ajoyraman

Good approach but be careful that the overall structural weaight does not go up.

Good work! on completing the details of your design, fabrication and operation. Just one suggestion: Could you work out and mark the ideal CG location so that when the location of components is suitably adjusted for this the plane would be statically stable could glide comfortably in case of power failure.

Excellent contribution to the aeromodelling fraternity. This could be a starter RC model for kids. Do complete the details of construction.

Good Idea! I have a spare set of pliers which are worth this modification.

Basic idea is great! Since we do not have a feedback on the switch status and as there is likelihood of false trigger based on calls not made by us, I suggest you include a time sequence. Something like, 2 calls in 2 minutes is ON and 3 calls in 2 minutes is OFF. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Yes! It is not easy to get a really new idea. Doing it once again on Instrutables helps dissemination to a larger group.

Yes I agree that was another option

Dear Community Manager,Thank you for your inputs. I will make the changes on my instructable 'Quickly Check FUZE' and resubmit for your consideration.Meanwhile another recent instructable "USB Powered Electric Shaver" has been redone by me to meet your guidelines. Kindly check if you can make it visible.Many thanks,Ajoy Raman

The electronic-ballast generates the high voltage for startup using a high-frequency oscillator and so does not need the starter. However, normal ballast-chokes which are wound-inductors along with the starter create the high voltage for the tube to start up based on the principle that interrupting an inductor current suddenly creates a high voltage. Yes, the electronic ballast is more efficient.

Excellent use of the old K1000, thanks for sharing!

Cool Idea!

Good job, thanks for sharing!

I often collect old toothpaste caps, using them as knobs and legs for electronic equipment. Thanks for sharing this novel idea for additional use of these caps.

Thank you for your suggestion I will consider this.

Very well executed project!

The phone is a USB Host in OTG-Mode I do not think it will support I2C.

Dear Hackerh,Yes it should be possible to get a sampling rate of 200 kHz for a one channel oscilloscope. You would need to setup a timer interrupt at the desired rate and carry out A/D conversion on each interrupt. Save say 250 to 400 sample values and them read them out and display them.I have worked with the PIC in 'c' and the source code and methodology is shared please go through this.Happy programming!Ajoy Raman

Dear Joe,Thank you for your mail.Kindly consider using this launchpad from TI.http://e2e.ti.com/group/launchyourdesign/m/c2000microcontrollerprojects/665559The programmer is built into the launchpad.This would be a good starting point in working with the TMS28027 processor. Ti has also provided a free IDE (downloadable as well as Cloud based) with a lot of examples.Regards,Ajoy

You hit the nail's on the head! A practical application of your string art is a "loom Board" for electrical wiring.

Thanks for your comments. I have now implemented a stand-alone mode / USB PC GUI dual mode project.https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Uno-DDS-Audio-Signal-Generator/

Thanks for your comments. I have now implemented a stand-alone mode / USB PC GUI dual mode project.https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Uno-DDS-Audio-Signal-Generator/

As we are using an electronic ballast the Phase/Neutral do not come directly to the terminals of the fluorescent tube. In the circuit for the electronic ballast (my earlier instructable) you can see that the phase to neutral connection is rectified and fed to a half-bridge. The half-bridge output after a resonant inductor forms one output of the ballast. The other is the mid point of two capacitors connected in series between the rectifier positive and negative. So, we will not short the phase and neutral.

Appretiate the enormus effort and the excellent presentation!

Cool Idea and Innovative thinking!

Yes, you can use this circuit to directly check the voltage status on the battery terminals. Here is the BOM:

Your connection scheme is probably for a different type of ballast which does not need the filaments. The one I have used and tested is based on the wiring scheme from the manufacturer. The experimental results also show a large increase in tube current when one filament is shorted. The ballast of this type would probably be damaged if both filaments are shorted.

I am familiar with only the two types explained in the Instructable. I suggest you check this site for details of other types of fluorescent tubes: http://nemesis.lonestar.org/reference/electricity/fluorescent/index.html

Thank you all for your comments. To give more clarity on the electrical parameters I have included an additional step giving more accurate measurements of voltage, current and power using an isolated setup and an oscilloscope for mesasurements.

Yes, your observation that the voltage across the filament should be 4-6 Volts got me thinking and I have now carried out a more accurate measurement of the electrical parameters. I added another step with this data. The resonant frequency of the half bridge is based on the 1.3 mH inductor and a 5 nF capacitor giving a calculated frequency of 62.4 kHz.

Yes, using a higher frequency than the 50/60 Hz mains frequency gives a 10% increase in energy efficiency. Using a frequency of 60 kHz is a trade off between the switching losses in the power-devices of the half-bridge and the frequency for best energy effeciency.

Use this method till you have time to get a new one!

