Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag Monday Yet again um and get straight into it. This one is from Michael Greg thank you very much Michael Greg from Mountain View California I've been to Mountain View Lovely place I had uh dinner there uh once I took the Um train to Mountain View and that was uh from Silicon Valley That was fun and uh so hi to all my viewers from Mountain View California or Silicon Valley even well Mountain View is not part of Silicon Valley But by the way, uh what do we got in here? It's um if you want a spoiler here we go. It's got a t-shirt and two broken hard drives. cool.

By the way if you're are noticing anything different with the audio and video this time uh it's because I've left my main camera the Canon hfg10 at home I forgot to bring it so I'm using my backup uh camera the Canon um HFM uh 400. so slightly different. Anyway, Um, here we go: T-shirt Love t-shirts I'm running a t-shirt uh contest at the moment. um so I'll be uh, crowdsource funding a uh t-shirt that will be coming shortly.

If you haven't seen the blog post Ros F fut I can't even pronounce that? Is that a Is that a turtle? Is that a No, it's something. Let's have a look. let's have a look extra large. Oh so extra large may not fit me very well if by the way, I'm like a um usually a small to a medium I prefer my uh T t-shirts uh tight fitting.

so it's the 50/50 shirt. it's American Apparel the 50/50 shirt. There we go and let's have a look. Okay, it's cool I don't get it though.

Is there something? uh Michael Well, you just thought it was a cool t-shirt and you wanted to uh I I don't know should I Google that Ross I don't even I'm hopeless of pronunciations Ross FY F fur Fury oh God I give up I'm hopeless I'm an engineer yesterday I couldn't spell engineer and now I are one um and it's got a couple of little doves down there I don't know. Seems pretty cool thank you very much Michael that's t-shirt A couple of oh oh, here are the hard drives. SanDisk Oh, hang on. we do have a note.

Turtlebot A Here we go pays to read the notes first folks and of course I Took a look at the uh Turtlebot with um Gavin um I don't know a couple of dozen episodes ago while was it the W on field day and here it is d I Saw E V blog 429 where you gave us a look at Gavin Smith Turtlebot Turtlebot was originally created by my wife oh there you go melan wise and a coworker Tully foot while they were at Willow Garage. Oh, sounds exciting I Was excited to see that Turtlebot on the show. Unfortunately, we do not have an extra Turtlebot to send you a That's all right, no worries I Do have a few Turtlebot stickers and a t-shirt Awesome! That's what it's all about. Uh, t-shirt for Ross Feud to Ross is a a Robot Operating system of course and it to find by Ros.org Okay, Ros provides libraries and tools to help software developers create uh robot applications it provides Hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message passing, package management and more.

Ros is license under Open Source BSD license uh Ros I can't pronounce it? Can somebody help me out? Ros Future is an old version of Ros but this was my shirt that was available. Hopefully it fits. Also includes some small hard drives I had for a camera Us St they both micro driv. Yes, the old IBM micro drives I thought the 340 Meg Micro Drive in 2000 s yeah, that's when they died I think I don't think they went much longer than that.

the um IBM micro drives they um sort of. you know, um sort of were uh, taken over by solid state memory and uh uh, stuff like that. So I seem to remember paying something around um7 cents per megabyte W do the mass I p bth I paid a lot for that drive. at the time it was quite large and very fast.

Yeah well. the March of Technology I'm afraid. Yeah I can remember when I bought my I paid 300 bucks at the time for my first 20 megabyte hard drive. 3 400 bucks or something for a 20 meg hard drive.

uh one is 340 and the lad is 4 gig uh purchased in 2005. Oh they making them in 2005 or 6 Really? Wow. um yeah I will do a tear down of them. probably not today.

I might do it for uh tear down Tuesday tomorrow but I haven't got time tomorrow. it's the anniversary with the wife. We have to uh uh head on out for a uh lunch so may not get time with the radio show and everything. Feel free to admit this part from your show.

Nah, it's what it all here. Gavin said you need to go visit his hacker Space like you said you would I know I've been to the Melbourne one twice I've never been to the Sydney one. Ridiculous to incite you to go visit the hacker Space ship Gavin a bonus t-shirt for him to give to you once you make the trip there. The bonus t-shirt should fit you better than the Future T-Shirt I think that's how you I'm that's how I'm going to pronounce it future f no that's not right.

eh ah, you mongr enticing me to go visit. All right I'm going to have to go visit the Hacker Space thank you very much Michael from Turtlebot Cool stickers and an awesome t-shirt Turtle Power Check it out! We have a Seate One and an IBM uh genuine IBM Micro Drive I didn't know Seate actually made made these micro drives I thought it was the exclusive domain of um IBM but uh, maybe they did. There you go. It's a compact fits compact flash uh slot of course and these were you know they.

they still haven't made um hard D this uh small anymore? really? not uh, mainstream, uh consumer uh stuff anyway. but yeah, um. Solid State just killed them I'm afraid so these will make a fascinating tear Downs Thank you very much Mike that's awesome I'm going to call it 30 I think I think 30 is the way to go. No worries, and if you want to send stuff in, send it to that crazy Aussie BL Borham Hills BCP box 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153 Australia not Austria or Germany which we've got in this case.

