How about it? Experiments of the third kind , take 999999.

How about it? Experiments of the third kind , take 999999. Update Change of plan, no more darkness :-)

I replaced a defective 120M resistor in one preamp, the other was already replaced on a previous occasion. Those small SMD resistors break very easily when bending the wires to it. Today I updated the software for the the black box and the main board. For the black box I added a 'clear all EEPROM memory' command that writes 0xff (hex ff) to all locations of both EEPROMs. Would you believe that it takes more than 10 minutes to clear these 24LC265? That is writing in page more.... The idea is that if some data error ever happens, there is a known value at that location. But now about darkness, I blacked out one photo cell with real good quality black PVC foil - so not to damage the lens - and to my surprise the ADC value started flipping between 0 and 1. That is the reference 'dark current value', and I checked it at the thermostat value of 40C too. In the the first test on the table when all this was started it was about 50 or

80 IIRC. So what does this mean? This means we can drop this 'dark value', and simply use both photo cells to look at the tritium light tube, gives some redundancy and an interesting compare if strange things were to happen, or the seasonal variations, then both photo cells should show this. I also repositioned both cells so they catch more of the light from the tritium tube 783 490 961 969 39 961 969 and a dynamic range of that minus 1, very good.

So, no more darkness, need to change the text in the firmware, maybe I will just leave it.

Apart from gluing the photo cells into place, it sort of looks like we are ready to go for a bit longer test run. BTW the clear memory command is also protected with a PIN code...