Freeside Atlanta

I got an interesting question on my YouTube channel yesterday asking if my transimpendance ammeter can measure A/C in addition to D/C and if the output of the instrument is A/C. The answer is yes to all of the above. Good question and a fun little thing to test on the bench on a Saturday morning.

I pushed 185 watts through my custom DC relays last night. They ate up that power like a champ. Likewise, I've also been testing it in the off condition to measure its steady off power consumption. The cards burn 150 nano amps or 1.8uW when off. That's means it's about 80 mega ohms which is OUTSTANDING. This project is really moving along nicely. I have some serious burn in testing to do and then it's time to get the main board encapsulated and do some real life testing. That's going to be fun!

Well, its time to finally get this project "out there". I've been sitting on it for months putting together a bunch of cool little projects for this board and the video above shows off some of the cooler ones. Check out the Kickstarter page for more details as well. Ever since I saw Kickstarter the first time I've been wanting to give this a shot so I could learn the ins and outs of doing small scale manufacturing from home. Because this is not a product, but a platform or hacker tool I am not super confident there is a substantial enough market for it but I cannot know if I don't try. The plan if this succeeds is to give all the boards a final value engineering assessment and put the project out to bid. I've already done this with a Florida shop called Tropical Assemblies as well as with Seeedstudio. I'm not super excited with Seeeds PCB quality so I think I'll skip them but the good news is that the local fab shop had similar prices so at l

Recently, we at Freeside Atlanta teamed up with the Alchemical Arts Alliance and My Inventor Club to design and build an Offroad Wheelchair so that our friend Robin can get around their events. Together, we've raised about $2,000 for the project. The design phase is usually the most difficult part of the projects, and it is often the most expensive place to make a mistake. Committing the resources to a poorly-designed project can cause the entire thing to be wasted, so we designed the Offroad Wheelchair project very carefully. We started with the constraints – We need ease of maneuverability, an ability to overcome obstacles and take fairly steep inclines, longevity to make it through events up to a week long, and recoverability in case it gets stuck. Also, biggest two constraints – Budget (~$2000) and time to prototype (2 months) From that, we landed on 3 design options – 1 – Electric motors with onboard generator for periodic battery charge 2 – Modifying an exi

If you've been following along on my journey to learn electronics design, you'll know I've been working on a motorcycle power supply. It's getting pretty close to finished and its time to do testing. The last series of blogs were about a constant current load testing device. I needed that to test the power supply under different load conditions. This installment is about the opposite end of that spectrum, what happens when the circuit is "off". Because lots of motorcycles tend to be parked for months without being ridden I need to verify that my device does not contribute to early battery failure. To do that I need to measure the current consumed when it is plugged in but off. We are talking about very small currents though so very high precision measurements are required. Normally, you can use a digital multimeter for this purpose but for measuring small currents this not as straightforward as it seems. Ammeters are connected in series with a circuit an

The project is finished. The units have been built and sent off for use. Much was learned. Here are some insights. First, don't design a PCB for the lowest cost. That just increases your costs later. I made the the board narrower than was convenient to save $20 and I ended up wanting to put the entire thing a case so I could mount the banana adapters off the PCB where they could be farther apart. Not necessary but preferred for me. Second, putting artwork in copper on your PCB not only works but looks great when you are finished. Take a look at the second photo below. That Freeside logo looks awesome! Third, assembly of through hole components is NOT easier than surface mount parts. It was a bit of a pain to build them all. TH components don't stay in place when you flip it over to solder.  Final PCB I used. Artwork in copper. Queued up for soldering. Delivered and installed. My lab's version with voltmeter and case. It includes a cooling