Questions for tonight?

The book ‘Make Electronics’ by Charles Platt is a great starting point. Good book and gets you stuck in with small projects.

Simon York

The emails triggered from messages may get eaten as SPAM 🍩yummy But using the web or app and clicking your message button should route it to Clive should you choose. Note: the community ’showoff’ tab area is not private

Cerity

Different conductivity leads to as you say applications. Cement 2W -5 W resistors are impractical at the size of 1/4 W film ones

Cerity

Saw this page: https://ibuildit.ca/projects/automatic-load-sensing-switch/ It’s a delay switch based upon power draw using only a relay, IEEE posted in 1982 or thereabouts, oldest vid on YT 2009 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=95LBb2ii_WI

Cerity

There was a fault on one version where it was a bridged track and required twice the voltage... think of it this was on the tracks from source to destination each Component needs voltage to work (or light up an LED, presume 3V each for white).As they increase in number that requires the equivalent step up of voltage to power the thing.

Cerity

Really only need to start with a multimeter, and a regulated 40W iron. The ‘basic’ chinese ones are carbon rods on a stick which can advertise up to 25 W, and are pretty much fire ignitors without safety. Watch Clive’s component video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Maq5IyHSuc His website page http://www.bigclive.com/solar.htm and also 2 or 3 videos on the subject are a great primer. I like using the purple yellow inductors 470 mH if i recall. Keep output up so that even a blustry isle of man day can charge the 50 mAh NiMH cells daily. Also i think he rarely has to pull the lights in for repair. There was also a 3x C cell power pack for really bright lights activated with PIR or lidar detection. Overall welcome to the hobby 😁😁

Cerity

I think he used 1k. You take the source voltage divide by resistance to get Amps. V = I* R (i is amps). This leads to the power formula W = i^2 *R Clive tends to under drive LEDs. If it says 20 mA (0.020A) he sometimes goes as low as 5

Cerity

What is this measuring? I’ve got zero experience with these instant hot water systems because they use so much kWh. If the inlet water still has to be raised to the temperature, it sounds like basic heat theory says raisins to higher temp uses more energy, ie less efficient.

Cerity

Technically the smoothed AC comes at 330 for 240V (110 in usa, peaks near 170) see this on bulgy red film cap LED arrays when using either discrete or single rectifier with smoothing capacitor in series EDIT: 😁 Found it clive covered this at http://www.bigclive.com/diyled.htm

Cerity

240/3=80 with each LED taking about 3 volts, a top of the head calculation tells me that it would be no more than 80. Now depending on the resistors that you use for protection of the LEDs, and the voltage drop, I would not try more than 60. This is without figuring out anything and presuming that the LEDs are hooked up in series.

Rocco Rizzo

HOw many leds do you need to run from 240 volts

The X-ray machine.

Frank

Would love to see a BCDC re-visit redesign of the Joule Thief updated to incorporate solar battery charging and a day/night auto'magic off-on sensor!

Mustafa's Fleas

Do you have cable on the island?

Clive, a bunch of personal and technical questions for you: PERSONAL: * Do you still make most of your income from lighting gigs, and how has COVID affected you? * When you were a jobbing sparky in Glasgow, did you keep your sexuality secret? * Does someone who knows you personally watch your live streams, so they can call an ambulance if you ever pass out from PCB fumes and alcohol? :) TECHNICAL * Is Sprint Layout still your tool of choice? * Ham Radio is for racist pensioners who want to talk about their enlarged prostates, but have you ever worked on RF circuitry? * Do you own an oscilliscope?

Andrew Crawford

Mine does, a bit. Masks which have some stiff wire along the top edge to help it keep shape around your nose help. But really the point is just to drop infection rate a little. If everybody wears them but some people's masks leak then it won't really have much of an effect on the statistics. The legal requirement is to wear one, not to wear one that works. And the effect on your own safety is minor : they're mostly to stop spreading YOUR infection to others, not to protect you. So don't worry about it, just do the best you can.

adrian

Not a question for tonight, but many thanks for the circuit board!!! I tried to send a personal thanks via Patrion, but you problably blocked the message system.

Hub Rijcks

This is a good question. I'd like to see more openness about mental health. But for what it's worth. I was much happier in isolation. Although I was looking forward to making contact with people again, as it's opened up I've found stress rising. Maybe I should go into retreat once a year to escape.

adrian

The previous question was I wondered if any of the guys have been asked to install Covid detection systems based on thermal image camera arrays tracking potential carriers.

