shovel. Makes a very nice sandwich, and should be a very rigid and strong repair.

      Can't help with your NES.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:07AM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:07AM (#1117850) Journal
    Back last summer a friend asked me about something called Legendre Memory Units [uwaterloo.ca]. It's a specialized neutral network model that uses Legendre polynomials [wikipedia.org] and a time scale to model and process time-dependent signals with several interesting and powerful features (the signal can be easily approximated in terms of the coordinate system of the polynomials, the time scale becomes another neural network parameter, and evolving stuff which is expressed in terms of Legendre polynomials over the time scale is readily approximated via the polynomials - they're great for expressing evolution of time-based systems). Somehow that got me thinking about orthogonal polynomials (with arbitrary inner product) and how they might be regularized (home-brew use of the term) into one of a few standard "classical" families of orthogonal polynomials (the Legendre polynomials are one such example).

    So anyway, I'm looking at a weird mathematical structure (the regularization which I think is a rudimentary example of a regularity structure [soylentnews.org] (or perhaps a "renormalization" transform over a regularity structure) and hence, part of the reason I'm using the term regularization) that I haven't seen before and trying to figure out its significance. For example, it appears that some regularizations can be extended from maps of polynomials to polynomials, to maps of continuous functions to continuous functions, but most can't.

    The idea is that if I have an unknown set of orthogonal polynomials, is there a regularization to a known classical set, like the Legendre polynomials, so that the coefficients of the unknown polynomial set be readily calculated from the regularization and our knowledge of the classical set that we regularize to?

    Now back to your regularized channel.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:31PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:31PM (#1117945)

      You should definitely look into pissing contests. Far more useful.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:21PM (1 child)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:21PM (#1118074) Journal
        Nobody is forcing you to care.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @09:08AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @09:08AM (#1118148)

          And no one if forcing us not to care, besides khallow him self, who seems to be doing all he can to force us, against all our well-brought up manners, to not care about his constant arguments in bad faith. Stop, khallow, please stop, lest we have to not pay attention to you, anymore.

    • (Score: 2) by hubie on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:30PM (2 children)

      by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:30PM (#1118237) Journal

      What do you mean by orthogonal polynomials with arbitrary inner product? Isn't the definition of an orthogonal polynomial one where its inner product is well defined?

      I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by regularization. Do you mean that if you have one set of polynomials, like Hermite (the favorite of physics students studying QM!), that you want to transform them into another kind?

      It sort of sounds to me in your last paragraph that you are wanting to implement the Gram-Schmidt Method [hmc.edu].

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 01 2021, @04:01AM (1 child)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 01 2021, @04:01AM (#1118376) Journal

        What do you mean by orthogonal polynomials with arbitrary inner product? Isn't the definition of an orthogonal polynomial one where its inner product is well defined?

        The problem is that there's a lot of well-defined inner products possible. A typical one has the form of the product of two functions (for which this calculation will be the inner product), times a positive weight function (which can be scaled so that the inner product of the constant 1 function with itself is 1 and which, if necessary tapers off so any polynomial inner product yields a non-infinite value), integrated over an interval (which can include +/- infinity as limits of integration).

        It sort of sounds to me in your last paragraph that you are wanting to implement the Gram-Schmidt Method.

        Gram-Schmidt is the default way of finding these polynomials. From above scaling of the weight function, you'll always have 1 as the first. Then for a given degree n, if you've calculated the n-1 orthonormal basis vectors, you can calculate the next by taking x^n, subtracting off projections of the previous n-1 polynomials (the usual Gram-Schmidt process), and scaling appropriately.

        What's interesting is that I think I might have a mapping of these arbitrary systems to one of a small set of classical systems. The classical systems have a bunch of weird relationships that allow for faster computation of the polynomials than one would get through Gram-Schmidt (using the Legendre polynomials as an example): via a generating function [wikipedia.org] (and a recursive formula), differential equation [wikipedia.org], and via Rodrigues' formula [wikipedia.org]. It looks to me like the regularization may allow for these formulas to be pulled over into weird operators on the original space.

