christmas

Christmas – New Tools!

I hope everyone reading this enjoyed their Christmas events, time off, and the company of friends and family.

This year, I actually made a list, much to the delight of my parents, so that they didn’t need to scramble and search for something they think I’d like (despite my assertions that gifts were not necessary.) In the end, my list was entirely composed of tools for electronics, and how happy was I to find on Christmas morning a plethora of utilitarian gifts!

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Monday, December 27th, 2010 electronics, life, projects 2 Comments

Obligatory Christmas Post

Alright, so it isn’t really obligatory. Merry Christmas to you, reader, and a happy new year to you as well. Next semester starts January 18th, 2010, so there should be plenty of new projects. In fact, we are apparently building a robot!

During the break, I should be getting around to photographing and making posts for all my projects this semester (that I’ve not yet covered).

Gorgar Relay Board

Oh, and as for Gorgar, I’ve located the triac responsible for the second drop-target solenoid not firing. (Notice to missing one above, 3rd row of triacs, 3rd triac in: right in the center!)

Triac

Now to locate a replacement. Shouldn’t be too hard. The way I located the defective triac was pretty awesome. I put the multimeter on continuity, and put one probe on the pin that triggers the malfunctioning solenoid, then, with the other probe, I touched the back-plate of all the triac, under the hopes that it was the pin attached to the back-plate (I assume ground, or perhaps the base, of the triac) would be the same pin that provides the power to the solenoid. Well, I was lucky, and found continuity between one of the triacs.

I checked on the intertubes for how to test a transistor/triac, and went about checking the hi-lo values on this one. Nothing. As a control group, I tested all the other triacs on the board, and all of those ones were fine, this was the only one that had no continuity anywhere. Safe to say, she has blown.

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Thursday, December 24th, 2009 life, pinball, projects No Comments