I once build a wooden sailing skiff in my second floor apartment living room. Got it out no problem and had many a lovely day sailing about my island.

 

Well......

My lighting desk... 780, CMOS 4000/4500 series, IC's, some DAC's and 4Mb static memory. Controls 256 channels over 256 memories. 16 subgroups over 8 pages with fully programable sequencing. AMX (analog multiplex and DMX outputs plus Wireless riggers control. It took 10 months of evenings to build, including all the woodwork and metalwork. It was used in our theatre for ten years, controling 115 x 2Kw dimmers, eight Goldenscans and two Tigerscans. It was on for 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Never gave any trouble. I still have it.

Daniel.

 

So, it's a control board for a theatrical stage lighting? It's got a memory for programmed light functions? Does it move the lights with motors too?
Looks cool!

 

I once build a wooden sailing skiff in my second floor apartment living room. Got it out no problem and had many a lovely day sailing about my island.

You have your own island, yet you choose to live in a second floor apartment? I think if I ever defaced my personal Island with an apartment complex, I would at least live on the first floor of it.

..or were you sailing around the island in your kitchen?

 

So, it's a control board for a theatrical stage lighting? It's got a memory for programmed light functions? Does it move the lights with motors too?
Looks cool!

Yep. it can control 256 pan and tilt PAR cans with the joystick and can run all types of inteligent lighting.

Daniel.

 

I also posted this on the Electro-Tech forum. I'm loath to pass up a chance to toot my own horn...

You guys probably know that I am now retired. Back in the mid-70s, I worked for Consolidated Video Systems in Mountain View, CA . We invented the digital timebase corrector for video tape recorders. I had been hired to do A/D and D/A converter design, along with other miscellaneous analog circuit design tasks.
My crowning achievement was the ADC for the CVS 520. It was a 9 bit ADC, sampling at 14.3 megasamples/sec. It was autoaligning, for the most part. It only had 6 pots, and the alignment techs loved it.
You might say that's a lot of parts for an A/D. You can buy a comparable one today on a chip for a few bucks. When I designed this, there was a total of one A/D IC available. It was made by TRW, was in a 64 pin DIP, cost $600 (!), dissipated 7 watts, and required that you epoxy a heat sink on it and blow forced air over it. My board was considerably bigger, and probably drew more power, but it was only $180 out the door, including testing and alignment. It had no exotic parts in it. Differential gain and phase were outstanding, and, due to the autoalignment, it didn't drift out of alignment.

I bought this used CVS 520 on Ebay in a fit of nostalgia several years ago for about $100. They had sold for $15k originally.

Oh, I should mention: No simulation, and all schematics were drawn by hand, on a drafting table.

 

Designed by hand on a drafting table?! Oh, Lord! It sounds impossible for a computer generation kid like me.

Ron, what does a VCR need an ADC for?

 

This is what it's for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timebase_correction
That's an impressive achievement.

 

I see now. You have to buffer the entire signal! Truly impressive! Well done Ron!

 

I see now. You have to buffer the entire signal! Truly impressive! Well done Ron!

Thanks for the kudos, guys.
The Wikipedia article is a little weak in the "methods" section.
Timebase correction requires a sampling clock that is phase locked to the vertical, horizontal, and color subcarrier components of the incoming video signal. Our clock was 4 times the subcarrier frequency, which comes out to be a jittery (tracking timebase error) 14.31818 MHz. The video must be sampled, digitized, and clocked into memory at this rate. The video is then read out of memory at a very smooth, constant rate of 14.31818 MHz, which is generated by a PLL with a quartz crystal VCO, locked to the facility's video sync generator. It is then passed through a D/A converter to recover the stable analog signal. All video equipment in the facility will be V, H, and color locked to that same generator, so that switching and editing may be done.

There are a lot of details left out, but those are the essentials.

I also designed the input PLL, which was a bear.

 

Oh geez, I may still have my TRW 8-bit 20MHz flash ADC. You could fry an egg on that sucker. I will see if I still have it and send a picture. I built a 20Msps waveform digitizer with it. Had to build my own "high" speed memory boards with 2102 SRAM chips, the only thing that was available then. Yes, all schematics were drawn by hand on a drafting table. In fact I still do it that way.

 

Dang, good job Ron!

Personally, the project I'm most proud of is my clock, which is still under construction, but you can see some pictures of some of what I have done so far here-
http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31376&d=1308099940
Sorry it's so fuzzy, camera phone
When I get home I'll finish it and take good pics and such, I think I'll try to work on updating the schematic in the car on the way (rocky mountains to Indiana )

Essentially, It has a crystal dividing out with a 4060 & 4013 for the timebase, then 6 4017's dividing out for the display witch use transistors to pull the cathodes to ground for the nixies.
Features are (or will be) a blinking neon colon (alternating top/bottom flash pattern), a settable alarm using rotary switches & logic gates, an AM/PM indicator neon, and whatever else I feel like adding before I put it in a nice case.

 

Magnet, that has been a great learning project for you! You can be proud of your accomplishments.
There are so many cool projects in this thread. I like some of the non-electronic ones better than my own.
If you are going to use a face for your avatar, I wish it was your own. I picture you as looking like Nikola Tesla, but I doubt that you really do.
If you must use Tesla's image, how about switching to this one? I probably wouldn't picture you as dead.

 

How about a discrete guitar pre-amp that fits in a 1/4 inch Switchcraft plug? Frequency range is -3db @ 7 Hz and flat to "I can't measure past 200 KHz".

 

Niiiice...

 

Our last house, we hired the framing, but did the rest ourselves including cutting the logs for the hardwood floor, and building the fireplace. Too bad the taxes tripled from what we were quoted, we sold it for spite.

 

Our last house, we hired the framing, but did the rest ourselves including cutting the logs for the hardwood floor, and building the fireplace. Too bad the taxes tripled from what we were quoted, we sold it for spite.

Impressive! Do you own a sawmill?

 

Wow, these are all some really awesome projects! Thanks for showing them off, everyone. Keep 'em coming!

 

Magnet, that has been a great learning project for you! You can be proud of your accomplishments.

I know, I started with nothing about a year ago, now I can draw and comprehend the circuit for a clock with it's features from memory, it's been fun

There are so many cool projects in this thread. I like some of the non-electronic ones better than my own.
If you are going to use a face for your avatar, I wish it was your own. I picture you as looking like Nikola Tesla, but I doubt that you really do.
If you must use Tesla's image, how about switching to this one? I probably wouldn't picture you as dead.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQUwWfEo89rwmi0irD8agWluChikNM4LBFUAWZohOQX_TGkVQtg

Yea, I've been meaning to switch avatars for awhile, I'll get around to it soon, hopefully tomorrow.

 

Our last house, we hired the framing, but did the rest ourselves including cutting the logs for the hardwood floor, and building the fireplace. Too bad the taxes tripled from what we were quoted, we sold it for spite.

Nice house, sad story.

Do you still have the construction drawings?