Electronics-2

So my blog is finally back in business after being off the grid for many months. Things have happened in my life. A divorce, moving to a new apartment and trying to start rebuilding my life again. But now I’m back! ...

I’ve been running my music system at home using Squeezebox Server software for many years. It has served me well, but Logitech bought the entire eco-system and then abandoned it. Because it’s Open Source, it’s still updated, but it’s time to do an upgrade to a better system. After testing a lot of different server solutions, I finally choose Roon by Roon Labs as my music server software. Here’s why. ...

If you leave your PlayStation Motion Controller without charging it for a long time, the battery will not charge. Even after you press the reset button, the controller refuses to recharge. Replacing the battery is an easy fix, but expensive, and there is another way of getting the PlayStation Controller to work again. ...

Just got my new Aneng AN8009 Multimeter in the mail. I’ve made an old post about improving the responsiveness of the Aneng AN8008 in an earlier blog post. I loved that meter, but I gave it to my son who is just beginning on his electronic journey. So naturally, I needed a replacement. After checking eBay, I found that there’s a new model, the Aneng AN8009 so I decided to get that model. It has the same problem that the Aneng AN8008 had; it’s slow to settle on a value when measuring. Fortunately, my old modifications work on the Aneng AN8009 as well. ...

My current music setup is a Raspberry Pi 3 with a HifiBerry DAC+ audio card as my music player. It works perfectly, except for one annoying thing. The new HifiBerry DAC+ makes an audible click or poping sound when changing the sampling rate. I have a lot of recordings in higher resolution than CD-quality of 16-bit 44kHz, so it’s jarring when it happens. I like to play my music loud which exacerbates the problem. But there’s an easy solution, and at the same time, you can get better sound quality overall. Here’s how to fix the problem. ...

I’ve recently got interested in RF radio. But I live in an apartment, so I can’t do any installing of large antennas. So after doing the obligatory Google search, I narrowed it down to two antennas. The Wellbrook Loop Antenna and the (much cheaper) PA0RDT Mini-Whip. Being short of cash, I decided to buy a cheap Mini-Whip from eBay. ...

Update: Apparently WeMo took notice of this article and contacted me. They have now sent a replacement unit. I also got an email from the people at Airspy, who mistakenly thought that this blog post was directed at them, which is not the case. The reason for me to choose Airspy is because they make quality products at a really good price, and I plan to do a blog post about using the Airspy Mini as an ADS-B receiver. Thinking of buying any radios, antennas or other radio amateur equipment from WiMo Antennen und Elektronik GmbHI? Think again! I wanted to buy an Airspy Mini to use as a makeshift simple spectrum analyzer. Usually, I buy directly from the manufacturer, but I wanted to be sure that if something were wrong with it, then it would be easier to have a seller closer to Sweden, so I decided to buy from WiMo Antennen und Elektronik GmbH in Germany. That turned out to be a mistake. ...

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks, learning all the ins and outs of my new Cetus3D 3D-printer. It’s a cheap printer for around $300, but it has linear rails and can give excellent results. Unfortunately, the calibration quality from the factory was terrible, which is unfortunate on such a superb printer. My Y-axis was way out. If I zeroed out the nozzle on the left side, the right side was 2.0 lower. There is a calibration feature inside the program, but you need to always print with a raft to get your prints level, with the accompanied wastage of PLA plastic. But I finally found an easy way of fixing the Y-axis adjustment. Here’s how I did it. ...

After finally getting my Cetus3D MkII 3D-printer I was eager to start to print. When I started through the steps to calibrate the printer by adjusting the build plate height, but the print head/nozzle refused to get close enough to the build plate to finish the calibration! The cables on the motor came in contact with the chassis of the printer! So the injector was 5mm from the build plate and couldn’t get any closer by increasing the step values. But there is an easy fix for the problem. ...

 ITEAD contacted me about testing some new equipment and write an unbiased blog post about it. I usually reject all such offers, but this one worked for me. Why? Well, all the stuff they offered was on my shopping list anyway! And my home is quite literally chock full of Sonoff relays, lamps, etc. So the first thing I started to play with was the SONOFF RF BRIDGE 433. The bridge makes it possible to control switches, doorbells, curtain openers, etc. that uses 433MHz communication frequency. I’m not interested in using the original firmware because I prefer to do my home automation setup in Node-RED. Here’s how it works. ...