Your latest purchase

Okay, so now onto something more fun. So I was up to my usual shenanigans, and have purchased (for a buck including shipping) : a "North Atlantic 801 Synchro Panel Meter".

This was one the of the first successful "dollar fishing" bids in quite some time, so I went and looked this thing up.

It appears this is a seriously useful device for CNC and that type of thing- it's a display unit for sensing and displaying angle of rotation. From the documentation blurb:

"The 800 & 801 are Synchro/Resolver Panel Meters, with resolutions up to 0.01°, and accuracies up to 0.03°. Both Synchro or Resolver mode can be programmed and the unit operates over a broad frequency band of 47Hz to 1200Hz. "

What the heck is it, and how can I misuse it..that's the question. Of course, if it's actually valuable and slipped through the cracks (has happened before) I maybe ought to looking into flipping it for a profit. I do prefer to play with toys rather than sell them, though... but with the projects I have going on right now I really would be better off getting some profit.

There's an industrial electronics recycler and dealer next town over, they buy and sell a lot of PLC stuff- so I am hoping to take a few things over there and do a little Yankee Swap. They have racks full of bench gear, decent hardware I could use well-- and I have several industrial electronics devices, new in packaging, that I have no use for but know are worth quite a bit. One's an industrial ultrasound sensor- designed for measuring volume in huge tanks and the like.. I know it's worth a few hundred. If I can swap a few of these items that I've gotten for a dollar each for a couple hundred dollars worth of bench equipment-- Win.

EDIT: Erm-- let's see if the guy actually ships this. After looking around a bit, the only other ones I could find are USED (this one is new in shrinkwrap) selling for $1000 and up!

What the heck is it, and how can I misuse it..that's the question.

While quite a buy for a buck, it's a pretty specialized application measurement device and probably pretty difficult to repurpose it to anything arduino useful. Maybe as trading material is it's best value. Syncros were how say a rubber position was displayed in a aircraft cockpit where the syncro motor was coupled to the rubber axis and then wired to the resolver display in the cockpit. To is measuring the phase difference between AC voltages, where the phase difference is created by the position of a shaft coupling voltage windings with an AC excitation voltage. This kind of stuff was pretty low volume thus very expensive and mostly used for military for aircraft industrial use. Make great weather vane position transmitter sender/receivers if found cheaply enough in surplus. So all you have is a receiving device so it's use as a standalone device is pretty limited.

Lefty

Kind of seemed that way, looking at the docs. Well, here's to hoping that he sends it-- if they sell for a grand USED, maybe I can flip it for some stuff that will be useful for the gas valve project among other things.

That's my hope when I grab these dollar-bid items, in reality. Of course I am hoping to find a diamond in with chaff, and sometimes I do.. however, then "mysteriously" the seller often "can't find" or otherwise backs out of the sale (which ebay gets pretty nasty on). I've only had one real home run, a cable tv analyzer unit (like the techs use) that I got for a buck and sold for a hundred... however, if this one actually is shipped, there has to be potential for some pretty decent upside on this....

"The 800 & 801 are Synchro/Resolver Panel Meters, with resolutions up to 0.01°, and accuracies up to 0.03°. Both Synchro or Resolver mode can be programmed and the unit operates over a broad frequency band of 47Hz to 1200Hz. "

It might be accurate enough to survey with... remotely.

Powerball tickets are $2+ and what are the chances of getting anything back on those?

I just got a shipping confirmation and USPS tracking number... SOMETHING is in that box :smiley:

In trying to price it out, I see it used for $1000, and I see the less accurate version (.05) sells for $2600. Looks like it's used for serious precision avionics, like a remote display.. I think it connects to an encoder or synchro that provides the data. The synchro is a distinct device, it would appear that I have gotten whole device in terms of what is sold as the unit. Still in shrink wrap, new.

It still wouldn't be a winning Powerball ticket unless I can sell it! Looks like it is a limited market kind of thing. Hmmm.

EDIT: Found one that sold on ebay previously.. For $799 without its packaging.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/North-Atlantic-800-Synchro-Resolver-Panel-Meter-4-/300722159236, sold March 5th.

I think I may have just made a huge donation to the project funding :smiley:

My Gertboard arrived yesterday. It has an ATmega328P in the lower lefthand corner with the pins brought out to a 0.1" male header. It operates at 3V3 and has a 12MHz ceramic resonator. I'm sure they were trying to get the highest speed performance at 3V3 that they could but I may replace the ceramic resonator with an 8MHz unit so as to be timing compatible with one of the stock Arduinos. There are conveniently placed headers to jumper TX/RX to the appropriate ATmega pins from the Raspberry Pi if you want to. There is also a 6-pin ICSP header which you jumper for programming using avrdude from Raspberry Pi's version of the Arduino IDE.

I already have several DIY "shields" with ATmega chips on them for the Raspberry Pi because they are simple to make from standard 0.1" perfboard but this is just another way to combine the two.