Fixtures with wire-wound ballasts have a starter which can be seen at one end and while starting the tube-light flickers once or twice before coming ON. With electronic-ballasts there is no starter and the tube-light comes on instantaneously after a short delay. Wire-wound chokes have only 2-leads whereas electronic-ballasts have 6-leads. Note that my experiments are further restricted to half-bridge resonant converters which are the most widely used consumer types.

Excellent observation!I measured the currents once again which are as follows: Normal operation 128mA, One filament shorted 202mA, Both filaments shorted 286mA. The tube glows in all conditions. A rough calculation of filament resistance based on the impedance of the 1.3mH resonant inductor (490 Ohms at 60 kHz) gives a value of approximately 200 Ohms. This would be the hot resistance of the filament, 20-30 Ohms would be the cold resistance.Summarizing: The current increase with one filament shorted is ~1.5 times which should be tolerable by the electronic-ballast and give an estimated 20-30% increased life for the tube. The current increase with both filaments shorted is ~2.2 times which is not desirable for the electronic-ballast.Instead of shorting adding a 200 Ohm / 8 Watt resistor...

Excellent observation!I measured the currents once again which are as follows: Normal operation 128mA, One filament shorted 202mA, Both filaments shorted 286mA. The tube glows in all conditions. A rough calculation of filament resistance based on the impedance of the 1.3mH resonant inductor (490 Ohms at 60 kHz) gives a value of approximately 200 Ohms. This would be the hot resistance of the filament, 20-30 Ohms would be the cold resistance.Summarizing: The current increase with one filament shorted is ~1.5 times which should be tolerable by the electronic-ballast and give an estimated 20-30% increased life for the tube. The current increase with both filaments shorted is ~2.2 times which is not desirable for the electronic-ballast.Instead of shorting adding a 200 Ohm / 8 Watt resistor would be difficult.

Check out this link: http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4439796/Read-multiple-switches-using-ADC . If you use a BCD switch then only 10 combinations need to be decoded. As we use ADCs the number of pins should be sufficient. Plan for frequencies up-to 19999 Hz. 4 BCD switches and the other digital pins can be used for selection 0/1 for the 10 Thousands, Sin/Triangle and to initiate the setup frequency.

Also consider an option using thumb-wheel switches.

Keeping the inpu to the PC Sound card within +/-2 V and with 0.1 Gain we can get +/- 20 V input range.

The add-on is basically two spi controlled pga's and as the booster-pack configurations are usually the same it should work. However, I do not recommend working with the Stellaris Launchpad as it is not supported by TI now. Also the C2000 had a 2Msps Simultaneous sampling ADC which is not seen on the Stellaris LM4F120 (Tiva TM4C1233H6PM) datasheet. If you plan to experiment I could share the c and vb code.

A negative going blanking pulse with the diode and 6.8 k Ohm worked for me. You may need to experiment on the resistor value for the particular build of the HC-SR04. Yes you could synchronize the blanking with the trigger using the arduino and software based on an ISR. I found it easy with the Schmidt gates.

Many thanks!

If you are getting the trace on the GUI your programming should be good.With the probe grounded we should get Zero and ~3 V when open.Change R6 150 Ohms to something between 15 to 47 Ohms (5V to Pin 28 AVDD Resistor) and check

Usually on a bread-board that the crystal and its capacitors are too far from the IC crystal-osc pins. Therefore it may not be oscillating or oscillating at a wrong frequency.If the programming is OK and the Oscillation is correct only then will the communication take place at the correct baud rate.When you select connect to com port you should get a response 'Aj Scope Ready' and not 'Time Out'. As a hardware check that the clock frequency is OK and hence the correct baud-rate is being set-up: On power up check the frequency at OC1 and OC2 outputs they should show a PWM waveform of 31.1kHz with 50% duty cycle. Also independently check the loop-back of the Rx/Tx pins on the FTDI chip and make sure that you have set the jumper for 5V operation and that the RxTx are cross-connected to the...

Usually on a bread-board that the crystal and its capacitors are too far from the IC crystal-osc pins. Therefore it may not be oscillating or oscillating at a wrong frequency.If the programming is OK and the Oscillation is correct only then will the communication take place at the correct baud rate.When you select connect to com port you should get a response 'Aj Scope Ready' and not 'Time Out'. As a hardware check that the clock frequency is OK and hence the correct baud-rate is being set-up: On power up check the frequency at OC1 and OC2 outputs they should show a PWM waveform of 31.1kHz with 50% duty cycle. Also independently check the loop-back of the Rx/Tx pins on the FTDI chip and make sure that you have set the jumper for 5V operation and that the RxTx are cross-connected to the TxRx of the PIC.

If we look at signal-amplitude with respect to the slew-rate of the analog front end and consider 1/10 of max-amplitude as small-signal and 9/10 of max-amplitude as large-signal then there is a difference in the bandwidths for these signals. The large-signal is slew limited and so shows a lower bandwidth compared to the small-signal case.