I think the picture of the sensor in post #371 is almost identical to the Chinese one. (Just a different board layout and some through hole components replaced with SMD devices.)

Les.

 

Alternative!

12V 16A

External probe, adjustable

Plenty of information

Domestic and industrial automation company

40 USD / 51 CAD

https://www.fif.com.pl/en/light-dependent-relays/691-light-dependent-relay-azh-s-12-v.html

 

That would be taken care of by the natural selection.

Darwin Awards for Chickens?

Hey guys! I’m out. This is no longer about re-engineering inappropriate components to operate chicken doors. Good luck!

In the COVID-19 ERA any conversation is welcomed. There is a respect for opions here. That's what really matters.
I miss one of the forums I was a member of that saw it's demise because of AG Jeff Sessions. Political discussions never got out of hand there. I miss that.

It has morfed into a discussion of engineering approaches, quality and cost.

More of the the a product can be
Good, Fast, Cheap: You Can Only Pick Two!

 

A reminder that switching power supplies and motors sometimes dislike each other. Because of the rule that "current in an inductor cannot change instantaneously", the switching power supply needs to be considerably overrated. The power supply "sees" the resistance of the motor for an instant when it first starts up.

 

Darwin Awards for Chickens?



In the COVID-19 ERA any conversation is welcomed. There is a respect for opions here. That's what really matters.
I miss one of the forums I was a member of that saw it's demise because of AG Jeff Sessions. Political discussions never got out of hand there. I miss that.

It has morfed into a discussion of engineering approaches, quality and cost.

More of the the a product can be
Good, Fast, Cheap: You Can Only Pick Two!

It's a bit my fault, sorry. On the one hand I know this is a forum for technicians and people who are interested in electronics and my posts can be distracting. But I never want to lose the human contact so I try to make it a bit more personal. Less technical, an element of, well, us, people.

 

The alternative of the alternative is this one. It's a bit cheaper (same company) and is also rated at 16 A. But it doesn't have an external probe.

It costs 30 USD / 39 CAD

What is not 100% clear to me is that the specs say

Power supply voltage

12 V AC/DC

But the imprint on the shell says 220V

https://www.fif.com.pl/en/light-dependent-relays/687-light-dependent-relay-azh-106-12-v.html

 

A reminder that switching power supplies and motors sometimes dislike each other. Because of the rule that "current in an inductor cannot change instantaneously", the switching power supply needs to be considerably overrated. The power supply "sees" the resistance of the motor for an instant when it first starts up.

I have tested that, just without the photocell. All was set up/built in the coop. It works beautifully.

 

I am going to order the one with the probe. Doctors got those things too. Could be my next call.

 

Don't change a thing.

I agree. My comment wasn’t a criticism of the banter. Truth be told, I enjoyed it. I was just exiting because it no longer interested me.

Engineering needs a human touch!

 

You are ordering from where?

It's a Polish company so I have asked them where I can buy their products as I am in Spain. Likely they will give me the address of their re-seller in Germany. They themselves don't do online sales and their own sales points are in Poland only.

 

I agree. My comment wasn’t a criticism of the banter. Truth be told, I enjoyed it. I was just exiting because it no longer interested me.

Engineering needs a human touch!

It does

 

200 meters short of a furlong.

A furlong is a unit for measuring distance. It is part of the imperial and US customary systems. It is equal to 660 feet or 201.168 metres. There are eight furlongs in a mile.

I suppose this is why Americans are never understood?

 

I see it in stock at many places, including Amazon and eBay.

Yep! Their German seller sells exclusively on eBay - their name leads nowhere but their eBay shop. But asking costs nothing and there is always a chance their advice saves me € 2. It's a sport. Many other websites sell their cells, in Polish and I checked 2 and was hoping the Zlotys converted to Euros would be cheaper. Zlotys sound as worthless as Rupees but so far the cheapest is still eBay Germany. I don't buy from Amazon. Bad experiences and they sell a lot of junk which you can buy on Ali and friends for half the price. If you buy junk you may as well pay junk prices hey?

Off to bed now. My 20 year old Chinese is calling.

Well, the blanket .......

 

You know best.

Bought it! One dollar cheaper too and I read: Central African Republic (GNI = $80): $1 buys half pounds of apples, or 1 pound of potatoes. So I will keep that one, you never know.

 

@Sofa, Will you sign the 'book' for me?
Have you decided on a title yet?
You mentioned conversing with Americans and Canadians, what about the English?
On a different topic, the big companies buy Chinese goods. We, the West don't
manufacture much now, we are too expensive.
Make sure you get a multimeter.
What's your day job?
Good luck..........