        But there's a few big obstacles at present. First, I think it's important that continuous functions are preserved under the regularization (since for bounded intervals of integration, I can calculate inner products of arbitrary continuous functions under an arbitrary continuous weight function so any regularization shouldn't be breaking that). I'm still figuring that out. Second, it may end up being more computational difficult to perform the regularization computations than to do Gram-Schmidt. Again, an issue that can be answered once I figure out what the regularization is actually doing.

        • (Score: 2) by hubie on Tuesday March 02 2021, @09:30PM

          by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 02 2021, @09:30PM (#1119052) Journal

          Thank you for your explanation. If you make progress I would be very much interested in what you find out. You've tickled a few of my neurons that have been idle for a few decades. Coincidentally, I was watching a blackpenredpen YouTube video [youtube.com] last night having to do with the generating function for Chebyshev polynomials.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:15AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:15AM (#1117852)

    I'm about to start working (parts in mail) on a camera shutter trigger that is operated by a ballistic chronograph, i.e., shoot through the sensor field, tap into the sensors so I can get the speed, calculate a time delay to close the circuit on a wired remote trigger for a camera set some distance away, and capture a picture of the projectile in flight.

    If I can get that far, I'll look into a camera with a faster shutter speed (mine maxes at 1/4000th of a sec -- a relatively slow projectile traveling at 1250 FPS, will cover about 3.125" in that 1/4000th of sec, although if I pull back far enough, the arc it passes in front of the lens gets shorter and the picture should be clearer, but being farther makes it less detailed). It appears there are consumer grade cameras now that can do a 1/32,000 th of a second shutter speed, but before I drop the cash on that, I want to figure out if I can do the trigger. My main concern that the time of flight between the chronograph and the camera will be very small -- 15 feet at 1250 FPS only provides 12 ms in which to do the calculations and operate the shutter to operate. Might need a longer cord than I already have.

    • (Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:10PM (2 children)

      by dx3bydt3 (82) on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:10PM (#1117906)

      Another variable to consider is the delay between trigger and capture, it is not necessarily correlated with shutter speed, and might be too long a delay to work on most cameras.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:32PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:32PM (#1118024)

        Yes, I'm worried about that. I've been trying to figure out ways to measure how much time elapses between the trigger to open the shutter and the shutter actually opening so I can subtract that from the calculation. I'll probably just use the guess/repeat method because I'm not sure how to get that measurement. My camera does let me lock up the mirror which probably takes a lot of time compared to the shutter, so that much is good. One thing that does give me hope though -- this also isn't an an original project and others have managed to do it with duct tape and arduinos. I did order a due because it runs at 84 MHz instead of 16, and there's a lot of overhead in an arduino (it's been at least 15 years since I tried any assembly language and I don't have the chops to go that route). If I can't get it to work with an arduino, I'll move on.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:32PM (#1118215)

          Wouldn't it be easier to grab a cheap mirrorless and use Electronic shutter? Of course you'll still get sensor skew without global shutter but modern cameras have faster linear readout speeds so it'll be minimal.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @05:11AM (#1118124)

      > capture a picture of the projectile in flight...

      Have you studied Doc. Edgerton's work?
      https://www.csw.org/news-detail-thompson-gallery-exhibitions-detail?pk=863079 [csw.org]
      About half way down that long page is, "Bullet Through the Apple, 1964"

      His trick was the strobe-lots of light in a verrrry short time. No computer needed!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 03 2021, @04:07AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 03 2021, @04:07AM (#1119295) Journal
      A very simple sort of sensor is the pencil (graphite) mark on a strip of paper. It's moderately conductive and very easy to break without disrupting most projectiles or air flow. To use the strobe example, string up a few strips in the path of the projectile and use that for your timing. Then flash the strobe at the appropriate time. Greatly reduces the requirements on the camera.

      As to something fast to watch, I played with a PVC-based shock tube [wikipedia.org] a few years back (that a non-profit I work with had developed). It basically was just a long evacuated tube with a thin plastic membrane on one end. I manually punctured the membrane with a multi-bladed cutting tool, the air flow going in passed through a nozzle which considerably increased the speed of the air flow. My peak measured velocity (using the above graphite-paper strips) was somewhere around Mach 1.7. The group had achieved peak air flow speeds of Mach 3.8 with that particular assembly. That's roughly 4000 feet per second.

