Your proudest accomplishments in circuits?

Plasma generation comes to mind!

For me it would be flashing a led for the first time with a micro, closely followed by building a bionic hamster

EvilGenius said:

Dear Mr. Tesla. How about a magnetic field car bumper utilizing identical magnets repelling each other? That should create a cushion for a softer impact!
Cheers,
Rom

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A ridiculous (if not deadly dangerous) situation, trying to drive near a car fitted with that contraption as well.

Pity that the OP did not attract valid replies...!

atferrari said:

A ridiculous (if not deadly dangerous) situation, trying to drive near a car fitted with that contraption as well.

Pity that the OP did not attract valid replies...!

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Surely speed dependent driving near any car is deadly dangerous? With or without a contraption? I see plenty of valid replies maybe you just have so many people on ignore you only see the non valid ones??

atferrari said:

A ridiculous (if not deadly dangerous) situation, trying to drive near a car fitted with that contraption as well.

Pity that the OP did not attract valid replies...!

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I think you mean without the contraption? If two different cars had large magnets with the same polarity facing out, they would want to repel each other. If you come near a car without an opposing magnet, it will be attracted instead.

DerStrom8 said:

I think you mean without the contraption? If two different cars had large magnets with the same polarity facing out, they would want to repel each other. If you come near a car without an opposing magnet, it will be attracted instead.

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No I think he is saying if only one car has it then it will stick to it, I think there would be at least one driver not willing to buy one judging by his post . Think of the fuel you would save

DerStrom8 said:

I think you mean without the contraption? If two different cars had large magnets with the same polarity facing out, they would want to repel each other. If you come near a car without an opposing magnet, it will be attracted instead.

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Whatever...

Whether the respective magnets in each car do attract or repeal each other, I prefer to keep driving as I do now; without them....!

Actually what happens if you have say 1000 cars on the motor way all fitted with it in a line and the one in the middle stops suddenly? All cars are evenly spaced and only just out of range of the effect at the point of stopping.

So do all the cars behind go backwards or do you get a Mexican wave effect? Would some push the car that stopped forward and cause the ones in front of it to speed up slightly as they have been magnetically pushed?

atferrari said:

Whatever...

Whether the respective magnets in each car do attract or repeal each other, I prefer to keep driving as I do now; without them....!

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I bet you said that with a Canadian accent Only joking AG

atferrari is gonna hit the roof when he finds out they are no longer steam powered! Dont worry I am on his ignore list so he wont see it one of the advantages to being blocked lol

How will the magnetic bumper interact with the mandated "Automatic Emergency Breaking" feature that will be available on all cars in 2022? You can get that AEB feature on some cars today.

The trouble with the 1000 cars on the motorway idea is that the cars would have to have alternate polarity magnets per car - else they'd all just stick together. Unless every other car was going backwards of course. Or do we have an arrangement where if imminent impact is detected, the appropriate polarity is selected? But then you have both vehicles trying to do that it's like two pedestrians going opposite ways down the street trying to avoid a collision but keep moving in each others way instead. So you need to have a handshaking system where the two vehicles agree on polarity. But wait! Suppose you have multiple vehicles - the nearly colliding ones have to ensure they're talking to each other and not some other nearby car.
Ok I've unwittingly outlined the system - someone cleverer than me needs to design and build it now!
Maybe with RC cars? Maybe? Hmmm?

But as to my proudest accomplishment... Hmmm... I once built a monster bench psu using the transformer and other parts from a mainframe computer psu. I was quite pleased with that. Same era (early '80's) I designed and mostly built a frequency counter, using discrete logic with the fancy new HC chips, much cheaper and should have given much higher speed than the standard monolithic frequency counter chip that was around at the time. Unfortunately I never finished it, just tested that the counter worked and the VF display worked - though I didn't know and couldn't work out how to drive it to get proper brightness, so it was a bit dim. Major life event prevented me putting it all together. Happy days until then.

More recent proud accomplishments - Can't think of any I've been super-pleased with apart from the odd repair that's been a major success - actually I replaced a 3 phase motor controller IC in a domestic washing machine, except the original was obsolete and the replacement needed different connections for the driver transistors - had to do a mod on that. Still working. Was super-pleased with that!

