#robotics Logs

Jun 14 2012

00:30 katsmeow-afk furry : http://ludens.cl/Electron/chinverter/chinverter.html
00:34 furrywolf there's a reason I try to buy american inverters. :)
00:34 furrywolf both of my main inverters are us-made.
00:35 furrywolf in fact, all the semiconductor-containing parts in my system are us-made right now.
00:35 katsmeow-afk this story on this Chinese unit is horrifyingly bad design
00:35 furrywolf both inverters, the charge controller, and the battery meter.
00:37 furrywolf I have four chinese inverters sitting on my table, with exploded capacitors.
00:38 furrywolf need to fix them for running the solar hot water recirc pumps.
00:38 furrywolf the original design called for undersized caps.... and yet the ones they put on the board are half the diameter of the silkscreen and space left for them. and of brands known to instantly explode.
00:39 furrywolf even if they'd used the caps the designer specified (judging from the size of the silkscreen), it'd still be marginal. as constructed, it's horrible.
00:39 katsmeow-afk wierd, i used convertors for years, even 6 mo at a time, from China, and no problems
00:41 furrywolf http://fw.bushytails.net/inverterchips01.jpg and they thought they'd be clever and grind the labels off the chips. probably disguising they used substandard and/or ghost shift parts.
00:42 katsmeow-afk emoving parts numbers has been common in usa oem
00:42 furrywolf nothing in these units is usa. :)
00:43 katsmeow-afk i was asked to clevery reverse engineer some circuits made in usa with no parts numbers, and my replacements never blew up, the oem's blew up every other day, and they shipped them like that
00:44 furrywolf I've never had a us-made inverter fail.
00:44 furrywolf I have a stack of dead chinese inverters.
00:44 furrywolf I've abused the us ones badly, with overloads, short circuits, etc.
00:44 furrywolf The chinese ones fail simply being on.
00:45 furrywolf I short-circuited my main one probably five times until I figured out one line had a neutral-to-siding short, another line a hot-to-siding short, and the siding ground had been cut.
00:46 furrywolf it buzzes really loudly for about a second, then blinks the lights in a most angry fashion at you. :)
00:47 furrywolf my us 600W inverter starts my refrigerator effortlessly up to about 60% pre-existing load. above 60% load, it takes a bit longer, and the output voltage sags slightly. my 600W chinese one has never, not even once, during any of my testing, managed to start the fridge.
00:51 furrywolf and the us one will still start it up to close to overload conditions, it just makes the lights dim. the chinese one, completely unloaded, just gives up.
00:52 tsmeow-afk
00:53 katsmeow-afk i had a tv that a 600w invertor wouldn't start, but it was the auto-degauss darwing enough to dim the house lites that was the big problem
00:53 furrywolf it meets its ratings: it will run a 600W resistive load just fine.
00:53 furrywolf but it has no ability to deal with an inductive load nor a startup surge.
00:55 tsmeow-afk is yaw
00:57 furrywolf I see those powerjack inverters on ebay all the time...
00:57 katsmeow-afk you might be just the person to ask this question: how dangerous is generic vaseline "mineral petrolatum" grease, etc on water lines?
00:57 furrywolf a lot of broken ones.
00:57 furrywolf it might damage pvc
00:57 furrywolf dunno
00:58 katsmeow-afk seems to be no harm to the pvc so far
00:58 furrywolf it's not toxic, and shouldn't foul your ro membrane with a carbon filter before it.
00:58 katsmeow-afk i figure it should float on water anyhow, and not get sucked in
00:58 rrywolf has had enough of it in various bodily openings to confirm its nontoxcic
00:59 katsmeow-afk i put it on the threads of the T at the top of the suction line over the edge of the pool-tank, to prime that line at the highest place
01:04 katsmeow-afk ...
01:05 furrywolf as long as it doesn't make the pvc stick to itself, should be fine...
01:05 katsmeow-afk k
01:06 furrywolf it probably kills ro membranes, but carbon filters are generally good at removing random chemicals.