      What was interesting here was how little fancy technology was needed just to achieve the speeds I reached. It's PVC with an acrylic tube section for pretty pictures. The telemetry was by far the most complicated part. I evacuated the tube with a shop vac. That meant the internal pressure was probably somewhere around 0.05-0.1 atmospheres. A somewhat better vacuum combined with a hot, high pressure chamber could hit mach numbers much higher than 3.8. Wikipedia says some labs have hit mach 30.

      And while it's a bit time consuming to set up (particularly the part where you're setting up the delicate strips and pumping air out), that still means a new shot every 20-30 minutes.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:47AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:47AM (#1117860)

    My current project is building a CNC machining company, specializing in 5 axis milling of medical device prototype parts.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:03AM (#1117863)

    https://www.magicalmicrobes.com/products/mudwatt-clean-energy-from-mud [magicalmicrobes.com]
    Grabbing one of these, and some graphene, going to do some experiments once it gets warm enough to dig up the swamp in the backyard, aiming at garden lighting without solar or batteries.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by lizardloop on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:41AM

    by lizardloop (4716) on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:41AM (#1117881) Journal

    I've finally pulled the trigger on making a video game. I've been wanting to make one for years and even paid for some concept art a bit back. I came across OpenBOR by accident a few months ago and just decided to get on with it. Hired a couple of artists and a music guy. Progress is steady, should have something ready for release early next year I reckon.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:13AM (3 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:13AM (#1117886) Journal

    Firstly, I monitor ADSB transmission - these are automated transmissions from all aircraft which give positional, altitude and other flight information, as well as company data such as flight number, type of aircraft etc. The data is plotted on a desktop computer screen which emulates a radar display. I wrote the software for the display, including mapping and other displayable data, in Python3 and the signal processing (using a Arduino) is written in C, and is based on software found on GitHub. From my location I can 'see' aircraft at ranges up to 200nm. I provide the data for 2 commercial sites for which I receive full professional access to worldwide data for free. I have tracked flights by US Presidents, rendition flights, Royal and VIP flights, flights by famous music stars etc. in addition to several hundred commercial flights every day and some military flights.

    Secondly, my wife is severely disabled now and has difficulty using controllers for the television or even using a telephone - a smart phone is totally unusable by her. I have designed and constructed controllers using ESP-32 based devices to enable her to change the TV channel, volume level and recording of specific programs despite the fact that she has little more control in her hands than a clenched fist. As the ESP-32 has WIFI and LORA built in she is able to communicate with me even if I am not within speaking distance of her - for example when in the garden or shopping, although the level of data exchanged is limited depending on range. The telephone controller contains a library of a dozen or so useful telephone numbers which can be easily selected with the minimum of manual dexterity, can make the calls, and the system uses a speaker for output to obviate the need for her to hold the phone at all. It attaches to the wheelchair table with spring loaded clips and she is very pleased with it. It looks a bit Heath-Robinson but it works.

    I am not short of ideas of things to build, I am only short of the time in which to build them.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by corey on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:21AM

      by corey (2202) on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:21AM (#1117899)

      I did a short stint a couple of years ago as a systems engineer on a new air traffic control system acquisition project for the govt, and learned all about ADS-B. It's quite interesting, and I've had half an interest in setting up a tracking station too. If you lived near the ocean, the nautical world has a similar system for large vessels.

      These days my 3+5-yr olds cancel out any project time (or energy) I have, other than night time. But while watching TV at night, I have been teaching myself about software defined radio (SDR) and FPGA's, this is mostly for work.

