OT an electronic circuit

Like, you can't touch-type? In My Day early in high-school we had classes; at the time (early 90s) they were still on VT100-type terminals with orange CRTs, with a training program running on some type of minicomputer probably DEC.

The particular classroom was in the basement and set up for touch-typing training only, the setup was probably from the mid 80s but worked well enough.

Confidential proprietary information!

Wow, the LTM8023 has 20(?) ground pins.

Yes I understand people have lost interest in designing and building anything I know. Good news is I built a power supply such as it is this week too, these little LED drivers:

4 cent each in quantity, have pretty beastly switches for their size. Rds ~0.5 ohms typical, peak current limit 1.5 amps @4.2v 50% typical!

I'm using it as a tiny CM flyback controller here seems to work ok in that role, too. About 18 turns of #28 wire on the primary and ~120 turns of 36 gauge on the secondary, on a Micrometals T50-8 toroid 4.7uH to

100uH seems to do 3.3 - 5 volts to 48 volts nicely.

I suppose that if I want to inspire one of those 300+ post threads, I should avoid discussing hard stuff like electronics.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

I looked at your diagram for quite a while, but could only see a variety of rather boring power supplies.

What sort of discussion about that did you hope to provoke?

CH

It contains two discrete transistors so it'll be perceived as disgusting by many "modern" hardware designers. One of our professors about 40 years ago said that we only have to learn about discrete transistors for the exam. Once we'd be entering the work force everything would be ICs. Boy was that guy wrong, and I knew it.

Is Python the name of the game today? I have largely migrated to Linux but the SCADA software I used for Labjack devices is Windows-only and doesn't like a VM. So I am thinking about learning Python and maybe Tkinter for the GUI part. It's mostly about measuring stuff, sending it in via USB and displaying calculated results.

In the past there was a new game every few years. First Fortran, then Basic, then everyone said you've got to learn Pascal (still have the book), then C, then C++, C# and whatnot. I want to avoid saddling the wrong horse.

Analog is fun. Very few people think so, but it is. I am trying to convince a client to do something without ADC and lots of code, going discrete instead and saving money. During the online meeting I could almost see the goose bumps come up.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

You're right. Politics is much more interesting than electronics.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

I could have used a second OPA547, but they are big and expensive.

The Python "Hello, World!" program looks a lot like Basic.

I still do a lot of engineering programs in PowerBasic. The Console Compiler version, the one I like, is $75. I have a zillion engineering apps in PBCC.

Fewer and fewer people can design "real" electronics. Most kids prefer to type, and the few who understand circuits are scooped up the the IC houses. I could tell stories.

This is a little better:

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

JavaScript and Java (only distantly related) are still arguably the kings as they have been for many years, but Python is catching up:

C++/C# receive the bronze and good-ol C at least an honorable mention.

Many large software projects use multiple languages, e.g. modern video games usually the physics engine and high-performance code is written in C++, Windows-specific stuff like database code is written in C#, the GPU "shaders" are written in a dialect of C, and the "glue" that determines what happens when is written in a scripting language like Python or Lua so that people like art directors and creative designers and audio engineers (who may not be highly trained software engineers by default) can make non-destructive modifications to their individual portions of the code without appealing to the C++ guys every time they need to change some minor detail

What sort of stupid non-response is that?

I wouldn't have even started looking at your schematic if I wasn't interested in your work driving GaN... but I see nothing obviously relevant.

Care to point out what you hoped we'd find? Or was I right, and there really is nothing of general interest there?

CH

Not even a little bit related, but invented as entirely different things for entirely different reasons by people working for different companies who were apparently not even influenced by similar ancestor languages, but given similar names for no obvious reason than that both companies were conducting trade wars on Microsoft that year.

Clifford Heath.

You are right that most languages are me-too variants, with little reason to swap from one to another. Choosing wisely has allowed me to avoid career dead ends :)

Overly simplistic: - code to run in a browser: JavaScript - serverside: Java - userspace applications: Java or Python depending on which libraries and user community is most relevant for your application - embedded: C or C++, but understand all gotchas in the FQA

- hard realtime: xC on xCORE processors, or FPGAs - C# is the Microsoft ripoff of Java

The key point is to start with the relevant libraries and user community, and use that to choose the language.

Yep. I just designed out an IC, TI's FDC2212, and replaced it with a bunch of discretes. The product contains a STM32 micro anyway, and a discrete LC oscillator and the MCU timer peripheral seems to work well enough.

The parts, all SC70s and 0402s, only just fit on the board, but there were several motivations. The FDC2212 is a niche part with no second- source, and TI seem to be having lots of complaints about it, based on discussions on their E2E message boards. I wouldn't be surprised if they EOL'd it, which would be a disaster for us with a planned 10+ year production run.

But the real problem was it was incapable of passing EMI immunity tests, despite what the claims in the data sheet would have you believe. The prototype discrete design, assembled on surface-mount proto board, works fine in this regard.

The boards will be here in a few weeks. We'll see how it turns out... [snip]

You might try to find some interesting electronics to discuss.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Got no responses on my instrument chassis critique.

Just like Trump. Well, not... he hasn't started spouting electronics lies... yet.

He does sport some of Trumps falsehoods as fact though.

Nothing to interest you. Never mind.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

[...]

Yep. One of my clients lost their HW/embedded engineer to Google and he now ... ... writes code. The boss joked that they put an offer on his table that could allow him to pay off his mortgage in four weeks.

Another client lost two engineers simultaneously. So they are leaning more on me now but I want to retire.

I can see the LND FET in there but zooming Dropbox pics is tough on this side. Not as good as bare-metal PDF.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"Non-destructive modifications" is exactly what I have in mind. I am not a coder by any stretch and never want to become one. Just write stuff I need and no more but it has to have a nice GUI, not some pre-historic terminal interface that nobody other than myself could use.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

[...]

Thing is, I understand next to nothing about this coding stuff. So I'd have to start with example code (but _with_ GUI) and then modify towards my goals. That's how I learned just about everything in life.

The first order of business would be to get a Labjack U3 going using Exodriver on Linux, then find nice SCADA-like examples for it and start modifying. So far I haven't found anything in Python and others but I'll keep looking. With Windows that was easier because Azeotech DAQFactory is a nice SCADA software which runs on Windows and they had lots of examples such as "Wiggle port so-and-so, have the ADC probe this, that and the other thing, write a nice graph from that with statistics over yonder on the screen".

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Hi Joerg, not a coder either, but I found python pretty easy to use. It's an interpreted language like basic, so no compile step. and to test statements you can just write them on the command line and 'see' what they do. I like that part. Oh and free so download play and see if you like it.

It was also fairly painless to get it to talk to a labjack. (with proper drivers and installation instructions from labjack.) I think ~1/2 my problems these days is getting everything in a directory that python can 'see'. I need the equivalent of the old DOS 'path' function. path = path + "C:/..etc"

George H.