Going back in time again, I once produced very tiny ball lightning, experimenting with a very crude HV maker (based on a TV lopt) and even cruder home made low pressure tube made from a cut off bit of industrial test-tube, couple of washers made of window glass, and some bits of brass rod. My vacuum pump was made out of a modified pressure pump from an old Primus stove! It didn't work very well. But in the tube, I witnessed once or twice a dot of light travel slowly from one electrode to the other. I later learned that these phenomena had been seen in photographs of Nicola Tesla's aparatus in action, but no-one had been able to reproduce them since, with serious budgets! So that was quite impressive to look back upon.

throbscottle said:

The trouble with the 1000 cars on the motorway idea is that the cars would have to have alternate polarity magnets per car - else they'd all just stick together. Unless every other car was going backwards of course. Or do we have an arrangement where if imminent impact is detected, the appropriate polarity is selected? But then you have both vehicles trying to do that it's like two pedestrians going opposite ways down the street trying to avoid a collision but keep moving in each others way instead. So you need to have a handshaking system where the two vehicles agree on polarity. But wait! Suppose you have multiple vehicles - the nearly colliding ones have to ensure they're talking to each other and not some other nearby car.
Ok I've unwittingly outlined the system - someone cleverer than me needs to design and build it now!
Maybe with RC cars? Maybe? Hmmm?

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Not quite sure what you mean. I would expect that every car would need to have, say, the north pole facing out. Then they would repel every other car.

Oh yes of course. IMA dumbass. I was thinking north at the front, south at the back kind of thing - like your magnetic train set when you were a tot.

My proudest accomplishment is represented by my avatar. It's a 24" tall penguin animatronic, driven by an Arduino Mega talking to an SSC-32 (servo controller) The Arduino is running about 1,000 lines of code that implements an interpretive language (of my own design) to control the servos. His action can be scripted or non-deterministic. Besides interfacing everything, I built an electronic interface between audio and servo, so when the 'penguin talks', his mouth moves synchronously to the audio. This circuit is documented here.

throbscottle said:

Oh yes of course. IMA dumbass. I was thinking north at the front, south at the back kind of thing - like your magnetic train set when you were a tot.

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Maybe you are onto something there. It would be easier and safer to simply connect a long train of cars than it would be to avoid connection (Collision).

Another issue with a magnetic avoidance system - magnets are heavy and would be a fuel hungry solution, moving all that weight up hills or accelerating from a stop. also, if you've ever tried to push to repelling magnets together, especially strong ones, they tend to flip in your hand and connect N-S. Now imagine slamming on your brakes late as you approach the car ahead of you, the car dives, and is pulled under the magnet of the front car, then click - they are connected. Who carries the demagnetizer?

Reloadron said:

Your proudest accomplishments in circuits?

I spent my last 25 years, before I retired working with 3 phase systems with very slow AC sine waves. For the most part 3 phase sub 1 Hz. Amplitudes around 150 volts at maximum.

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Hola Ron,

May I know what was the final application and how were they generated?

atferrari said:

Hola Ron,

May I know what was the final application and how were they generated?

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I can give you a brief overview. Before the new power supplies which were inverters the old designs went back to the 60s. We started with small fractional horsepower Bodine Electric variable speed motors driving gear networks and a synchronous transmitter. The rotor powered by 120 VAC 60 Hz and S1, S2, S3 (Stator outputs) were whatever the rotational speed of the rotor was modulated by 60 Hz. The 60 Hz was filtered out and the 3 phases cleaned up and amplified. That signal drove a large motor generator device called an "Amplidyne". At this point I had moved from Naval Ordinance (Torpedoes) to Navy Nuclear Propulsion Systems. The large motors that ran on the low frequencies were used with what was called CRDM (Control Rod Drive Mechanism) which is the only moving part in the core of a nuclear reactor. I worked with the manufacture and testing of reactor components for the US Navy. So, we started with a synchro transmitter and in the later years went to solid state inverters. The Amplidynes I mentioned were massive driven by a 40HP motor with three large generators on a single shaft.

Ron

gophert said:

Maybe you are onto something there. It would be easier and safer to simply connect a long train of cars than it would be to avoid connection (Collision).

Another issue with a magnetic avoidance system - magnets are heavy and would be a fuel hungry solution, moving all that weight up hills or accelerating from a stop. also, if you've ever tried to push to repelling magnets together, especially strong ones, they tend to flip in your hand and connect N-S. Now imagine slamming on your brakes late as you approach the car ahead of you, the car dives, and is pulled under the magnet of the front car, then click - they are connected. Who carries the demagnetizer?

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What? We don't have monopoles yet? What's going on there, then?