+1! His acting in that was top tier.

David K

Sorry about all the multiple messages my intent is having a bad day, while I was researching came across a methane detection system scanning a crowd you could see who was farting lol

Clive: Have you ever flown a plane? If not, why not?!! Best gadget in the world! :)

Steve Brace

I believe HMRC is only interested in packets of chinesium if they're over £15... Perhaps that's how you got caught?

Steve Brace

thermal image camera array covering large areas

Also wonder if any of the covid detection system usually based on a te

O wait here's a good one: Will you be frothing your whoosher for us tonight?

Michael Thompson

I asked my question on YouTube for all the world to see!

Michael Thompson

What refillable printer ink cartridges do you use?

I have ordered a batch of your circuit boards from JLCPCB and been stung with a £17 customs charge has anyone else had this from Hong Kong ?

Just in case you're worried your Fork system is too safe : https://youtu.be/jZ-IbLN9z_Y?t=29

adrian

I'll drive from Amsterdam to Vienna for that!

Frank

Any thoughts on non-human hazards to using ozone generators in the home? Are there materials, fabrics, etc which are susceptible to damage or decay if exposed to ozone too frequently?

John Salt

imagine waking to find that in your bed along with sun burn

have a look at rockubot it’s a uv sanitation robot not a question but. Made me laugh watching the video

Hi, a while ago I'm sure I saw on an AvE video a copper hammer with your name on it - if you have got it - please show us it.

Paul Kemp

Hi Clive

How about a poll for the next comestible to introduce to the Forks of Fratricide ?

adrian

Do you think the JLCPCB employees are happy and treated well?

Clive is not having his annual tattoo this year ;)

Frank

Ralphy's booze of the week ?

adrian

Would you ever consider coming to Australia to do an Aussie Patreon or YouTube subscriber funded meet up, maybe to the capitol city’s?

Mike Wynne

Charging a Ni-MH battery pack is very simple. You use a series resistor and you are done. Handling a LiPo battery pack is way more complicated. You will need a CC/CV charging circuit and the battery pack needs to be balanced, every individual cell has to be protect against overvoltage. Because of cost and complexity most products still use Ni-MH technology.

Frank

I would love to see a sound controlled Led panel / music visualizer. Also a refresher on neon relaxation oscillators would be fun.

Kevin Hardisty

Would you ever consider doing a sequel to Fanny Flambeau? Not another dolly in the "Smokin' Pussies Gang" but perhaps another toy where something equally as inappropriate happens? :)

Q1, It depends on the length of the cables. You might get signal reflections in system and therefore signal interference. This usually results in erratic behaviour of light fixtures, most of the times this occurs somewhat in the middle of the chain.

Frank

Electroboom tried this, ended up blowing up each CFL board he tried (about 5:30 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeadK4cs_Bs

Seán Byrne

I have two questions, in case the first is too personal. 1 - How's your mental health holding up this year? There's a lot of scary stuff going on lately, and I found - through being asked the question myself - that I wasn't doing as well as I thought after some internal reflection. So I'm asking all of my friends to make sure they're doing ok. 2 - On a lighter note, what is the funniest thing that you've ever seen happen on the job?

What's more efficient . An electric shower on "high" heat but with the dial lower down the range Vs the same shower on economy with the temp dial higher for the same temperature?

GL_1_Code1_1A

Hi Clive, Do tell - what do you do with all the wreckage left over from your teardowns? Ta Jim

Jim Norman

The most expensive failure! ;)

Frank

Can you tell a crazy thing you did from when you were younger (I don't imply that you are old now). And... are you able to switch out the Jägermeister with something different? Poitín, Tequila, Different types of schnaps...

Earth or ground is mostly about equalising potential. Tie something to the metal fuselage and the potential is equalised.

Frank

Check decoupling caps. Those 100 nF thing can short out. I had one last week. Used the multimeter to narrow down the corner of the board where the short was and was able to identify the cap that was shorted out. It might also be an IC. Measure resistance when off or measure voltage when the circuit is on. You should be able to find where the resistance / voltage is the lowest, That is where your defect is. Good luck!

Frank

Hope this isn't a repost ... but my q2 didn't seem to post.... Is it possible to turn the large LED panels into sound activated units ... id like to build some for the radio studio ... if possible what would be needed other than non flashy LEDs?

Are there any projects you've done / things you've built that you were exceptionally proud of?