01:08 katsmeow-afk i am thinking the only time it will touch water is when i have it open to prime that line
01:08 furrywolf that page confirms what I expected about powerjack inverters from seeing them on ebay... total utter garbage, not worth buying at any price.
01:08 katsmeow-afk i am thnking of adding a checkvalve and line to high pressure water, but i expect i'll notice the lack of prime when i have no high pressure water in the house
01:09 furrywolf is your pump selfpriming?
01:09 furrywolf some centrifical ones are, and they do a decent job of not expelling the last bit of water that they need to re-prime.
01:10 katsmeow-afk i have not approved of using a bar to clamp transistors lke that,, i just cannot make the physics work to make proper clamping unless there's smething tween the transistor and the bar so bar bending is irrelavant to the transistor
01:11 furrywolf the fake chinese charge controller I got was built like that. some of the fets are at ~10 degrees to the heatsink, with just the very corner touching.
01:11 katsmeow-afk atm, it's 5ft above waterline, and no, will notprime,, once in cellar but minus the 500 gal tak there, it will haveto suck up 3ft and then fill 10ft of 2" line
01:11 furrywolf not like the heatsink does much, being flat on the back of the unit, and pressed into the mounting surface.
01:12 katsmeow-afk once the 500 gal tak is in the cellar, the pump will be below waterline when the tak is full, and even with waterline when tank is 1/2
01:13 katsmeow-afk oh, and those rubber things... i have 300 pwr supplies here with 3 -5 transistors each mounted on those, and on eavery one i can see daylight under the transistor
01:14 furrywolf chinese crap is, well, crap.
01:19 furrywolf the amount of defective, dangerous, etc chinese products seems to be increasing.
01:19 furrywolf or fake, like my charge controller.
01:20 tsmeow-afk
01:21 furrywolf it says mppt all over it, the manual talks about 10-30% efficiency gains, etc, etc, etc... it doesn't have an inductor in it.
01:21 furrywolf it's just a pwm charger.
01:21 furrywolf with an extra digit on the price, of course.
01:21 furrywolf completely fake.
01:22 tsmeow-afk lookes pissed, because she wanted to make those o sell once her solar panels wee on the roof, but she was threatened specifically with attack dogs if the solar panels were ever
01:24 rrywolf would help katsmeow-afk move to california, but lacks money for self, much less others.
01:37 rrywolf curls up next to katsmeow-afk for bed
01:46 rrywolf sighs and heads to bet with no
01:46 furrywolf s/bet/bed
01:46 furrywolf bbl
01:46 katsmeow-afk gnites too
01:56 ferdna this early?
02:16 summersault is there any channel for 3d printing ?
02:16 summersault Anyway ... this is my doubt, should i consider a extruder of 3mm or 1.75 mm?
06:21 Helios Good morning
12:43 ferdna a computer fan will spin to its maximum speed as longest red and black wire are connected right?
12:44 ferdna *cpu fan
12:49 Tom_itx unless you stick your finger in it
12:52 Steffanx You won't feel anything when the power supply isn't on Tom_itx
13:25 charolastra ferdna: in an ideal world; in realiy it works agains air; also the "axis" might be damaged: it spinns up, makes BRRRR and spins down and up again
13:44 ferdna wow thanks
19:23 rue_mohr !thislog
19:23 tobbor This one: http://rueshouse.dyndns.org:82/~ircjunk/irclogs/html/%23robotics-2012-06-15.html
19:49 rue_mohr 0: (RW) d = 7.000000
19:49 rue_mohr d!=6 -->> 1
19:49 rue_mohr ok
19:49 rue_mohr 0: (RW) d = 7.000000
19:49 rue_mohr (d!=6) -->> 0
19:49 rue_mohr .... ???
19:49 rue_mohr have to fireu out what my expression parser is up to
19:51 rue_mohr hmm
19:51 rue_mohr nothing in the code seems to deal with braces
20:00 rue_mohr ok ( and ) are operations...
20:01 rue_mohr the code thet recognizes them as options dosn't care about what operation they are, so what does...
