Electronic hobbies and discussion

HavingaGoodTime4x4

FUCK CANCER
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It's pretty simple, but no one makes one. Hamster cage AC. My chick has a very spoiled rodent. Thermal electric cooler hooked to a thermostat. Fused relay from a 12v power supply. Wires are a bit ugly.
View attachment 83562View attachment 83563
I was thinking about making something similar, but for "feeding crickets".

Crickets are fairly hard to keep alive due to humidity, temperature, and even the amount of light exposure.

The biggest one, from my understanding is temperature?

But yeah, my plan is to do an Arduino project to build it.

Very nice!!! :thumbsup:
 

Dezert4Runner

Pineapples belong on pizza
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I was thinking about making something similar, but for "feeding crickets".

Crickets are fairly hard to keep alive due to humidity, temperature, and even the amount of light exposure.

The biggest one, from my understanding is temperature?

But yeah, my plan is to do an Arduino project to build it.

Very nice!!! :thumbsup:
I had a cricket keeper with water bites and cricket food when I owned a Bearded Dragon. Those things died steadily no matter what. I always tried to keep it from being overcrowded which caused higher casualties so I’d buy 20+ crickets from LLL Reptile, feed my dragon up to like a dozen and put the rest in the cricket keeper. Keeping the egg carton in there helped with keeping them dry. That seemed to be a big deal for longevity other than staying on top of food and water. It’s weird that you have to have good husbandry for the food that you’re feeding your other pet!
 
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I had a cricket keeper with water bites and cricket food when I owned a Bearded Dragon. Those things died steadily no matter what. I always tried to keep it from being overcrowded which caused higher casualties so I’d buy 20+ crickets from LLL Reptile, feed my dragon up to like a dozen and put the rest in the cricket keeper. Keeping the egg carton in there helped with keeping them dry. That seemed to be a big deal for longevity other than staying on top of food and water. It’s weird that you have to have good husbandry for the food that you’re feeding your other pet!
Yeah, I do the same. I only buy about 20 to 25 at a time.

I have the cricket quencher food stuffs and put some in a plastic type bottle cap with a little bit of water to keep it "moist". That seems to help a little.

I'll try the egg crate and see if that helps?

It is pretty hot and humid in the room though and it's hard to control the temp right now.

Oh, and I either read it or someone had told me that crickets are sensitive to the amount of light. Makes sense because every place I go, the crickets are always in those "black bins".
 
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Speaking of HDDs I found this gem of a box tonight cleaning the garage. There's an 80mb in there. Haha. I've got a USB drive reader so I'll grab what's important off these then give them the magnet treatment before heading out to the desert for some target shooting this season.

View attachment 83570
I still have a 10mb Seagate HDD with the, I want to say, an RLL/MFM disk controller card. Either way, it still works or did work. Been quite some time since I last messed with it.

I also have a system with 2x Seagate 25mb HDD using, I want to say, an ST11R disk contriller card. The ST11R card was really easy to setup. You had to configure it manually, but it wasn't that bad once I figured out how to do it. If I remember correctly, I have DOS 3.0 running on it. An 8086 with an 8087 and 256kb RAM.

Used to be a hobby of mine back in the mid 90's. I still have the system, but it is in storage at the moment.
 
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4runner DOA

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I still have a 10mb Seagate HDD with the, I want to say, an RLL/MFM disk controller card. Either way, it still works or did work. Been quite some time since I last messed with it.

I also have a system with 2x Seagate 25mb HDD using, I want to say, an ST11R disk contriller card. The ST11R card was really easy to setup. You had to configure it manually, but it wasn't that bad once I figured out how to do it. If I remember correctly, I have DOS 3.0 running on it. An 8086 with an 8087 and 256kb RAM.

Used to be a hobby of mine back in the mid 90's. I still have the system, but it is in storage at the moment.

Dude you need some upgrades. Haha. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these was running win3.1
 

HavingaGoodTime4x4

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I was thinking about making something similar, but for "feeding crickets".

