It’s (not) Alright

I so wish to write the part 2 of my lost article… about Sayeed, Jin, Penny and Desmond, Charles and Ben… Claire and Jack… Kate but because of many reasons, I have not been able to do so and all of them are here in the heading.

I have got my internal exams from 20th to 22nd. I have not studied at all, but I can’t keep on writing like this… else I will surely PHAIL. :p Then we have some guests (dad’s sister and her husband) here so… Party on Dude…

Besides that, my friend finally got me those AVRs. I did a simple LED blink S/W and then jumped (too high) to a binary clock. And made a mess of it. Finally, I ended up building the circuit on a general purpose board and wasting 2 days in it. But it WORKS! I am feeling good…

Outcome of this all is, I have to read 300 pages today (such that I will be able to write in paper) then 300 tomorrow, then about 250 the next and then only a 100 on 21st. (HUGE backlog)… So, I am off till 23rd of this month… Seeya.

Aditya

\\ tags: college, Electronics, My Life, TV

Whoa… you might be wondering what am I writing a post with such a title right after my exams… It is not that the exams went bad or something, but I really am amazed at what can happen.

I went to the exam dreading of a particular experiment. It took us 11 people and 2 batches of 2 hours each to finish it when we first performed it. It was the RC Coupled Amplifier with a negative voltage series feedback.

Now a little flashback. Last semester we had a subject, called Electronic Devices and Circuits. In that we had to perform a practical on a sinngle stage RC coupled amplifier. And just before the start of the practical exam, my friend had said that Aditya (me) is the only one who can perform that in oral. And (curse his bad tongue), I had to perform that practical last year. It was the largest experiment. I somehow succeeded in fooling the examiner and did a little scam with the readings and came out as topper in the class. Continue reading »

\\ tags: college, Electronics, exams, My Life

Shit… I am really feeling… I cannot describe what I am feeling right now. I have been wasting time in Virtualizing the OS and watching cricket. 4 Posts in last 24 hours and I have my exams coming up in less than 14 hours. It is 0002 here and I need to sleep now. But I also have to study.

There are more problems. The subject whose viva I am going to give… it does not have a defined syllabus anywhere. All they say is, Fixed IC Regulators…. I mean, what the hell? There might be hundreds of those. What am I supposed to know? The subject is Electronic Circuit Design. We haven’t even been taught about normal regulator circuits design yet and ICs? What in ICs? Specifications? (Mugging up?), design using them? Or designing the ICs themselves?

The subject is the worst subject ever because,

• The syllabus is not clearly defined. (The Depth).
• There are no books available (I mean it. Even the so called good or very good books provide no explanation about how a circuit has a specific feedback. Or how the circuit actually works. They all have the specs and working of individual parts in them. But there is no info about how they work in unison).
• Then comes the part where time is a main factor. There are 4 more subjects and they are more or less the same, BUT at least there are books that provide enough information on the subject. The lack of availability of books, lack of time and non-clear syllabus make this the worst subject ever.

The subject is actually very interesting… but the reasons told above have made it the worst one ever…

Aditya Shevade

\\ tags: college, Electronics, My Life

Looks interesting doesn’t it? Well, I thought so as well and decided to make one. My loyal readers and friends would know by now, that I am too lazy to make my own design, so I started hunting for tutorials and found a great one on GIMP FAQ.

The site features a very good tutorial about building a binary clock. Anyone with a good electronics knowledge would know that the design featured on the site is a very simple clock.

It first re-samples the A/C supply either 50Hz or 60Hz into a 1Hz signal. Then this signal drives a combo of 2 decimal counters with the second being converted to mod 6 counter. Meaning that the total stages of the combo are 60. So the combo resets every 60 seconds, or one minute.

Using this, the next combo is driven and then the third one with this. The third set is a 24 state counter combo that resets the all 3 combos when it finishes the cycle.

Having said that much, the design also features a push button time setting control. The problem I faced was that, the circuit is big. It meant that the PCB layout design would be a real pain in the a**. Still I went ahead and created a layout with some custom and some automatic (AI) layout program. The result was that the board had to be a minimum 2 layer one or must have many wires. Continue reading »

\\ tags: Design, Electronics, Projects, Tools