Hi to all my German viewers I do have a lot of them uh Germany I think is a third country behind the US and the UK in terms of uh viewership. I think and it comes from um, oh goodness oh rimset labor EV sorry if I'm I'm sure I'm pronouncing that correctly from Manheim in Germany haven't been to Manheim I've been to uh Hamburg and Luc before. Lovely little small town luck and Hamburg which I absolutely loved I'd go back there any day of the week. Hamburg has more bridges than Venice if anyone is interested and we have a university in Uh lib Zig by the looks of it and another looks like a university or some sort of um, uh, government, uh building or something like that somewhere in Deutchland.

Germany So let's crack this sucker open and see what we have here. And oh look at this. We have a kit. We have a oh no, it's not a kit.

It's fully Sble. Oh yeah, yes, it is a kit. Actually, we have a note rums at Labor I Am definitely pronouncing that one. Wrong folks.

Please correct me on that Australia Not Austria Beautiful. That pisses off a lot of people I Love it. Introducing the Hackless Hi Dave While watching the EV bloger notice that you don't wear any electronic jewelry. No, sorry, uh, not really into that sort of thing.

So very 1980s for a guy to wear a jewelry I Think so you know each to their own. Um, right up there with mullets I Guess Um, so here's one Hackless for you. The Hackless is our first high volume project of the hacker space rooms. it labor.

Ah, there you go. It's a hacker space in Manheim In Germany If you're going to build this, absolutely make sure you read the instructions. Yeah, I usually don't I'm hopeless with that. Okay, I will, because you're using a Dip package for the microcontroller display and the microcontroller need to be solded at the same huh? The display and the microcontroller need to be sold at the same time.

That's bizarre. Please please note that enclosed build instructions are written in German An English translation of the guide is available at Hack.org The firmware on the My Controller pre flashed cool as a desktop application available to create custom animations. All right, So oh right. It's just going to be like one of these little dot matrix things that just hangs around your neck and uh, and probably power.

Yeah, powered from a coin cell 2032 coin cell and flashes up. lots of patterns. Going to have to build that one up, definitely. Um, We also put the USB serial converter ah right, and some jumper wise in case you don't have some few notes about the project single Sider board to keep the cost down.

Excellent, Well done. Uh. Symmetric component alignment. o That's why you have to solder in the mic, controller and display at the same time.

Might be sold for a later version. That's interesting. I'm going to have to check this out. Um, it's aimed for beginners as their first soldering project.

Uh, we made a special device. sand down the rough edges see enclos photos. Enclosure is actually a playing card box. Ah yes, yes, that looks playing card size.

Uh, the project was inspired by tiny Matrix from Tiger up I Hope you like it and wear it. Excellent! I Have an unfinished project called The Matrix Doino I'm going to have to dig it out. Hang on a sec. Yeah, sorry to hijack this one, but uh, before I forget I'll just uh, show it.

this is my micro RGB Matrix Dwo I called it. it's a Um 8 By8 um RGB Lead Matrix um Arduino compatible uh controller One of those projects I started and uh um, stopped on a uh, rainy day I Never got uh uh finished. Unfortunately, you can see the uh Jewel uh header rows at the um uh lead Matrix uh solders into and then uh uh. You know the boards can butt up together and do you know? well, you can put them in strings long uh, strings of boards and um uh yeah, that was the uh, that was the idea behind it.

It used a um I forget it's been that long ago. hang on, it's an 0 Mega something or other I can't read that but uh yeah. and then it used the Uh TLC 5947 uh lead, uh, driver plus uh, you know some mosfets and that stuff on there to drive the leads and uh yeah. unfortunately, um, never finished the sucker.

oh well, them's the brakes. but uh yeah, you can see like there's a male header on this side. There's going to be a female header on this side and you could like butt the um uh modules up together. So they would because this board was exactly the same size um, or slightly smaller than the lead module itself so you can butt them all together and put them in, uh, complete strings.

