News, Updates and Other Minutiae
September 2023 Long time between drinks, but not much happening on the tech front at the moment. Added another couple of rants to the rant page.
January 2023 Updated the AD9833 VFO code to use a 12F1840.
December 2022 Added rant about todays useless (internet) search engines.
November 2022 NEW Project An AD9833 Based Simple VFO. FT101ZD VFO project updated.
October 2022 A replacement internal DDS VFO for FT101Z/ZD rigs. Because the worlds postage system has gone totally bonkers and it is not possible to send a small pcb anywhere except at extreme cost, I am slowly making available the option to purchase pcb's from Pcbway. First up is the Simple DDS VFO 2017 project pcb. Others will be added over time. Noise Canceller kits available again- see Noise Canceller page.
Privacy Policy uploaded. GPDR and all that stuff In accordance with various bits of legislation around the world, either currently in force, about to come into force or proposed, you will now find that annoying "We use cookies" notice at the top of this website. The full Privacy Policy is available at the Privacy Policy link in the footer at the bottom of the page. (If you don't know what GPDR is, Google it. Real scary shit for ANYBODY with a web presence.)
Model Railway Electronic Project - Welding simulator - Under construction - Dec 2017
All the Model Railway Electronic Project web pages are a work in progress at the moment, so they may ramble a bit or be a bit disorganised while I refine the various pages. Most of these projects were done quite some years ago without much documentation, so I'm in the process of documenting them, which may take a little while. In the mean time, what I have is being put up here. I designed this project as I was not satisfied with what was available at the time, most welding simulators had one flashing white light and not much else. Today, there appears to be more (albeit expensive) options available, but still none that I could find that simulated the red glow of a hot weld. So what does it do? Well, obviously, it simulates the flashes seen when an arc welder is used by flashing both white and blue LED's. But it also gradually illuminates a red LED to simulate the glowing red area of the weld and when the "welding" finishes, it slowly fades. A couple of other functions I added for the control of this project are: 1: An On/Off control line so it can be controlled by other devices such as DCC modules. 2: Either random periods between when the "welder" activates or the ability to preset a regular delay between activations.
I have designed a 'Universal' pcb that can be used for several different projects (that is why the 'Not fitted' references in the schematic above), but have not yet made one to make sure there are no problems with it. In the meantime, below is a preview of the pcb.
To do: Expand this webpage with more info. When I can find a HO figure of a welder that doesn't cost an arm and seven legs, make a small diorama and video it to show how it operates. More as I think of it.