      We're moving to the country, an hour out of Melbourne and will be on a 10-acre property. So I imagine in a few months my projects will be a tiny GPS tracker for my cat, figuring out how to keep kangaroos away from my veggie garden (there were kangaroos in the yard next to the house when we inspected it), and getting back into astronomy due to the dark skies. And building some fences, painting walls, etc around the house. I'll probably need to install some 4G LTE antennas pointed at a nearby cell tower for our internet access. Oh, and I'll have a shed finally, space to build stuff so I guess I'll need to start thinking of electronics/woodwork projects. Recently I re-grouted our shower, floor, and painted some walls, installed downlights, etc to get the house ready to sell.

      This is an interesting post, I've found it fascinating to hear what others are into/doing and learning about the lives of some of the familiar usernames here.

    • (Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:31PM (1 child)

      by dx3bydt3 (82) on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:31PM (#1117910)

      I've got an ADSB setup as well. Initially I had it working on a netbook using dump1090, now I'm using PiAware and feeding to FlightAware. The activity is remarkably reduced now compared to pre-pandemic times.
      My visible range is variable depending on direction, as there are some hills that limit my horizon in a couple of directions, but I have 200km visibility everywhere, and nearly 400 to the due South. My antenna is a co-linear coaxial, made from RG6. That antenna doesn't perform as well now as when it was new, probably due to the crappy connections. I made a new one from aluminum, air cored, with TIG welded connections, which I anticipate will improve my reception, but I haven't made up a mount for the larger PVC pipe that houses it yet.
      I'm curious about your display setup, is it running on a PC?

      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:58PM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:58PM (#1117953) Journal

        Firstly - a correction to my previous comment. The signal processing is done on a RaspPi (using a modified dump1090) but the control of my receivers and in-use antennae (I have 3 x Rx and 2 antennae, having lost an antenna in a storm a month or two back) is managed by the Arduino Uno.

        The antennae are various home made colo's (using 7, 11 and (I think!) 15 segments), and simple whips. They are all mounted in the roof space although the one that was lost was located on a mast remote from my home with its own stand-alone computer and power supply. Perhaps I will have time to work on it this year - but maybe I am being a little optimistic.

        The display data is sourced by a stand-alone computer (usually a RaspPi) which can send the signal via the internet to anywhere you choose. The display software can be on any computer but I would recommend a large screen unless you want to have eye-strain. I use a desktop because I have several in use with spare processing capacity and the loading for each display is negligible. Each data source (rx/antenna combination) is input as a lat/long to the display and there can be as many of those as you wish. Theoretically, any number can be displayed at one time but for practical purposes it is best limited to 2 or 3 sources. This is useful when I have a remote location so that I can compare the sensitivity between 2 or more locations, or compare the effectiveness of 2 antennae which are co-located. I'm not interested in displaying airways etc although the display software can do this given the appropriate data. The display shows coastlines and national borders, and selected places depending on the scale of the display selected. If I am looking at a 200nm radius I don't need every village displayed, but if I am interested in a specific aircraft I might want more detail so that I can understand what it is doing.

        I will not provide a screenshot of my display as that will compromise my exact location but if you are interested let me know and I will 'doctor' an image to hide such details, and then let you have a copy of that image.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:07AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:07AM (#1117895)
    Running a Gemini [gemini.circumlunar.space] site off of a home-based SBC. The software [gemini.circumlunar.space] for both the clients and the servers are quite new. As such they are not yet packaged in the verious repositories and instead have to be built individually.
    With Gemini, although there are links and a few headings, the rest is plain text. That puts the focus back on the content and takes a load off of both the net, the clients, and the servers. Again, even getting close to 1M hits per day, it is still possible to run a site at home using an SBC, and one with a throttled connection at that.
    • (Score: 2) by corey on Friday March 05 2021, @12:07PM

      by corey (2202) on Friday March 05 2021, @12:07PM (#1120288)

      Started in 2019 - that IS new. Will continue looking into this, doubtful it'll get anywhere though. But then that may have been said about the original blockchain spec..

  • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:39AM

    by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:39AM (#1117900) Journal

    Yeah, not hardware, but it's what I was enjoying until life got in the way. As usual, I thought it would be a quick, simple project, and it turned into more of a monster project than I expected.