 

'Life after electronics'?

It's a bit of a coincidence that I am on a Forum of the new world. I simply entered 'electronic forum' and 'Allaboutcircuits' came up. I just have to be careful about my writing so instead of 'There is this red coloured wire' I should write 'There is this red colored wire'. Apart from that I told myself 'Don't mention Trump' because that may cause the website to split in allaboutcircuits.com and the newallaboutcircuits.com

And obviously I should mention that I am from the Netherlands because somewhere somebody's grandfather used to have a friend who grew potatoes in Iowa and was an immigrant. There is a bit of respect for those people and if you are from a small country like me people assume you must be family so the first response could be 'let's help this dude out'.

We get on well with the British. Most TV programs are in English, (UK and US productions) and luckily subtitled so our exposure to English is considerate. English is also a very powerful language in the music industry, it just sounds better than any other language. There are many British comedies on TV and we have a huge admiration for their sense of humour. Many Brits 'do' Amsterdam. You know, the red light district and the pubs where you can smoke a joint. They drink themselves into a coma and vomit all over when they wake up. And because most Dutch speak English (at least at a minimal level) they think it's a cool place. And we think that a country that has given us 'Faulty Towers' and the 'Rolling Stones' deserves some credit.

My day job at present is harassing my wife. She tries to get away from me but I've got real long legs. The Dutch are the tallest people in the world you see. I have an English friend and he's called 'Stumpy'. His legs are missing. Well, they look like they're missing.

Many years ago I worked for a sales promotion company and I was responsible for product development, product sourcing, logistics and an awful lot of trouble shooting. 'We got a problem?' 'Put it on Dekker's (that's my sir name) desk, he'll sort it out.' We sold all kinds of stuff, from furniture to toys to stoneware and loudspeakers. Many of our promotional products were specially made for big brand companies. Our goods came from all over, the UK, Japan, Thailand, Italy, my own country, etc. Sometimes I went to the factories, sometimes I didn't.

It was a stressful job alright and I spent too many hours in traffic jams with the windscreen wipers on and decided enough was enough. So I told my then pregnant wife not to look any longer for baby clothing and we left with a backpack and clean underwear. SE Asia, Oz and NZ. There I taught, I picked apples and mandarins, broke my back on watermelons, delivered pizza's, packed steel furniture, almost died in a plasterboard factory, worked in a 3-star restaurant (but got fired as I 'lacked experience' - that was right, I had none) and worked for a moving company. That business was almost as bad as the Killing Fields. I remember the guy we moved complained about the treatment of his piano. Life is easier as a zoo keeper I can tell you, even at the elephant quarters. All jobs were illegal and poorly paid but that happens to travellers who want to stay a little longer.

After years we went back to the Netherlands only to find that it was still drizzling and the color blue was still not associated with 'sky'. So we left again, in an old car and a small trailer pop up tent. South, towards the sun!

Now, imagine you are a dentist and you want to live somewhere else. No doubt you can start tomorrow in any of the 250 countries world wide. But what about a New York divorce lawyer? Yes, he may be very well paid and he may be a clever bastard but what can he do in, let's say, Turkey? He doesn't know anything about the law there and he doesn't speak Turkish so he will probably end up loading goats somewhere.

Anyway, the further south we got the warmer it got, the skies bluer and I thought 'Yeah, this is it!' Once in Spain I had to figure out how to make some money. I didn't speak a word of Spanish and any experience in my field wouldn't count for anything anyway. So, I cleaned swimming pools and etc.

After a while I started selling ink cartridges and that went well. Then printers. Then monitors. Then computers. More and more until the bank crisis. Most of our customers (young foreigners) lost their job and left the country and our business went down the drain. The next idea was to start a new business but something for which there always would be demand. Sex! So 8 years ago we built a small porn cinema and that turned out to be a good idea. Year after year we got more customers and last January we rented a place 3 times bigger and started building again. Not long after Covid arrived and ever since we don't do anything. Where I live it's 100% tourism so hundreds of hotels, bars, restaurants are closed.

That's why I am now a chicken farmer. I can't sit still for long and get bored easily. So I built a coop. And then another. And number 3 was finished yesterday. Now I want an incubator and go big. What for? No idea, it's just for fun.

Hopefully the vaccination program works and we can go back to business after the next summer. We mainly get Europe's old farts here and older people have to be very careful so our problem will continue for some time.

Personally I am very interested in politics. I also love geography. I read a lot of US news, I know 'everything' about Jimmy Carter, Ellen, Trudeau, Gold Diggers in Canada, Red Necks in Texas and how many immigrants there are in Vancouver so that's another reason I thought 'why not?' when it was clear this was not a UK forum.

