Entropy

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
billshurv
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Re: Entropy

Post by billshurv »

There is one thing I am planning to replace that is repairable, which is the microwave (needs a bulb). This one the convection part (quartz) is covered in dust and grease and lets out clouds of smoke when you use it, but cannot be accessed to clean and the microwave part has days when it doesn't seem to run at full power. The replacement we have found has a proving mode, which is very useful when I make pizza dough. So a working microwave will go.

Washing machines are an oddity. I will agree that many of the 'innovations' of last 15 years are ways of reducing reliability without getting clothes any cleaner, but some are good, at least for parents like me. The ability to do a sub 2kg wash in 15 mins would be a boon. Internet connected ones...don't get me started. For me the peak of the washing machine was a Japanese model launched in the mid 90s for single men. It used fuzzy logic and had one button marked 'wash'. It weighed the clothes, measured the water absorbtion and from that worked out the fabric. It then used water turbidity to work out when the clothes were clean. Never made it to europe as far as I can tell, but are sold in India https://www.samsung.com/in/support/home ... g-machine/ .

For now I will stick with clockwork :)
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

billshurv wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 7:29 pm There is one thing I am planning to replace that is repairable, which is the microwave (needs a bulb). This one the convection part (quartz) is covered in dust and grease and lets out clouds of smoke when you use it, but cannot be accessed to clean and the microwave part has days when it doesn't seem to run at full power. The replacement we have found has a proving mode, which is very useful when I make pizza dough. So a working microwave will go.
Sounds like more than a microwave... If mine was smoking I'd hit with the fire extinguisher.

When I make pizza, I proof the dough overnight in the fridge, covered. I recently bought two pizza stones and am liking my pizza a bunch these days. :D
Washing machines are an oddity. I will agree that many of the 'innovations' of last 15 years are ways of reducing reliability without getting clothes any cleaner, but some are good, at least for parents like me. The ability to do a sub 2kg wash in 15 mins would be a boon. Internet connected ones...don't get me started. For me the peak of the washing machine was a Japanese model launched in the mid 90s for single men. It used fuzzy logic and had one button marked 'wash'. It weighed the clothes, measured the water absorbtion and from that worked out the fabric. It then used water turbidity to work out when the clothes were clean. Never made it to europe as far as I can tell, but are sold in India https://www.samsung.com/in/support/home ... g-machine/ .
The japanese have always been cutting edge for creature comfort innovation (their toilets come to mind, but bread makers, rice cookers, etc)...

I hope my old GE washer just keeps on washing because GE the company may be gone before too long.

I am not big on instant gratification... I can live with one laundry load a week...

JR
For now I will stick with clockwork :)
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billshurv
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Re: Entropy

Post by billshurv »

The instant gratification is only due to the ability of under 10s to get through several changes of clothes in a day (sometimes in an hour). With the big 3 off at uni I only have brood 2 to worry about but still have to run the machine 5 times or more on an average week. All my own fault of course.

Yes the microwave is one of the modern breed of combi units that has a grill and oven function as well. Very useful for certain things.

Somewhere I have a picture from my early 20s of me and my housemate rising dough on top of a Radford STA-25 valve amplifier :).
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Solar driveway lamps are now sorted with new batteries. Lights bright all night... :D

My neighborhood birds like to use one lamp for target practice, maybe payback for me sealing up the chimney vents with wire screens. The bird nests up there always made a racket, so blocked them off this summer while they were away.

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mediatechnology
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GE Outdoor "Waterproof" LED Christmas Lights Fire Hazard

Post by mediatechnology »

What a can or worms...
LED Christmas light failure...

1) This assembly is not completely waterproof.
2) The PC board was able to burn without blowing a plug fuse.
3) The component and jumper leads are not trimmed.
4) The crimped ferrules where the leads attach to this board are crimped poorly some only appeared to be crimped to the insulation.

Naturally this was the middle string of three and the failure interrupted the Hot connection to the next string.

The trace underneath that folded over lead is burnt open.
It's the Hot lead...

Image

You think they could have trimmed some component leads?

Image

Image

There was a lot of blue electrolysis funk on the housing. The "V-" line (LED current) is pulsed DC.

What a mess.
billshurv
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Re: Entropy

Post by billshurv »

eek. clearly no FMEA done on that!

I used to have a load of the cheap incandescent strings that are 500 lights for $10 from walmart. Bar the half day finding the dead bulbs and avoiding treading on them before they were up used to cover 4 of the apple trees in my garden. Never wanted to go more advanced than that and now I really don't want to!
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mediatechnology
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

I'm going to finish tear-down of the plug end and will post pics of that.

The receptacle was "sealed" with RTV at the conductor end but I found beads of water inside the case.
I think water came through the blade end which had no sealant or gasket.

It might have survived the water if they hadn't bent the untrimmed jumper onto an adjacent trace with only the solder mask to insulate it.
The whole thing looked to have "percolated" for awhile boiling out water.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

could be worse... I had an audio amp that kept blowing fuses... when I opened it up I found a component lead that had been clipped then left to float around loose inside the chassis... I was a rich environment for inadvertent shorts that blew fuses...

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

Well the male plug end had been allowing water to enter too.
I can see where they had left a too-short "creep" distance and it looks like water had been bubbling around that area too.
It has a patent number on it: For a waterproof plug. :lol:
They paid a lot of attention to the blade end but water came through the conductor end.

In looking at some of the other "leading edge" patents in GE's Christmas lighting portfolio we find what appears to be a patent on the full-wave bridge rectifier. https://patents.google.com/patent/US760 ... c609%2c006
One patent puts half the bridge in the plug end, the other half-bridge in the feed-through receptacle.
The big advantage is three conductors are only used with Hot and Neutral being available at the far end.
Wow, this stuff is rocket science.

This implementation uses a diode, film capacitor and two resistors in each end.
The diode, film cap and a 560K form a filtered rectifier with bleeder.
A 100Ω then serves as a crude current-limiter.
There are 50 3.3V LEDs in series for a composite Vf of 165V.
Vpeak is about 170V with a 120V RMS line so the 100Ω 1/4 resistors aren't dissipating much.

Diodes Inc. AL5890 constant-current LED driver looks cool: https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AL5890.pdf
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

I notice my low key Christmas window display, composed of two cheap strings of christmas lights has one burned out bulb... (I'm guessing its a bulb). Kind of surprised to find it must be wired in parallel to still light.

====

The mad bomber (bird) stuck again... fresh bird dropping on same one driveway lamp.

[edit- just noticed two new hits on other lamp, so 3 hits in 24 hours... different colors so 2 or 3 different birds... I wonder if they do night bombing runs? I don't see a lot of misses in the area so it appears like they aim. [/edit]

JR
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