    This project has been brewing for a couple of years (because of lack of time), but I think I have some time coming up where I can try to continue writing up a semi-sane set of documentation for every day Git commands on the CLI. The primary goal is to make a quick-reference of high-level commands which can be easily understood and used plus a glossary. These two sections are tied together through a bunch of links so a user can quickly get the information they need and then do what they need to do. There are a few commands which require longer explanation, so there are also links to highly detailed explanations that deal with some complexities in the man pages and in the official documentation. (The man pages and official docs need a major clean up and harmonization of terms.) For instance, what is the difference between a branch, a remote branch, a remote-tracking branch, and a tracking branch? I'll cover all that. And the term "remotes" is a train wreck. The target audience is casual-level user of Git, and includes the "scary" commands like rebase.

    Of course, this personal project has been going on so long, I'm not even sure if they've updated in the documentation in the meantime. [Shrug.] That wouldn't be atypical for me.

  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:07PM (1 child)

    by inertnet (4071) on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:07PM (#1117904) Journal

    I hope to finally conclude a treasure hunt I've been researching since December 2012. I have decoded a document that leads to a valuable treasure which was hidden at the end of WWII, but it's in a difficult to reach location on a mountain. I have fear of heights and I'm physically not fit to go there myself. That's why I need mountaineers to do the final search on location, which is only safe during summer months. I've known the exact location for over 2 years now, but couldn't get to it yet, last year was because of SARS-CoV-2 restrictions. I hope I can finalize this research this coming summer with the help of a couple of mountaineers. I'm planning to write a book about the long search and hopefully the find, the original version will probably be in German, in cooperation with someone who lives near the place. The whole adventure with at least a dozen 10 hour trips to the area and lots of 'looking in the wrong paces' should be entertaining enough to make a documentary out of. In retrospect I lost about 2 years of directionless searching because I'm not a native German speaker, so for a long time I missed some essential clues in the decoded document.

    You'll understand that you're not going to get any relevant details from me, at least for the next 5 months or so.

    As for work, I'm currently working on an application design for a company, database design (probably in PostgreSQL), back end in Go, front end probably PHP/Laravel, I'm looking at Uber Cadence for the business logic.

    I hope one of these projects will lead to an easy retirement for me. Covid-19 has cost my own company a 40% drop in revenue.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:40PM (#1117947)

      Here's the twist at the end: the mountineers find your gold and pocket it while telling you there was nothing there. You lose your mind looking deeper and deeper into the clues. Finally, a broken man on the streets, you come to your senses and restart your life in the meat packing industry.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:22PM (2 children)

    by Rich (945) on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:22PM (#1117908) Journal

    I'm building an 8-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer using all vintage technology: Through-hole components and 8-bit CPU in a solid sheet steel case, to channel the spirit of a bygone era. (That spirit wants to live in PDIP-40 ICs...) The voice signal path (control to audio out) can operate in a way where its transistor topology is exactly the same as that of the classic Roland Jupiter 8, but it has a few other tricks up its sleeve. Consisting of two dozen PCBs and weighing around 20kg already in its compact 3-octave prototype form, it can be considered to be what they call an "analog monster". I plan to do a small production run and maybe sell a few dozen units with pricing in the lower range of used samples of the vintage "competitor".

    From a theoretical engineering perspective, the whole effort is useless. I also have programmed a virtual-analog simulation of it (mostly for easy debugging of the firmware, and including a lovely autoranging virtual phosphor 4-channel scope), that started out as "technically ideal", with a perfectly clean sound - which should mean "job done". Yet, as I added approximations of the shortcomings of the old technology (temperature dependent stability issues and amplifier distortion), it started to sound a whole lot "better". This actually should be good enough to sit in any mix. But the real deal still ascends to another level. I remember first hearing the signal of a first feasibility experiment of the voice, and how it said to me "go ahead with the project" ;)