Crickets are fairly hard to keep alive due to humidity, temperature, and even the amount of light exposure.

The biggest one, from my understanding is temperature?

But yeah, my plan is to do an Arduino project to build it.

Very nice!!! :thumbsup:
Try small millworms
You can keep them in the fridge
And easier for her to digest
 
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Try small millworms
You can keep them in the fridge
And easier for her to digest

@WileECoyote
When you get them out the fridge you will need to warm them like with your breath or leave some out for them to warm up

Them worms will be cold and if I know reptiles they need moving food
Already do this.

Yeah, if it ain't twitching, she isn't interested in eating it.

But yeah, I feed her worms on occasion.

We used to have Alligator lizards when we were kids. Even had one that was so "domesticated" it actually slept with us on our beds under the pillow.

His favorite hangout spot was on top of the window on the window curtain rack.

Never ran away or anything.

I don't remember how we caught him other than how he was. Good times.

True story... At one point, we thought he did finally run away. We were so damn sad too.

So, our dad's friend took us to go grunion hunting one night and we're in the bed of his El Camino heading for the shoreline where the grunion hunting was to be.

We're on the freeway and for whatever reason, our vacuum cleaner was in the back bed. I just happened to look in a crevice part of the machine for whatever reason. It really was just a fluke look, if you will. There was the damn lizard all coiled up. I yelled out to my brother, "Charlie's in the vacuum cleaner!!!???"

Some of the weirdest shit with that damn lizard that is how loyal and domesticated he was... no freakin' joke!!!

Finally, my brother and I would go "spider hunting" just about every night. We would check every single crevice around the house, bushes, you name it. Even UNDER the house because our house was partially "raised" so there was a crawl space under the whole entire house.

It got to the point where we couldn't find any more spiders. Like seriously, there was some very slim pickings at one point. We started to go "cricket hunting" on the train tracks that was right next to our house. I can tell you that those "black crickets" fucking bit pretty hard too.

Oh, and finally, we even propped open the manhole cover and let me tell you, those fucking roaches are SCARY AF!!! We caught one and the lizard actually ate it, but we only fed him the roach that one time. We thought about how the damn roach probably had diseases never before documented!!! :rofl::rofl::rofl: We didn't want our lizard to get sick after thinking about it. So we only fed him the one roach.

Crickets, spiders, and house flies were his main diet. Never calcium powdered his food either as back then as kids we didn't know about stuff like that. That lizard stayed very healthy too. :thumbsup:

But yeah, we had freedoms back then. Now you can't do shit like that anymore.
 
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Jesus H MAN???!!! My electronic hobby bench is finally coming back together again since my move into my new apt.

I HATE moving!!! :headwall:

Anyways...
IMG_20231028_201444321.jpg

Still not fully put back together, but it's finally getting there. Ran into issues here and there and I just finished checking hookups and readings and finally so far so good.

I have a 3D Print project I've been wanting to do.

I have a few power supplies I'm going to 3D Print custom made/designed chassis for. For example, I want to make a chassis for this PSU and make a simple digital voltage readout using Arduino. I SHOULD be able to do a amp meter as well, although it will be a little tricky. I did it before. But anyways, I could use this PSU for other projects I have in mind that take higher current draw.
IMG_20231028_221140943.jpg
 
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Chris In Milwaukee

Ain’t no mo’
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Jesus H MAN???!!! My electronic hobby bench is finally coming back together again since my move into my new apt.

I HATE moving!!! :headwall:

Anyways...
View attachment 83993

Still not fully put back together, but it's finally getting there. Ran into issues here and there and I just finished checking hookups and readings and finally so far so good.

I have a 3D Print project I've been wanting to do.

I have a few power supplies I'm going to 3D Print custom made/designed chassis for. For example, I want to make a chassis for this PSU and make a simple digital voltage readout using Arduino. I SHOULD be able to do a amp meter as well, although it will be a little tricky. I did it before. But anyways, I could use this PSU for other projects I have in mind that take higher current draw.
View attachment 83994
We just moved, too. I have zero idea when I'm gonna get my electronics (and wood) shop back together again...
 
