Posts tagged with "electronics"


  • Tools I Use To Repair Electronics

    This is a continuation of my previous post on the tools that I have at my disposal when I am building electornic projects. As I mentioned before, this is not the comprehensive list of tools, but it should give you an idea. In the last post I left off at my soldering station. I use a couple of solder tips depending on the work. If I am soldering thick wires or soldering pins to an arduino nano board, I will use a chisel tip because it spreads heat well and makes good fat solder joint. For delicate work I use a thinner conical tip. Other than that I don’t use any other tips.

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  • Tools I Use In Electronics Projects

    A reader asked to me to write a post on the tools I use in my projects. Since my projects range from software to electronics to mechanical, the number of tools I use becomes quite large. So in this post I will cover the tools I routinely use in electronic projects. May be in another post I might cover the tools I use for more mechanical projects such as repairing cycles or scooter, setting up solar panels and batteries, building rain water harvesting pipes, plumbing, drip irrigation etc. If anyone is interested, I might also write a post on the tools I use in software development but in this case the tools vary quite a bit depending on the software. Anyway, lets get straight to the point and do a bit of show and tell of the tools I use in my electronic projects.

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  • One Year Since COVID, Franklin, Sensex And Other Lows

    It has been a year since I have seen all kinds of lows of 2020. That year turned out to be quite bad. However, it seems like 2021 is not going to be much better when it comes to COVID. But not everything is as bad. This post is a look back at what happened since the last year lows (from my perspective) and how things are now compared to one year ago.

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  • Does Lightening Strike Twice?

    You would think that one would learn from past mistakes. But no, not me apparently :). With in a week of the last major electronic equipment blowup, there was another lighting strike blowing up another router. That and more coming up soon. Stay tuned.

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  • Lightening Strike Destroyed My Electronics

    This post was long overdue. It happened a while ago, but I have been postponing it since there were so many other important topics to cover. While the year 2020 have given us a massive blow in the form of COVID-19, I was sustaining some other injuries along the way ;). Not physical ones though. Early in the year Franklin Ultra dropped the bomb that Vodafone papers will be marked to zero. Then COVID-19 issues started in India and the country went into a lock-down. Next, Franklin wiped out a good portion of my investment by winding up six funds. A large portion of my investment was in Franklin Ultra Short Term debt funds. That resulted in me dipping into my emergency fund for the first time. Well there is a first time for everything :).

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  • Drip Irrigation Control System v4.0 - Hardware

    As promised, I started upgrading my drip irrigation control system with v4.0 design and software. If you read my last update on the control system, you know that there are two things that I wanted to add to it. One was a way to access the system via internet, so I don't need to physically configure it. And the other was to add a humidity sensor. I finally worked on the first upgrade. Now my control system is accessible over the net (currently limited to my home network). However, I had to make a few hardware design changes. I replaced Arduino with ESP8266. The why and how follows.

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  • Drip Irrigation Control System v2.0 and v3.0

    In one of my previous post, I wrote about my drip irrigation control system. But there were a few problems with it. In the process of rectifying them, I built v2.0 and v3.0 control systems. And to think people were asking if I was getting bored in retirement or if I wanted to get back to work :). Why? I love what I do now and it occupies me completely.

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  • Drip Irrigation Control System v1.0

    If you have been reading about my organic terrace gardening project in the last few posts, you know that I have setup a drip irrigation system that automatically waters the plants everyday. Tinkering with electronics has always been my passion and this was one of those fun hobby projects that I wanted to do after retirement. Sorry, this post may be a bit too technical (electronics and code), so feel free to skip.

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