Sunday 15 July 2018
#29 Tie-dyed acoustic panels
I know, it's a bit of an uncharacteristic topic for this (sort of a) blog, but despite the curve-ball thrown here, bear with me. It's for a good cause... As it were.
Saturday 12 May 2018
#28 Active full-range surround speaker project (BN96-12832 & TPA3118)
Since the "unofficial" theme of this blog seems to be repair, recycling and repurposing (more or less), i finally got around to getting knee-deep into this idea, which i started devising quite a while ago - a pair of "slimline" surround speakers.
Disclaimers:
- No, these are not meant (or supposed) to be "hi-fi". More just for a bit of "ambient noise", if you will, for movies with 5.1 soundtracks. That, and possibly alternative monitoring for checking mixes.
- No, these are not meant to go terribly loud. Due to, let's call them, physical constraints, they'll be placed at the corners of my sofa (right up against the wall, opposite the TV and the "mains"), so no huge SPL's are required.
Disclaimers:
- No, these are not meant (or supposed) to be "hi-fi". More just for a bit of "ambient noise", if you will, for movies with 5.1 soundtracks. That, and possibly alternative monitoring for checking mixes.
- No, these are not meant to go terribly loud. Due to, let's call them, physical constraints, they'll be placed at the corners of my sofa (right up against the wall, opposite the TV and the "mains"), so no huge SPL's are required.
Monday 19 February 2018
#27 Samsung 5V 1A ETA0U81EBE USB travel charger
This one's a quickie, but i figured i might as well document it.
A friend passed me this a few weeks ago, not quite sure why. I don't recall it being mentioned as dead, only not-used. Either way, last night i wanted to charge the battery inside my modded M-Audio Fast Track, in preparation for a local gig next week. Upon plugging it into this thing, the power LED flashed up for an instant, then nothing. I figured it might not like the USB data lines being tied together, as they often are, in chargers; it powered on and worked well with another charger. But that prompted me to crack this one open.
A friend passed me this a few weeks ago, not quite sure why. I don't recall it being mentioned as dead, only not-used. Either way, last night i wanted to charge the battery inside my modded M-Audio Fast Track, in preparation for a local gig next week. Upon plugging it into this thing, the power LED flashed up for an instant, then nothing. I figured it might not like the USB data lines being tied together, as they often are, in chargers; it powered on and worked well with another charger. But that prompted me to crack this one open.
Wednesday 7 February 2018
#26 Cheap & easy DIY LED light panels
Recycling's all the rage nowadays, right? Right..? Well, either way, freebie raw materials for projects are always welcome, that's something i'm pretty sure we can all agree on. Now, i'm not admitting to be a hoarder, far from it, but i kinda-sorta couldn't bring myself to throw away the dead (read: cracked) laptop LCDs that i had replaced for various clients at work. And what with "finally" expanding this blog onto YouTube, i figured i'd need some extra lighting for the workbench. Catching my drift yet?
Tuesday 14 November 2017
#25 Behringer ADA8000 "Ultragain Digital" revival
I got my hands on one of these Behringer Ultragain Pro-8 Digital a few months ago, as faulty (as in, totally dead) for about 50$ shipped. Having done some preemptive googling before going for it, i was expecting the transformer to be toasted. Sure enough, that's exactly what the problem was - one half of the center-tapped primary measured in the hundreds of kohm, so pretty much open-circuit (as opposed to the 50-odd ohms the remaining good half measured).
Initially i was planning on finding / getting a "drop-in replacement" toroidal transformer, ie. similarly sized physically and power-wise, but with less insanely-high secondary voltages. The stock one, according to some "inspection notes" i found online, seems to have had roughly 2x20VAC windings for the analog +/-15V (meaning the voltage regulators had to "burn off" uselessly much power / voltage), 12VAC for the 5V regulators, and a whopping 58VAC winding for the phantom power regulator. That's about a 50% overkill across the board. One can only wonder just what possessed them to spec the transformer quite like that, especially since it must've been a custom order - you'll rarely find retail units with more than two (identical) secondary windings, and when you do, expect to pay a pretty penny for'em.
Initially i was planning on finding / getting a "drop-in replacement" toroidal transformer, ie. similarly sized physically and power-wise, but with less insanely-high secondary voltages. The stock one, according to some "inspection notes" i found online, seems to have had roughly 2x20VAC windings for the analog +/-15V (meaning the voltage regulators had to "burn off" uselessly much power / voltage), 12VAC for the 5V regulators, and a whopping 58VAC winding for the phantom power regulator. That's about a 50% overkill across the board. One can only wonder just what possessed them to spec the transformer quite like that, especially since it must've been a custom order - you'll rarely find retail units with more than two (identical) secondary windings, and when you do, expect to pay a pretty penny for'em.
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