Skip to main content

Electronics 2

 On Sunday Davy Dick ran an online version of his Electronics 2 course.



Normally he runs them at his home with around six or seven attendees which gives plenty time for questions and the opportunity to see and touch the circuits

The course was divided into three sections covering

  • Numbering systems - decimal, binary, hex - how do we use them in our projects
  • Digital signals
    • How do we store numbers (e.g. inside a DCC decoder or inside the Servo4 module)
    • How do we pass numbers (e.g. from a command station to a loco, CBUS, etc.)
  • Serial / parallel connections
  • How transistors work
  •  Using transistors as switches and operating high power devices.
    Integrated Circuits
  • Examples of ICs, PICs
  • Demonstrations of popular ICs.
    • Driving a 7-segment display
    • LED chasers
    • Route selection
    • Power drivers, including motors
    • Comparators (DCC TOTI)
  • 555 timers - and how they are used in Pocket Money Kits
  • How this very popular (and cheap) IC works and its three operating modes:
    • Bistable – as in the shuttle
    • Monostable – one shot timer as in the automatic lights kit
    • Astable – as a LED flasher and a pulse generator
A great insight into how some of our most popular kits are constructed, and as always clearly explained.

The whole session was recorded and it is hoped that this will be edited into 3 separate videos that will eventually be made available on the West of Scotland Area Groups own website.

Davy has a future session planned on PICs. More details later.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Train sequence / timetable using Arduino

                              Following discussions in a MERG Zoom meeting about potential projects for the Cumbria virtual area group I have started this blog to share my ideas for building a train sequence / timetable system based on an Arduino UNO. The trigger for this project was Andy Robb's article in the MERG journal (June 2020 edition). In it Andy describes using an UNO with a OLED display to produce an electronic station display board.  Having tried out Andy's version I started thinking about expanding the idea and have come up the following list of possibilities: 1. Replace my card index train sequence with an electronic version. 2. Have the train sequence synchronised with the on platform displays. 3. Display an analogue clock on the station display and have it display the train times. 4. Store the position reached in the sequence so that it starts where it left off on power up.  To mak...
8 comments
Read more

3D Printing Presentation

Sunday's Zoom meeting had our largest audience so far with 19 members attending from various parts of the country. Alan Geekie gave us an excellent and well received presentation on 3D printing that included FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) and SLA (Stereolithography apparatus) types He first showed how we can source "things to print" using sites like Thingiverse. His own filament printer was the Prusa i3 Mk 3S which is available either as a kit (£699) or pre-assembled (£899) and features a self leveling bed. It also benefited from an additional multi material upgrade kit and he demonstrated the start up sequence of leveling, homing, clearing remaining filament from the hot end and then beginning the print.  The process of slicing where a 3d object drawing file (.stl) is broken up into the x,y,z drawing coordinates for each individual layer was also explained. Alan then moved on to resin printers using another Prusa model, the SL1 and its associated curing and washing mach...
3 comments
Read more

Mimic Points in Visual Basic

For this project, I wanted to create a moving graphic to mimic a set of points moving from one position to the other.  This Blog shows all that is needed. The first Picture shows the 6 lines needed.                                 This Picture shows the Line Properties.    The tracks are shown with 5 lines, though only the middle ones in red are involved.  The other line shown below the others is the one that actually "moves".  It is shown below the other lines for clarity only.  At the start of the Program running, it is positioned over the lower red line. In VB, each Line has properties and these are shown above.  To get a line to appear to move, all that needs to be done is to gradually change the X2 and Y2 co-ordinates of the line. This is the code for the program. The first 6 lines create a pause Function in the program, by using the Computers internal C...
1 comment
Read more