Elliott Krimchansky

We'd (I'm sure that means a lot of us) would like to see your pinball machines sometime?

With your recent sausage roll in mind, have you seen Mat's (Techmoan) 'Rollie' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRGZMg4GWtg ? and are there any gadgets that you long for?

Andrew Donaldson

No particular questions come to mind. I enjoy watching the wave of questions coming in and how well you handle them. I can hardly see them as they move so fast.

If there is no option available to disable this then you might be up to some serious reverse engineering of the power supply.

Frank

No question either but was just going to say I am going to print my own A4 Gallium board thing king black mask on it with white silkscreen on it.

I haven't got a question, but I wanted to say thank you because I have learned lots from your videos! And also I'm awaiting my shipment of LEDs from China so I can build my own A4 Gallium boards.

Is the circuit board inside a energy saving light bulb (the bend fluorescent tube type) useful as a high voltage power supply?

Mike Hanley

I ordered a sample batch of the chaos boards,only I chose yellow solder mask just to be different. Im in The US ,for 5 of them it was 29 bucks but the shipping isjust about the same. thats ok if I get them. My Question is what kind of shipping charges you pay for bigger batches? Oh 2nd Question I found a big Bottle of coffee flavored Yeager marked down at the local wally world . Have you heard of that? Thanks

William Nimmo

It sounds like you don't use much electricity for heating. Have you ever considered solar power for your house? Or maybe wind power? Or solar power for anything bigger than the garden lights?

Nani Isobel

Can you point to a good source to learn the basics of electronic and construction of it? I know software but very little hardware.

Simon Mikkelsen

I caught a video ages ago where you briefly talked about BCDC website, other than HTML do you know any other coding languages

Is both an allowed option, dependant on mood

Hey Clive. This isn’t a question but a small request to say happy birthday to my daughter Rebecca as her 15th is very soon. She is an aspiring theatre techie and loves watching your channel.

I can’t join live, but I’m wondering: do you still have ‘regular work’ apart from YouTube, Patreon and the yearly tattoo?

Paul Schuur

We definitely have the skilled personnel however I'm not sure how profitable it would be sadly

Love to see this, even better whilst spraying the stuff too :)

I doubt it Mike, but I suspect on a clear day Clive can see the Blackpool tower, as a small blip on the horizon, I *think* we can see the IoM from the seafront just about

For me, sadly its a -100, everything I ever bought failed within a few weeks upto 6 months and the stuff was usually marlin in house brand DJ gear or other electronics .. never components tho

I've been working with the QX5252F, an integrated circuit in a transistor-like packe (but with 4 pins) to make boost circuits for driving LEDs off of AA batteries. (The QX5252 is designed for driving outdoor solar lighting.) Question 1: these are often called Joule Thief circuits, but as they use simple inductors rather than proper transformers, do you think they qualify for the name? Since you invented the term, I think your opinion matters. Question 2: I've been using zener diodes to cap the voltage to 3.3 or 5 volts. Should I be worried about cooking the zener? Why doesn't something burn up due to a short circuit (when the zener voltage is reached)? Would it be safer / easier on the zener to first use a voltage divider to bring the voltage down closer to the zener voltage? (I've measured the boosted voltage to be about 8 volts.)

Jeremy Impson

I'm sure something will come to me entirely too late

Michael Thompson

how would you keep a uController running for a few milliseconds after the external power supply was switched off? thinking of either a big cap and detecting when ext power goes away... i want to log a "power-off" record onto an sdcard... looking for a simple solution with minimal (if at all needed) changes to existing e.g. arduino boards or nodemcu boards...

Redlock/Robonline Does your beard interfere with a Covid mask? I ask because mine does and I was wondering if you had found a solution (besides C2h5OH + H2O).

Why are some of the behavioral characteristics of DC step up and step down converters? With the era of large capacity lithium batteries I'd have expected to see them more in lighting/RC applications. Noise? Need shielded and low esr capacitors?

Why resistors are made from different materials and best applications?

Simon York

Question 1: What would technically happen if you *illegally* split a a DMX cable two ways to run two strings of DMX lights from a single cable rather than actually using a DMX repeater/distributor to properly run two separate DMX chains from a single cable? Question 2: Do you play your pinball machines much and is the self playing feature of Centaur a intended setting/feature or a bug? It would be nice to see more videos on them.