Anyway, that was The Matrix Duino so um, similar sort of thing I guess is this one? RGB um I don't know, we'll find out. Look at that happy smiling chap I love it with his nerd necklace Yeah! Status Statement: Future version of the hackers might be able to read your mean what your mean and displayed in real time on the display as showing little happy face look little smiley face. absolutely brilliant. So I know if you smile it'll uh it'll smile.

if you frown, it'll frown. If you're shouting it'll shout that' be awesome so this looks pretty funky I am definitely going to build this one up I might do a a build video just I don't know soldering the thing together and ranting on. but there you go. There's the um uh animator tool for it.

Very nice. You can set up your animations, the speed, the delay, play, and it. it displays it um on the screen exactly as what you're going to get on the thing. unfortunately yeah, it's not RGB it's just Red by the looks of it cuz the RGB ones are uh, quite complex.

But that folks is the hackless. so if you want one, go to Hack.org Very cool. I Like it. Aha, this is what he means by soldering at the same time.

There you go, you put your chip down through there and the holes are slightly bigger. That's quite novel. I Like that. that is really quite nice and then you solder that on, put that on top, and solder it through at the same time.

That is really quite. uh, novel. it's It's not the first time technically I've done something like that, but um I really have not seen that in a, um, like a you know, a product like this before. That's that's really quite nice.

I that's really well engineered. They chose the right pins on the microcontroller to be able to do that. Fantastic! Very clever. I Like it, thank you very much.

and I don't think that one was actually uh, signed with a name. There you go if you want to scan that folks and get a video of the hackers in action. I don't think that was some. Didn't say who it was who actually sent it.

it's just the uh rimit Liber uh hacker space. definitely check it out. Hack.org Cool! And next up we have o Worther. thank you very much.

o from Cedar Park in Texas nothing's bigger than Texas is it? Well, I'm sorry, but the state I live in New South Wales is bigger than Texas Thank you very much. We have electronic cables. Oh very light, incredibly light. So uh, let's check out these cables.

Hang on and blah blah. Here we go. That should do it. Bubble wrap and let's have a look.

We have little cables. ooh oh they look funky. Hang on Hi! Dave I Really enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work! I Recently purchased a few probe accessories for my Msox um 3054a W If you got one of those for your own, you're doing well and I thought I'd buy a few more and donate them to your lab.

Nothing special but useful. Uhoh you You want that package next? All right. We'll do that one next. Hang on! You may keep the accessories if you can figure out how to trigger the scope on.

I ITC address higher than O x7f Oliver Thank you very much Oliver RF engineer from Germany Germany and uh bloody Germany again bloody us again Of course please keep the accessories anyway. thank you very much Oliver Let's have a look Who man funky. Wow! look at this. where' he get them from.

Who makes these things I don't think they're agilant. Oh check out this folks little mini Grabbers look at that. sorry I don't have my uh oh I know actually I do probably have a macro lens for this camera I think somewhere. but oh that's pornographic.

Look at that. That is fantastic. Who makes these things? This is brilliant. There you go I do have my macro lens I knew it to come in handy.

Uh Mao in Japan as in Maano as in Maano sets I Don't think so. Um, we welcome. We welcome the request welcome without a KNE we welcome the request I Love there you go from Meo in Japan These little mini Grabbers look at that W beautiful and this is very cool as well down in there design to what? Slip your probe the end of your probe into that which then converts it into um, these two um, little hooks which then you can plug into your micro Grabbers So that is definitely going to be very useful. That's going straight into the little uh accessory kit box on the top of my scope.

Thank you very much! Oliver Very useful stuff. Love it! And by the way, for those wondering how I get the uh closeup shots in my video here are here's the macro lens I Use it's an Opteka highdefinition X 10 macro lens. This is the 58 mm one for my main Uh Hfg10 camera and this is the one I just used. Then it's the smaller one.

It's exactly the same, but it's just got a smaller uh thread size for the 52 mm diameter for my smaller camera and these are very cheap. They're like, you know I don't know, 20 30 bucks or something like that. Really quite cheap and the quality on them is absolutely brilliant. So if you want those close-up shots, highly recommend one of these puppies.

not the cheap Brands Get genuine Opteka and I've actually been shooting this video up until now with this: Vivitar Um HD uh high definition uh wide angle lens because this um HFM 400 camera isn't as W I think it's 38 mm or 40 mm or something not as wide angle as the 30 mm wide angle. I have standard on my Canon HF G10 So I basically um have this one fitted all the time to this uh backup uh camera and it gives me uh, the exact same 30 mm wide angle as what I've got on my bigger uh Canon camera. So there you go, that is. uh cuz that's the whole idea I mean you stick it on there and uh, it becomes wider angle.