20:03 rue_mohr ah, I cant do them as operations or it breaks the model
20:06 rue_mohr typedef enum states_e { ERR = 0, VAR, CONST, OPER, WHITE } states_t;
20:06 rue_mohr hmm, so formula components were broken down into variables, constants, operators, and whitespace
20:06 rue_mohr what class do I create to do brackets
20:07 rue_mohr shoudl I call it ascendors?
20:14 orlok syere: AD? active directory?
20:28 Tom_itx orlok did you see the 2 sky events of late?
21:34 rue_mohr (((()()))())((((())), 2
21:35 rue_mohr I called them PAREN
21:35 rue_mohr the 2 means that mess gained 2 (
21:36 katsmeow-afk =^(o);(o)^=
21:54 furrywolf might have found someone with a set of 25 100AH NiFe cells... that's not much capacity, but if I can get them for a good price...
21:57 furrywolf with 20 in series for my 24v system, that'd only be 100AH, or less than two $46.99 marine batteries in series. heh.
22:00 katsmeow-afk but you already have some FeNi cells
22:01 furrywolf no, I don't.
22:01 furrywolf I have a guy who keeps saying he'll be back in town soon every time I call him, and a guy who hasn't answered calls or emails in four months.
22:03 katsmeow-afk oh
22:05 furrywolf right now I have five golf cart batteries, none of which really work, and two marine batteries, neither of which really works. the reason I have 5 is one has such low capacity I paralleled a spare with even lower capacity with it...
22:05 katsmeow-afk i found the low capacity ones are only good for discharging the good ones
22:06 katsmeow-afk it's made me unhappy with parallel battery systems
22:06 katsmeow-afk afk a few
22:06 furrywolf no, they don't self-discharge... they still read 6.5v if let sit for a week.
22:07 furrywolf I got rid of all the ones that self-discharged.
22:16 katsmeow-afk 6.5 is pretty low for a 12v battery
22:16 katsmeow-afk oh
22:16 katsmeow-afk nm
22:17 tsmeow-afk is fretting about all the stuff still in moving boxes, like electrical b
22:17 tsmeow-afk is fretting about all the stuff still in moving boxes, like electrical b
22:17 katsmeow-afk why the heck is sometimes what i say coming out 2x?
22:17 tsmeow-afk t
22:17 tsmeow-afk t
22:19 furrywolf only "/me"s?
22:20 katsmeow-afk yeas
22:20 tsmeow-afk t
22:20 tsmeow-afk t
22:20 tsmeow-afk t
22:21 katsmeow-afk i was removing some code, apparently someting waslinked from remotes to aliases, and back to inhibit the double
22:21 tsmeow-afk t
22:22 katsmeow-afk dinner is nuking, hopefully i get food before midnite tonite
22:23 furrywolf I should nuke some food too.
22:27 katsmeow-afk i put ~200gal water in the outside pool-tank months ago, it still has ~1500gal in it (counting rain refills), but my useable drawdown is only 1000gal atm, because of the height of the strainer and check valve
22:28 katsmeow-afk i'm going to put a bottom drain in the 500gal inside tank so i can drain it all down
22:28 katsmeow-afk if i must, next yr , or this winter, i can maybe put a bottom drain in the 3000gal pool-tank
22:28 katsmeow-afk dinner is done, afk!
22:30 Helios Hi guys, today I tried to melt ABS and PVC and all I did was deform the plastic, get it stuck onto the stainless container and make an awful smell.
22:47 furrywolf meh, I need money.
22:47 furrywolf fridge is getting empty again
23:28 tsmeow-afk is sorta back, but afk on the other puter swapping harddr
23:29 katsmeow-afk *two* big turboprops just went over, but didn't sound like EP3 or KC130's
23:38 rrywolf curls up next to katsmeow-afk and y
23:42 katsmeow-afk ok, that puter is having a hard time with 4 drives in it
23:42 katsmeow-afk i have a feeling every one of these has too-small psu to fully kit them out with hds