Joined
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Building an automated test setup to write a Python Program using PyQt5. Will likely eventually code using PyQt6, but 5 is more than relevant to use for now and TONS of books written using PyQt5.

Tonight I was testing GPIB functionality of the Agilent 33120A Sig Gen. (i.e. the very top instrument on the left). As well as integrating it into my mimic Automation setup that we have at work.

Not fully operational as I need to get a few more instruments and interface cards. Eventually once the code, more or less works on my home setup, I will just have slight modifications to do to the code for it to work at work. The main core of the program will technically be the same just different instruments and GPIB commands.

I have 2x more instruments and some adapter cards that I need to get and waiting on, but the main bulk of the instruments I already have. I can already send GPIB commands, but still need to finish my code for read back and data received.

It should take me about a year, maybe a little longer to fully complete my automated code.

The smaller monitor on the left is dedicated to my Raspberry Pi ZERO. Just hobby related stuff really, but can be used for testing Python related code as well. The large screen on the right is connected to my desktop and my Raspberry Pi 4 through a 3-port monitor switch. The desktop is an old ASUS M3A78 motherboard running an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6000+ on a Win10 32-bit OS. Built this system WAY BACK originally using WinXP and kept it for future use. HAHAHA, now it found a new use and still a very viable piece of usable hardware.

Finally a close up of my Raspberry Pi 4, the 3-port switch, Raspberry Pi ZERO, and my Arduino boards.

Saved a lot money by using old existing PC setups I already have and instruments. When I say "saved", I mean comparing to what work has!!! One instrument is roughly $50k! That is just one instrument for the test rack I use at work. I just need similar instruments that essentially do the same thing, but $$$ thousands less. I just need instruments to essentially test the code.

Anyways, getting ready to test the sig gen.
IMG_20260910_201051017_AE.jpg
IMG_20260910_201832935.jpg
IMG_20260910_202753266.jpg
IMG_20260910_202820323_AE.jpg
 

Chris In Milwaukee

Ain’t no mo’
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The last time I touched GPIB was early 90s when I was an Navy avionics guy, and the "computer" was a Harris mini mainframe. Never did learn to program them. What's the end game? Got a project in mind? That's great brain twisting exercises right there.
 
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The goal is to update our very old outdated HT-BASIC automation program that surprisingly still runs, but I think the Win11 OS is having a hard time memory allocating what the program needs, if that makes any sense?

Windows allocates memory space when programs are ran. When you open this current automation program, it either will run and not save the data after the program is done running the automation part. Or, it will not run the program and "hang" as the program is still loading to get ready to use.

I noticed that when restarting the computer, there is roughly a 60%-70% chance that it resolves the suspected issue that I stated??? I honestly don't know other than it seems to correct the, basically, non-running program by restarting the computer?

It is definitely not a computer issue as when we changed to Win11, they were using Win10 and the issue was still going on then and on a totally different desk top? The guy who "trained me" just kept brute forcing the program by running it until it did run and/or finally save the data. :confused2::doh::smash:

So, I am currently making an automation program using Python and utilizing PyQt5 as the GUI portion. I will likely convert to 6, but for now I am using 5 as PyQt5 has more reference material written and I already have some reference books for PyQt5.

I already have GPIB communications working for sending commands and reading back data. My program mimics NI Max, but in a very watered down version. But still, I am making pretty good progress, but this will take a year or more before coming up with a first rev automated program that can be used for "production work".
 

Chris In Milwaukee

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I haven't programmed anything for desktop OSes. TBH, I've only done some minor embedded stuff back in college, and even then I never really went beyond that (although I'm sure it would have been fun). Most things that I've done are server-side stuff. Python and Qt are very popular in the Linux world, although both appear to work across the major platforms. With that in my brain, any chance that your existing automation program would run successfully in a Linux VM (recognizing your Py/Qt app and your HT-BASIC app are separate animals).

May be talking out my backside since I've got so little current programming experience, however. So apologies if so. :beerscheers:
 
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