    From a marketing perspective that wants to sell music instruments to musicians, it also seems senseless. Youngsters having to make music out of passion will not be able to afford it, and (at least most of) those who would be able to afford it from making music will not need it (because they quickly - time is money - click together their work in Logic, invoice, and move on the next job). I expect sales to be mostly in the "long tail" of the market, to the small subset of the DDL crowd with music as hobby. They already have their (new) Porsche, their (new) Harley, and their (new) Custom Shop Strat (all new, because some want to avoid the hassle with vintage). When they were young in the early 80s, they tried to get a band together, maybe played a few shows at school, they had some cheap keyboard and were dreaming of the Jupiter in the music videos and in the store with that impossible price tag. Time dragged them away from their band, there was college, uni, 14h/day employment, starting their own practice, but now they are settled in and got a few buddies together, and play again. And those will say "I'm getting that NOW". They might even consider it charitable, "Patreon deluxe" style, to support a small shop, which "does it like this" in "They don't do it like this anymore"-times.

    I got sidetracked by the fact that no machine shop in my area wanted to manufacture some case parts for me (I invented the word "satignant" for this, see my journal entry), and have to do them myself now. I got a SIEG SX2L mill, and am now frequent visitor on the "Blondihacks", "This Old Tony", and "Joe Pieczynski" channels on YouTube to assist my learning efforts. The first thing I really learned was that in search of perfection, one can dedicate a whole lifetime to machine tools in the quest to improve them. But still, my first project was to fit digital readouts. And I'm still going to CNC it! :)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:55PM (#1118044)

      Guess you'll not be competing with Behringer and the mental gymnastics I'm having to do to not buy their remakes.

      You may want to avoid milling enclosures or face plates - a local commercial laser shop can probably do it for you cheaper than you can source the steel. Literally load the plate, load your .stl and hit a button - minimal setup and no tooling costs.

      • (Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday February 28 2021, @01:10AM

        by Rich (945) on Sunday February 28 2021, @01:10AM (#1118091) Journal

        Haha, fortunately I have at least found a good local supplier for folded sheet metal (they work off a DXF) and also a great one for the printed face plates with cutouts and drill holes. The prototypes have a folding panel like a Minimoog, or a Waldorf Wave, and I wanted the struts that hold this panel to be stable and lockable. This is a thing of the 80s, where big hair bands had cages that spun instrumentalists (particularly drummers) around, so the engineering requirement specifications say that it needs to work upside down and under (light) g-loads.

        I just needed kind of stepped shims and a spring-locking receptacle for the panel struts. By now I've made these, they snap in with a very satisfying click, but I have come to the conclusion that I need to outsource this work to someone significantly faster than me, or merge the panel into the main body for the 5-octave release version (which might be a plus, because users can stack their solo instruments on top then and the number of knobs is limited anyway). In general, it does feel great to have the ability to machine simple things when the need arises.

        Competing with Behringer would be more a thing of logistics than anything technical. As the saying goes: "Study tactics to win a battle, study logistics to win a war." First you have to organize shipping to re-sellers which expect a 30% margin, and then a service organization needs to clean up the returns after that. Printed boxes, barcoded labels, plastic bags, manuals, mandatory safety note sheets, shipping containers, trucks, ships, all have to be in the right place at the right time. A staff of a dozen first-world people able to do the job will set you back a million of a western currency per year (including offices), which means at a margin of 100 (price point 300, shop margin 80, manufacturing 100, shipping 20), you'll have to shift 10000 units to just break even with the workforce. And there are no ads, trade shows, private parties for the big resellers so far. You can tell your staff to do Youtube in idle moments. Good luck. Nothing I'd like to grind up my nerves with, although I'm sure I could come up with a 4-voice paraphonic (even programmable) that has an assembled board cost ex Shenzhen under 100 bucks.

        On the other hand, none of the big players can really, except for a loss-leading halo project, do such a true vintage style project in their main product line. They'd price themselves out of the market that has the unit sale numbers they need. Korg do, with the full MS-20 reissue, or the big KARP, but these are priced accordingly, and I think they mainly run that as a "custom shop" side line, and for their street cred.

        There is a French guy who started to sell his boutique 8-voice poly for around five to six grand (Euro), but AFAIK he gave up on the THT components and went SMD at some time during his design phase, because it really is THAT much easier to handle in manufacturing. I think he has shipped a high two-figure number so far, which gives a good idea about the market size.

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