T&L Publications

A couple of comments: - print screen button has several different options, full screen active window, ... the different modifiers (alt, ctrl, ...) select the option. - pasting into paint and saving as bmp (the default) WILL produce an enormous image. try saving as a gif or jpg. - you can cut down th...

one other possibility - it takes a fair amount of time to acquire the wireless signal. I had something very similar on mine (Lacrosse, I think) when I changed the battery. It eventually got sync'd up and displayed the outside temp. Ditto on them being fragile. Our maid knocked one unit off the shelf...

please limit to 600 pixels. OK, that would be about 25x25 pixels. kind of small... I suppose you really mean 600 wide but what kind of cheapo monitor are you using? The project controls the remote for an single model digital SLR camera, not the camera directly. According to the camera's manual (7.5...

I think you may be the only one that misses him Al. He lived to argue, his ideas were more nutty than not and he seemed to have an axe to grind about everything - especially other people. His unsafe suggestions were the worst. He could never admit he was wrong so would argue endlessly that his bad i...

I finally got the Feb issue and looked at that schematic. My first effort was to suppress regurgitation. What a poorly done schematic. Very little clarity. Pretty poor project as well. Using a PIC16F84A indicates this is a very old design - should have been updated to use at least the 16F628A (cheap...

the one in the link.

A lot of possibilities spring up from this but from what I've seen so far, I'd guess that you tend to have a combative style that may have been read as complaining. I'd guess the outfit is a one man shop, probably doing it because he likes it. So, if it were me, there was a reasonable backorder and ...

Yes, I'd say this version of the software is MUCH better than the previous one. Especially from the point of view of the spam bots. Great job for amateurs, guys.

Don't use a solenoid - use a servo which can be set up to press halfway to cause focus to occur. Easier to interface to, as well.

this reminds me of a local comedy show that did a parody of the outsource fast food order taker. foreigner trying hard to be hip with an indian accent and all. it was hilarious - "You want curry with that?"

Bigglez wrote: Now we're back to predictive tracking - location
of the sun regardless of cloud cover, based only
on the viewing point on the earth, and the time
of day.

Yeah, I think this is the better way to go. Super simple field install and align. Especially if it includes a GPS.

I'm curious as the often quoted phenomenon of "the brightest spot in the sky may not be where the sun is". When would this occur, and how often? Anybody have tracking data on sun position vs. max power position? Economics of a tracker is the concern here. How often is it justifiable to tr...

it was a blown mosfet and looked like a low side driver so I could have replaced it. However, the design is fragile and I really don't want to deal with having to repair the thing every 18 months. My whirlpool works just fine and doesn't make me prove my technobones. Some things are just not worth m...

Well, with a microcontroller, if you know the location on earth and the time/date, you can compute the optimal path. Actually, you can probably just create some tables and not even need much computing power. I think the commercial trackers come with a GPS receiver and require no special alignment. I...

In addition, some of the newer appliances have highly specialized components that have controlled distribution. I had the bad misfortune to buy a fisher-paykel washer. Their controllers burn out if the motor jams. That's what happened two years into owning the product - wife called the repair guy. $...