I prefer using the Raspberry Pi as a substitute for an Ethernet shield for any project where I want to connect an Arduino to the network. For one thing it's cheaper, $35 plus another $10 for a USB WiFi dongle if I want to go wireless, and I find the network programming much easier for me.

The Gertboard is way overpriced as a bridge to an ATmega project, by the way, but is a good prototyping tool for the Raspberry Pi itself.

You know, I never considered that use for a Pi.. as a slave to an arduino, for connectivity and such. It certainly can provide a lot more flexibility and "support" than a standard WiFi shield... Hmm. (gears grinding..)

I think of it more as a slave to the pi to make up for lackluster gpio

but whatever :wink:

focalist:
You know, I never considered that use for a Pi.. as a slave to an arduino, for connectivity and such. It certainly can provide a lot more flexibility and "support" than a standard WiFi shield... Hmm. (gears grinding..)

I think they are a good pair, they complement each other's shortcomings.

I get my Pi today! AUS$40.

First project will be to get my Realtek SDR working, I've had NO luck under 'Doze, except across my network.

I was thinking of putting the 'Pi upstairs away from all the EMR, running an antenna cable outside.

cyberteque:
I get my Pi today! AUS$40.

First project will be to get my Realtek SDR working, I've had NO luck under 'Doze, except across my network.

I was thinking of putting the 'Pi upstairs away from all the EMR, running an antenna cable outside.

That seems to be a pretty popular application. Have fun!

I recall when I was still actively following the R-pi forums, thinking the gertboard seemed a bit expensive. Adafruit and others are now churning out cheaper ways to connect R-Pi's to devices. Here are all of the Adafruit R-Pi offerings: Raspberry Pi Products Category on Adafruit Industries

I got a Pi by luck about a month after it came out and I feel like a jerk because I haven't even powered it up yet and I know there were many people waiting for one. Learning Atmel's line of uCs and Altera's line of PLDs has kept me too busy so far to devote any time to it.

I was getting nowhere using an Arduino with Ethernet for my "Internet of Things" projects and ordered a Pi simply because they were so cheap. After I played around with it for a few days I realized it was a computer, not a micro controller and was the perfect solution to combining sensors and web pages so that I could use my iPhone as the GUI without having to write any apps for the phone. I was pretty surprised at the performance of the Pi running what I generally consider desktop applications. I'm still impressed at what you get for $35.

What class memory card do you have on it? If it is class 6 it will be very fast.

MitkoDyakov:

[quote author=Papa G link=topic=91399.msg1165280#msg1165280 date=1363808863]
I was getting nowhere using an Arduino with Ethernet for my "Internet of Things" projects and ordered a Pi simply because they were so cheap. After I played around with it for a few days I realized it was a computer, not a micro controller and was the perfect solution to combining sensors and web pages so that I could use my iPhone as the GUI without having to write any apps for the phone. I was pretty surprised at the performance of the Pi running what I generally consider desktop applications. I'm still impressed at what you get for $35.

What class memory card do you have on it? If it is class 6 it will be very fast.
[/quote]

Yes, class 6. Best Buy had 8GB cards for $10. I bought several.

20 x MAX7219 multiplexing display-things.

$9.60 from eBay including shipping.

I tested one at random (the missing one in the photo) and it worked fine. Note the nice packing.

SWEET! Wow, the shipping to Oz from Shenzen is fast, huh? I am expecting that my order will still be another few days to arrive. Yeah, they do tend to be no-frills packing, but these guys I use for price and not for fluff and pretty stuff.

I really have no idea how they maintain the prices that they do, between them and another similar vendor, I just can't find a fault except for shipping times from overseas. Beyond that, I swear the prices on half of it won't even cover the shipping cost, never mind the items themselves. I don't even see how this could be profitable if they were knockoff chips-- you still have to make a knockoff chip that works, or you aren't going to sell many. All I can think is that they buy whole warehouses of surplus and blow it out. One tip off that this may be the case is that some times they will have the same device with multiple prices.. In other words, they think in terms of bins, not products. Two identical products from two different wholesale purchases with a standardized markup.. Employees only know them as bins number 013345 and 547758, or something.

Their employees don't know anything about the products from what I can tell, I had a fruitless and frustrating time trying to let them know that they had made a mistake in their listings (http://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS-LM2596-DC-DC-Step-Down-CC-CV-Adjustable-Module-Output-DC-1-5V-35V-/400417999181?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d3ac5c94d) calling these Voltage regulator modules "CC-CV" when they are not constant current devices. They were polite enough, but between the language barrier and not understanding the product, it was pointless. If anyone can send them a note in Chinese explaining, maybe they will fix the listing, until then, just have to know better. Caveat Emptor, as always- even when the vendor isn't trying to stiff you, unless you are a smart consumer, you still might not get what you think...

FTDI breakout module:

Lefty

focalist:
SWEET! Wow, the shipping to Oz from Shenzen is fast, huh?

Yep, I ordered on 13 March, it arrived on 22 March.