Saturday, September 26, 2015

EC1204B V1.2 kit


This is a fun project. I picked up this clock module, a EC1204B V1.2 ,from wish, so it wasn't expensive. Few things you will need. Some warnings, there are small parts, so be careful opening this up. Also there are quite a few surface mount components so I don't recommend this for a total beginner, unless they are super patient. There seems to be quite a bit of support on the Internet and the device appears to be highly hackable, and cheap enough to screw one up. The transistors (or triodes according to the instructions) can be tricky to solder. I tin one pad and then mount the transistor on that pad, then solder down the other two pads. Actually, I do that to the caps and resistors. I did have a few LEDs that weren't working, but there were leftovers. SMDs were 603 I think. It took me several hours, but then I'm pretty unfocused and had a grandkid getting into stuff too :). Stock, it has several modes. Tells the time, date, and temperature. Best of all it looks nothing like a bomb. I set this up in my workspace to keep an eye on it for the week, (I needed a clock anyway) after several days I got an ERR1, or ERRI I suppose. Hard to tell on a 8seg display. It required a complete reset of the clock to clear. There is a lot of leakage too, so there is a lot of half/on led. But for the price, if you have done a few through hole component projects and are ready for a decent challenge this one may be for you. Oh and one other thing, the hourly chime sounds like my microwave, so don't go running to it for food. I had some sort of weird Pavlovian experience one night. I enjoyed it, and ordered another one to hack into something for my desk at work. I'll post that process when I'm done I promise. For now though, I've other things to do.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Update and some news

Lately I've been starting several projects. My intentions is to move this to a wordpress site that I would host myself. It is proving to be quite challenging ergo, I've been quiet. I do want to do more with this site. So I invested into some soldering projects a question I get asked a lot is "my (family member pronoun) likes electronics (probably video games on some console) what is a good project for a (random number)yr old? Also there is a certain zen to soldering. Put on some Floyd, climb into your head space and put iron to copper. It's a beautiful thing actually. SO, hang tight as I start sharing my soldering adventures with you dear readers, and perhaps you will get excited enough to be a soldersucker too. Remember too, cp horse /water but you can't sudo drink horse.