Circuit Break Podcast #114

Chasing Oscillations

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Feature Complete or Minimal Viable Products

Custom designed instrumentation tools? Stephen and Parker dive into differential oscilloscope probe designs on this week's episode of the MEP!

Battlestar Gallactic Grounds

Parker tries out the new Eagle 9 and Stephen fixes Jerry's Amp and talks about PCB ground configurations.

Standard-ish

Stephen hacks an oscilloscope into a dynamic signal analyzer and Parker gets some verilog code to compile.

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April 4, 2018, Episode #114

Stephen hunts oscillations in the Serengeti while Parker watches out for danger noodles.

Podcast Notes

  • Stephen
    • Nasty Analog Oscillations
      • Opamps are drama queens of electronics
      • Solved the oscillation with a small capacitor in the feedback loop to lower the frequency of the feedback
  • Parker
    • Waiting on circuit boards to be built for the DAC Article
    • Reworking the Knowledge Base here at the FAB
      • Suggestions for topics are welcome!
  • RFO
    • Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years
      • Trajectory Correction Maneuver or TCM thrusters
      • TCM’s where only used for continuous firing mode and not used to angle the craft which requires controlled burst firing
      • Engineers used decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language to figure out how to test the TCMs
      • Electric propulsion coaxial
    • 0306 Capacitor Size
      • Odd capacitor size
      • Same dimensions as a 0603 but hamburger style
      • For reducing the parasitic inductance by shortening the current loops in circuits
      • AVX product brief on low inductance chip capacitors
    • A Concise Guide to Ceramic Capacitor Types
      • Covers the different classes of capacitors
      • “Why does Y5V even exist?”
    • Four Levels of project transcendence
      • 5th level is starting a lifetime of projects every month but only abandoning them after ordering all the parts and supplies for said projects
  • Announcements

    • Twitter Chat Info
      • April 6th Friday at 1PM CST
    • Meetup Info

      • Parker will discuss Key Parts of an Arduino
      • Trey German will talk about taking off-shelf enclosures and customizing them. Shout out to @yertnamreg
    • Houston Hardware Happy Hour

      • First Thursday of each month
      • May 3rd at Slowpokes
      • Bring hacks and hang out

Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes and please review us, wherever you listen (PodcastAddict, iTunes). It helps this show stay visible and helps new listeners find us.

DAC Test Fixture PCB

DAC Test Fixture PCB

PCB holder and alignment part. This will be 3D printed and then mounted on the test fixture PCB.

PCB holder and alignment part. This will be 3D printed and then mounted on the test fixture PCB.

The four levels of project transcendence!

The four levels of project transcendence!

About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
  Parker Dillmann

Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.

In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.

In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.

Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
  Stephen Kraig

Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.

Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

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