There you go. haven't screwed it in of course, but that's the idea and this will probably be the last one Sean pested me to do to open this one so let's have a look. I've had this one for quite some time. sorry because I know I think I know pretty much what's in it.

um and it will require a separate video it's from uh, Blackbox Consulting here in Australia they're the representatives uh for the product in here from Peter box so thank you very much Peter and we'll uh, crack this sucker open and this one folks has been much requested. Actually much much requested. So Blackbox Consulting at the local Distributors for Tada if I can get it open. Lots of people have been asking for it for the digilent Ta-da analog.

Discovery Portable Analog Circuit Design Kit. Um, it's been very uh, popular. So I've heard. Um, it's a dual Channel oscilloscope function generator 16 channel logic analyzer, dual power supply all powered from the USB and it's got some funky software so I'm not going to have time to uh Power this up and uh, try it now.

Unfortunately, we will have to, uh wait for another day. But let's let's check it out. and uh, I've heard some good things and some not so great and they you know not not so great things, but just some you know niggly problems with it and uh, stuff like that. it's got a headphone.

uh Port oh, it's got some. do it get hot does it? I don't think so. not power from the USB Um, it's got a micro uh USB down there. very nice and a whole bunch of Uh headers.

It's a dual row header so there's tons there so it looks like we have 16 channels. T1 T2 Who I have to read the manual on that one. but uh, that's just a a nice little plastic case I Rather like it I Think we can actually crack it open though, folks. and there it is.

Digilent Beyond Theory that's what's inside the analog. uh Discovery I'm going to have to get down and have a look at the Uh part numbers. There's curiously, uh, four little trimmers down there that's very interesting obviously. uh, two channels like this.

probably eight uh channels each cuz this is a 16 channel thing. so let's have a look. and that's the back. double-sided load.

Whole bunch of analogy stuff. so it's pretty dense, pretty, uh, pretty populated. You can see all the, uh, all the bypass caps down around here. they look like B are they hang on I can't see them? Yeah, they look like tiny little 0402 uh bypass caps all surrounding one of the main, that of zyink fpga Let's take a look at it and yep, it's a Zyink Spartan 6 Fpga the 6 Slx1 16.

Um, it's not a huge uh density devices, just like 16k Gates or something like that is one of the latest generation. Spartan 6 BGA Of course that's why you saw all the bypass caps on the top and there's more bypass caps on the bottom. The reason they don't have them directly on the bottom is because this sucker is not like going to be a six or eight layer board so it's harder to, um, fan out all of the traces and keep the bypass caps in there. So they've had to sort of group them out of the way of all of the routing paths coming out of this thing.

and if you flip it open, they've done a very similar thing down in here, so that's not an optimal uh layout in terms of uh, bypass caps. but uh, you know it's it's it's going to work. Um, but on, you know, really high performance. uh stuff.

you'd be routing. You know that thing out on a six or eight layer board or something so that you can get your um as a loop as possible with your uh, bypass caps on your power supply. Uh. One of the things about using this backup camera, by the way is the screen is much lower resolution than the other one.

like um with my other Canon camera because it's got like a one megapixel. um LCD display I can actually read the things on the LCD display as I'm actually filming them. This one's are not quite as good, although it's not bad with the macro lens. but when I zoom out, it's uh, it's no good at all.

All there's an Analog Devices Ad 9648. you can go look that one up. Not going to do it right now. a uh Qfn type package there.

What else have we got? We go a Ftdi uh interface ft232 standard. So it's basically is that it is it a Serial interface only. If that's the case, then it's going to be quite slow in terms of uh data transfer if it's um, oh, that was San moving the tripod. Um, it's going to be slow in terms of uh uh, you know, actual data transfer of this thing in terms of real time.

So um, that's probably a bit disappointing. um if they are using serial only interface instead of uh, genuine like a full-on uh USB interface. But anyway, there's some uh adg there be analog switches ad a Adg 612s there you go, That's some trimmers down there. and that's about all she wrote.

What's that on the bottom? That is a TX Dack There it is. It's an Ad 9717 that's the Dack on this thing. And there you go. That's the analog Discovery It's all in the uh, well, there's quite a bit in the hardware, but uh, ultimately, it's going to be all in the uh software really.

So this requires uh, quite a few hours of use and uh, playing around with before. I Can uh, uh, give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down on that one, but that's a nice little bit of Hardware don't mind that at all. So that's Mailbag Monday for this week and uh, I'll try and do it weekly to try and catch up on, uh, all. the backlog.

I've still got 2, four, six, seven rather large, uh, packages sitting there at least so and they still, uh, keep coming in. but by all means, um, continue to send stuff in people to mailbag money Sunday It's one of the most popular segments I don't know why I guess it's like Christmas time every time I open something right for everyone. Beautiful! Anyway, if you like mailbag, Monday Please give it a big thumbs up. And if you want to discuss it as always the Eev Blog Forum that's where you need to hang out.

Catch you next time.