 

Retired. But I've worn many hats. I worked in a semiconductor research lab doing anything imaginable, but electronics, mechanics were the forefront. I did car HVAC for myself. I put a 1982 car AC unit in a Toyota from a BIG BOX. I got my forst car when I was 15 and unable to drive. the car wasn;t able to be on the road either, so i had plenty of time to get a car that cost $25.00 USD on the road. I removed the head and had it rebuilt. The carb got rebuilt. The second one and I was 15 YO. I added electronic ignition and got 18 mpg. I upholstered the interior. I did body work. The paint shop was impressed.

The '82 I did lots of harder stuff like replace a steering rack, body work and I got screwed. The company provided no warranty because I did the body work. It allowed them to not use a clear coat wit the paint, so that paint job didn't last long.

I got interested in locks, so I can open a master combo lock in about 20 minutes. It takes me a little longer to find the combination after getting the lock open. I created the algorithm by taking the locks apart. So, I can do a simple left right left type lock and I did do a safe for my moms friend after her husband died.

I have a degree in generic engineering and a 4.0 GPA in Electronics technology and 2 years of a BSEE degree.
I've rebuilt chimney, installed a storm water system, but it's not complete. It's still better than what we had.
I've gardened and built a shed.

My programming skills are old, but nutty. 1st assembly language was the PDP-8. The second was the PDP-11.
Did some hacking in high school and ended up working for the place for a while. Hand compiled a rather long RCA 1802 program. My first FORTRAN program was a 7 PID direct digital control system for 7 heaters with recipies. A two person team took us 9 months. The PC wasn't invented yet. This was the early 80's. For school, two of us wrote an operating system and instruction set emulator. Most were teams of 4 or 5. That was my first C program.

It doesn't matter what I attack. I've attacked medicine with and without a medical professional involved. They mess up too.
They killed my father. A student punctured his lung and didn't tell us. They fed him and were not supposed to. He was scheduled for a CAT scan. They turned off his oxygen instead of his room mates. He lapsed into a COMA and passed in about 10 minutes when the breathing tube was removed. lawyer: He was going to die anyway and you did not have an autopsy.
Dad dropped an pill and we asked for another. Response: "Pick it up and give it to him".

They caused mom to have a stroke because of a stupid policy: Any medication given 1x a day will be given in the morning.. I'm convinced she had a stroke. Unable to talk and urinary retention. Later idiots catheteized her 4x/day instead of giving her a Foley catheter. She is now in diapers, talking, writing and out of Hospice (17 months).

I'm learning to cure pressure ulcers created in a skilled nursing facility with very close to zero help. Ask the medical profession: "turn every two hours". They are stage I and stage II pressure ulcers. You will be unable to fix those bruises. The medical profession wants to put a cream containing menthol on a stage II ulcer. I said, you can wash and remove the bandage if necessary, but no creams. I'll take care of it. The PU's are 100% fixed now. I have a protocol that keeps them at bay. Prescriptions are required. Zero help for treatment. I used some very unusual techniques. The method was developed by me and it should be the medical profession. I put her on oxygen a few times because it was available and Pulse ox said she needed it. I can do stethoscope lung checks. I know when to call for help.

No one knows how to fix bruising in the elderly diabetic. One wack and you have a bruise. She was transported by "professionals" and came back with a 5cm bruise. 1+ years later and it's not gone.

Her bruises are "almost gone" with two years of "treatment". The bruises have been there for a long time, covered up so i never saw them. The treatment I am doing is non-agressive. Apply a salt mixture for a few days. Agressive is to apply 1/4" of the commercial stuff and bandage. I don't. Two commercial products work. One better than the other. I've resorted to making one product from scratch. It's made and used immediately. The water is wound grade and the salt is pharmeceutical grade, the other product used is food grade.

Law enforcement is about as smart as a pet rock. I'll only talk about one incident and not the one that gave me PTSD,
Had what looked like an attempted break in. The door frame was mangled. The inner door would not close properly and that didn't quite add up. One cop was non-committal. The other said "wind".

When they left, the reason became obviously apparent. Differences in thermal expansion between concrete and metal.

They can't drive. I was stopped and asked to be careful in the snow. Coming in the reverse direction, he was firmly in a snow bank.

I'm a problem solver with a lot of attention to detail. I can solve problems by asking the right questions. I don't have to be an expert in the field.

