Category Archives: Electronics

FlipDot Display

Posted on 2024-10-29 by Nigel VH

FlipDots are a very cool electromechanical display mechanism, and can offer significant power advantages, as they only consume power when changing state. These have been commonly used in roadside construction signs because they’re reliable, and can be easily powered from … Continue reading →

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Grid Frequency Measurement

Posted on 2024-07-16 by Nigel VH

Some recent conversations with a friend regarding instability of the power grid, and particularly the issues they are facing regularly down in California, got me interested in setting up some logging of the local grid frequency. Of course, there are … Continue reading →

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HP 3478A Repair

Posted on 2024-04-26 by Nigel VH

I’ll start with noting that these repairs on the HP 3478A (and many other older HP instruments) are well documented amongst the community. I mostly referenced the excellent write-up here by Tom. I mostly followed the procedure described, I backed … Continue reading →

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Switch / Router Learning Platform

Posted on 2024-03-19 by Nigel VH

I’ve been interested for a while in playing with ethernet switching on a hardware level, and decided to put together a platform to play with routing and switching hardware with a Raspberry Pi compute module, and an ‘off the shelf’ … Continue reading →

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UPS Expansion Butchery

Posted on 2024-02-20 by Nigel VH

I picked up a used Emerson Liebert Vertiv GXT4 Double-Conversion UPS a little while back to better handle the dirty power coming from my portable generator, while feeding my server cabinet at the house. The internal batteries work fine, but … Continue reading →

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