August 28, 2011, 8:12 pm
Since I do not have a DSLR camera, taking photos for my projects under normal room lighting can be quite challenging. When flash is used, the pictures often turn out to be none-uniformly lit and some components reflect quite a bit of light making those portions over exposed. But if I do not use the camera flash, the pictures either turn out to be grainy due to insufficient lighting or yellowish due to the color temperature of the room lights. Continue reading ‘Lighting for Project Photos’ »
August 22, 2011, 9:32 pm
Just because you are using a true RMS multimeter does not automatically mean you should always trust the readings of your measurements. In fact, most true RMS multimeters can only offer reliable readings under certain conditions. In this post, I will examine some of the pitfalls in RMS voltage measurements and show you some concrete examples on how RMS readings can sometimes be misleading. Continue reading ‘On RMS Voltage Measurement’ »
August 14, 2011, 7:08 pm
Most of the multimeters do not offer resistance measurement in the milliohm range. In most meters a typically Ohm range has an accuracy of 0.1 ohm and is too coarse for measuring small resistance. Of course, some of the high-end multimeters have milliohm range and there are also dedicated micro ohmmeters for even more accurate small resistance measurements, but most of them are priced way out of the range for personal use. Continue reading ‘Accurate Milliohm Measurement’ »
August 9, 2011, 7:45 pm
One of my computers has been unstable for quite some time now. It had been crashing and freezing up once a while in the past, but it has become noticeably worse in recent months and sometimes the computer would crash just minutes after boot up. Continue reading ‘Video Card Capacitor Failure’ »
August 4, 2011, 8:26 pm
One of my RSA SecureID tokens had recently expired, so I decided to do a teardown to see what is inside. While there was one such teardowns posted on EETimes a few years ago, I thought it would still be worthwhile to take it apart myself. Continue reading ‘RSA SecureID Teardown’ »
August 1, 2011, 7:54 am
Apress was kind enough to send me a copy of their recently released book “Arduino Robotics” a few weeks ago (ISBN13: 978-1-4302-3183-7, 628 Pages. Publication Date: July 18, 2011). So I thought I would read through and do a quick review on it. Continue reading ‘Arduino Robotics – A Short Review’ »