 

Retired. But I've worn many hats. I worked in a semiconductor research lab doing anything imaginable, but electronics, mechanics were the forefront. I did car HVAC for myself. I put a 1982 car AC unit in a Toyota from a BIG BOX. I got my forst car when I was 15 and unable to drive. the car wasn;t able to be on the road either, so i had plenty of time to get a car that cost $25.00 USD on the road. I removed the head and had it rebuilt. The carb got rebuilt. The second one and I was 15 YO. I added electronic ignition and got 18 mpg. I upholstered the interior. I did body work. The paint shop was impressed.

The '82 I did lots of harder stuff like replace a steering rack, body work and I got screwed. The company provided no warranty because I did the body work. It allowed them to not use a clear coat wit the paint, so that paint job didn't last long.

I got interested in locks, so I can open a master combo lock in about 20 minutes. It takes me a little longer to find the combination after getting the lock open. I created the algorithm by taking the locks apart. So, I can do a simple left right left type lock and I did do a safe for my moms friend after her husband died.

I have a degree in generic engineering and a 4.0 GPA in Electronics technology and 2 years of a BSEE degree.
I've rebuilt chimney, installed a storm water system, but it's not complete. It's still better than what we had.
I've gardened and built a shed.

My programming skills are old, but nutty. 1st assembly language was the PDP-8. The second was the PDP-11.
Did some hacking in high school and ended up working for the place for a while. Hand compiled a rather long RCA 1802 program. My first FORTRAN program was a 7 PID direct digital control system for 7 heaters with recipies. A two person team took us 9 months. The PC wasn't invented yet. This was the early 80's. For school, two of us wrote an operating system and instruction set emulator. Most were teams of 4 or 5. That was my first C program.

It doesn't matter what I attack. I've attacked medicine with and without a medical professional involved. They mess up too.
They killed my father. A student punctured his lung and didn't tell us. They fed him and were not supposed to. He was scheduled for a CAT scan. They turned off his oxygen instead of his room mates. He lapsed into a COMA and passed in about 10 minutes when the breathing tube was removed. lawyer: He was going to die anyway and you did not have an autopsy.
Dad dropped an pill and we asked for another. Response: "Pick it up and give it to him".

They caused mom to have a stroke because of a stupid policy: Any medication given 1x a day will be given in the morning.. I'm convinced she had a stroke. Unable to talk and urinary retention. Later idiots catheteized her 4x/day instead of giving her a Foley catheter. She is now in diapers, talking, writing and out of Hospice (17 months).

I'm learning to cure pressure ulcers created in a skilled nursing facility with very close to zero help. Ask the medical profession: "turn every two hours". They are stage I and stage II pressure ulcers. You will be unable to fix those bruises. The medical profession wants to put a cream containing menthol on a stage II ulcer. I said, you can wash and remove the bandage if necessary, but no creams. I'll take care of it. The PU's are 100% fixed now. I have a protocol that keeps them at bay. Prescriptions are required. Zero help for treatment. I used some very unusual techniques. The method was developed by me and it should be the medical profession. I put her on oxygen a few times because it was available and Pulse ox said she needed it. I can do stethoscope lung checks. I know when to call for help.

No one knows how to fix bruising in the elderly diabetic. One wack and you have a bruise. She was transported by "professionals" and came back with a 5cm bruise. 1+ years later and it's not gone.

Her bruises are "almost gone" with two years of "treatment". The bruises have been there for a long time, covered up so i never saw them. The treatment I am doing is non-agressive. Apply a salt mixture for a few days. Agressive is to apply 1/4" of the commercial stuff and bandage. I don't. Two commercial products work. One better than the other. I've resorted to making one product from scratch. It's made and used immediately. The water is wound grade and the salt is pharmeceutical grade, the other product used is food grade.

Law enforcement is about as smart as a pet rock. I'll only talk about one incident and not the one that gave me PTSD,
Had what looked like an attempted break in. The door frame was mangled. The inner door would not close properly and that didn't quite add up. One cop was non-committal. The other said "wind".

When they left, the reason became obviously apparent. Differences in thermal expansion between concrete and metal.

They can't drive. I was stopped and asked to be careful in the snow. Coming in the reverse direction, he was firmly in a snow bank.

I'm a problem solver with a lot of attention to detail. I can solve problems by asking the right questions. I don't have to be an expert in the field.

Impressive!

 

Have you ever got thrown out of a college class? I did. Teach said "If you have something better to do, don't bother coming to class." That was after the third class. BTW, 4.0 GPA. last class ironically "College reading and study skills".

 

Have you ever got thrown out of a college class? I did. Teach said "If you have something better to do, don't bother coming to class." That was after the third class. BTW, 4.0 GPA. last class ironically "College reading and study skills".

Oh yes, plenty of times. One of the teachers couldn't keep order at all and I once I put thumbtacks on his seat.