News 11/24/18

I have been booking side jobs doing AV Integrator work but my Son ignored the Oil light in the Van to the point the Engine seized up. So now I have to cancel a few jobs due to transportation issues. Going to trade in the Van for a small Pickup Truck or wait until the Tax return and go buy a truck from Craigslist and sell the Van for junk.

My Shop is a total mess again. I really need to do some deep cleaning and purge it.

I finished the Tek Scope and works beautifully and since I have so much stuff that requires Main voltage I found an old Computer Power Station and use it to control equipment that is sitting up on the shelves.

I left my Desk Lamp on overnight and the bulb literally blew up so I gutted it and converted it to LED by using some Automotive grade LED bulbs and a 12Volt 4Amp Power brick. Finally finished the Work Bench/Desk Lighting while I was at it. The vintage bulbs have too much of an Orange tint and I might switch out the bulbs to some WiFi enabled Bulbs.

Speaking of WiFi enabled Bulbs I’m going to secure the Home Network soon.
With the world of IoT you’re opening up your Network to the world. Let alone these devices like to phone home and crap. Instead of “Internet of Things” it will be an “LAN of Things”. I’m going to take an old Router and flash DD-WRT on it and keep it off the Net so I can use WiFi to control IoT devices locally only. Hide the SSID and create a Blacklist and Whitelist of only what can connect to it. Might even use an old CellPhone or Tablet to control it. If I could find a couple of cheap Wireless cards I could do a small PC with pfSense instead of an old Router.

Another project I have been working on is a self monitored Security system. A Raspberry Pi would be ideal and instead of relying on the Internet or some cloud crap like MQTT, it could have its own GSM and send you alerts via text and you can control the system. This adds a level of Security to the system so you don’t have to worry about some one tunneling in from a silly IoT device on a network to get to the Security. So far I have been using a peer-to-peer network to control it and with wired contacts. I need to develop wireless contacts. Don’t want to use anything too simple. With a real Security wireless contact it is supervised with the main Panel and pings it often and the contact has a tamper device like a tilt/shock or a simple switch if the case cover is removed. Also you want to make it sensitive enough so if someone tries to attach another magnet on the other side of a door or window it will trip the contact. It would be nice instead of using Reed Switches a IR and Photodiode could be used or something.

Tektronix T922/T932

I was cruising around Craigslist and came across three free Oscilloscopes. One was a complete unit and the other two were in parts. The complete unit was a T922 and the two in parts were a T922 and T932.

The guy that gave them to me said the complete T922 died a few weeks ago and said it would work intermittently. Sounded like a bad Cap. So that was the one I tried troubleshooting and figured I wouldn’t get the other two working.

I reworked the Low Voltage Power Supply Board and got that working but still no trace. After poking around I could easily tell this had been worked on. A blown fuse was bypassed by a wire and was poorly capped once before. I had a trace for a short time then faded out and couldn’t get it back on.

As I started to look at the other two I noticed the T932 was only missing a Plug pack and needed a new power supply. So I used the complete T922 parts and surprise, surprise, surprise I had a trace and some what worked. The Power indicator was blinking rapidly and the trace was real wide. I then tried it with out the Dim Bulb and Isolation Transformer and the Power Indicator stopped flashing and the Trace looked normal.

Now I got a working Tektronix Scope but I have no idea if it can handle 15MHz or 35MHz.

I guess I can strip down what is left and keep some of the parts handy for if I ever have to repair it. I honestly don’t know what to do with this Scope. Might toss on an Octopus Module and use it for testing parts.