81–90 of 92 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it possible to have a light / emw battery ?
Speed of light is fast, even if possible you'd be looking at a lot of conversion losses. It'd be like trying to use a wire as a battery because power has to travel from one end to the other
Isn't that one of the possible uses for superconductors tho?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does the same go for Peltier plates and thermocouples?
Yes, thermocouples can work as heat pumps, and Peltier elements can work as thermocouples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's my current living nightmare. Endless treadmill of: 1. Our contract manufacturer calls in a panic no longer able to obtain/was shorted on a shipment of part XYZ. XYZ is increasingly becoming random "jellybean" parts like MOSFETS, oscillators, to slightly-more-complicated but not "fancy" stuff like serial transceivers, USB stuff, NOR flash, load switches. TI is the bane of my existence currently. 2. Search for a d…
Your OODA loop is way too long. We buy ALL the parts immediately, within 10 minutes of finding something. If they don't work, it's a loss. On new designs, I find a part in stock, we order ALL we need for the next year, and THEN I make a footprint and put it in the design. For EVERY SINGLE PART. Starting with the IC's. It actually works quite nicely once you get used to it. Obviously, there are some losses there too -…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just hope my TV can't be used as a camera ...
Well, pairing the TV with a light sensor in a fixed location, and like, having the tv alternate between a sequence of different patterns, and recording how this changes the reading of the light sensor, and assuming that the room is otherwise dark, uh, apparently can be used to produce an image of the room as if taken from the location of the tv and illuminated from the position of the light sensor?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's my current living nightmare. Endless treadmill of: 1. Our contract manufacturer calls in a panic no longer able to obtain/was shorted on a shipment of part XYZ. XYZ is increasingly becoming random "jellybean" parts like MOSFETS, oscillators, to slightly-more-complicated but not "fancy" stuff like serial transceivers, USB stuff, NOR flash, load switches. TI is the bane of my existence currently. 2. Search for a d…
Your OODA loop is way too long. We buy ALL the parts immediately, within 10 minutes of finding something. If they don't work, it's a loss. On new designs, I find a part in stock, we order ALL we need for the next year, and THEN I make a footprint and put it in the design. For EVERY SINGLE PART. Starting with the IC's. It actually works quite nicely once you get used to it. Obviously, there are some losses there too -…
Don't you find that they can be resold? Surely there's someone desperately looking for the parts you find unusable, but would fit their needs...
New Craigslist category for semiconductors?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve heard of materials that can slow down the speed of light propagation. Imagine you can slow the speed of light to a crawl. You shine a huge amount of light into this material, which has a mirror on the other side. Before your light arrives back at the source, swap it for a mirror. You’ve now got a huge amount of light energy trapped.
Okay, I imagined it. Converting electricity into light is inefficient (maxing out around 44% [1] excluding ballast losses), and converting light into electricity is also inefficient (topping out at 47%[2] efficiency). So you'd end up with a battery that stores energy at extremely low efficiency (less than 21% combined), relying on a hypothetical exotic material that can slow light transmission to ~0.00000001c, assumi…
Another piece to think about is density. Even with these losses.. how much energy can a material hold in terms of pure light? Is there a limit to how much light can pass through a material?
And I wonder if you could slow the light down even further, maybe 2 or 3 more orders of magnitude..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a video of a circuit I made which flashes an LED, using only power collected by the LED: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BM7VDOoFIWI The LED is the component on the left; there's a very dim flash (pretty much just the black die turning red) at around 11s, then every few seconds. I can't remember exactly how it works... I think there's two capacitors charged up to the voltage of the LED in parallel through high-val…
Cool, it's a self powered light meter. The more light there's in the environment the more frequent the blink. Maybe can be adjusted to have less frequent, shorter lasting but more powerful flash!
This should be called a Goku circuit. Kaaaamaaaaikaaaaaa.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure seems like it. I was hoping to see if anyone knew the root of the problem, but if they do they aren't talking.
A big part of it is increased demand caused by the disruptions themself : a lot of companies are now stocking to have enough to run production for the whole year, while otherwise they'd order just-in-time. That causes further reduced availability, which causes more companies to stock up, repeat ad infinitum.
Good overview, but he's missing one of the coolest applications of semiconductor / photolithography. MEMS. Micro-electromagnetic systems. The most common MEMS I can think of is the comb sensor, used for accelerometers in all of your cell phones. https://www.memsjournal.com/2010/12/motion-sensing-in-the-ip... The MEMS sensor for an accelerometer is quite simple. Take the nearest comb and smack it against a desk: you'l…
MEMS are awesome! Here are some other MEMS devices: - hard drive read/write heads (the platters are debatable) - inkjet printer nozzles (this is why making a DIY inkjet printer is nontrivial) - air pressure sensors (e.g., for car tires) - precise frequency filters for smartphone wireless communication - oscillators ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340693 ) - very tiny microphones for smartphones (speakers are…