Elliott

2nd Question for tonight - I'm trying to find a way to have my Workshop Vacuum switch on automatically when I power up various tools - how would you go about this as the only circuit I can find steps up the Potential Difference over a series Bridge rectumfryer using a reversed 6v step down transformer - the output of which powers a relay. There must be a better way surely?

Whippet Gas

Questions for tonight: Having purchased several of the Gallium boards in both sizes, I'm planning on a red/white/blue Union Flag version of the A4 - any recommendations for the series resistors as I'm using different colours? PS. I'll upload a video of it finished with full credits to your genius self once completed...

Whippet Gas

As a relatively (I expect) younger viewer of your videos (although at 30 myself), how can someone of my age go about learning and getting into old electronics - Thinking old electromechanical arcade stuff, pinball machines and the like. (Where everything these days is collectible, it's incredibly difficult to get hold of stuff just to take apart to see how they work!)

Elizabeth L

Have you any plans for a big Xmas project ? Maybe we could all join in, somehow.

Have you ever taken one of the Lovense Bluetooth Remote sex toy to bits? I'd be willing to be there'd be some interesting kit in there, plus the click-bait title alone wouldn't hurt. :)

Ken Kopin

I want to make a programmable cross-fader for haunted houses. Can I use the PCM from an Arduino (through a MOSFET) to drive an off-the-shelf 12V LED floodlight, or would their driver circuitry get in the way?

Have you tried setting fire to silly string ?

Private Private

Can you explain house wiring like I'm 5? I have a decent understanding of DC , but through in the neutral wire and multiple switches in a room, and I'm a cave man again. Also, why are there so many songs about rainbows?

Matthew Dickey

What was your biggest mistake on a job? (Sorry if this has been asked before!)

Why would one of the gallium boards I made only power some of the LEDs unless 12v was applied while other boards worked perfectly at 5v? I don't know enough about electronics to understand why but thought it might be the tracks not being made correctly increasing resistance?

Some devices will such as simple resistive loads, however the US runs at 60Hz and the UK and Europe runs at 50Hz, and that makes many 50Hz UK/ Europe devices not compatible with the US electrical system. RMS is short for root mean square, it is basically the square root of the peak voltage/current. Due to AC current and voltage is not fixed but alternates up and down in a sine wave, RMS voltage and RMS current is used to get a mean average in order to calculate loads and power demands due to the *Alternating* and not fixed nature of AC voltage and current.

Elliott

Earlier in the world of vaping there was unregulated mods that had protection via mosfets. My question is how did the mosfets protect the batteries from going explosively happy when there was a ground fault to the case?

Can you see the Cumbrian mountains from the Isle of Man?

Mike Hanley

What kit or kits would you recommend for someone who's wanting to get into electronics and such? I don't even have a soldering iron or any components of any kind. Well... besides a bunch of computer and server hardwar,e but that's not exactly something I'd be repairing.

Hi Clive being a 69 year old newbie to electronics I love your videos but some components I don't understand, also what wire gauges to use. I've built some of the things in your videos and just sent off for the pcbs for the blue blinking lights. Would you be so kind as to tell me what resistors I need for colour leds or will the 220 ohm ones be ok. Keep up the great videos. Kind Regards Tony

Here's a good one, how do you earth devices that are flying in planes?

Mike Hanley

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not at all and 10 being lots. How much do you miss maplins? For me its a 100!

Techniques for finding faulty components (probably an IC) on an Amiga 4000 motherboard - 51ohms to GND on the +5v rail, takes no more than 2.5a when trying voltage injection. Thermal camera and IPA methods don't show anything significant...

Clive, I have a Sharp sound bar, it always shuts down when there is not active sound feed to it due to EU green requirements. Do you think there would be an easy way to disable the shutdown?

Mike Hanley

Andy isn't that because the live oscillates between +ve 240 and -ve 240 where as the neutral remains at 0 volts? Might be wrong as I am a meckie :)

Mike Hanley

The American grid runs at 120-130vac but we often use 2 phases at "240v." Would the European devices rated at 240vac run on our split phases safely? Can you explain RMS? I have a grasp but couldn't put it into words!

I'd like to make a simple circuit using mostly basic components (no programming) with the purpose being to bring lithium batteries to a "storage" voltage (3.8v) no matter what the starting voltage is, (3-4.2) and at a rate of lets say 100ma... can you think of a starting point for designing this? power would probably be usb, and the idea is make it modular for charging through the balance lead

Do you have a Sea View from where you live ?

Robert

Trek or Wars? 😝