Canon NB-5L Battery Status
Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, Photography & Images, Science on 2017-08-10
My pocket camera has begun kvetching about a low battery rather more often than before, which suggests the batteries I’ve been using since 2014 have gone beyond their best-used-by date.
This came as no surprise:
Canon NB-5L – 2017-08-05
I re-ran a couple of the batteries to make sure they hadn’t faded away from disuse, which didn’t materially change the results. The lightly used Canon OEM battery continues to lead the, ah, pack.
The camera’s lens capsule accumulated a fair bit of dust from many years in my pocket, which lowers its overall contrast and wrecks the high f/ images produced with the microscope adapter.
Sandisk 64 GB High Endurance Video Monitoring Card: Verification
Posted by Ed in Photography & Images on 2017-08-09
The Sandisk Extreme Pro 64 GB MicroSDXC (whew) card in the Sony HDR-AS30V had been working fine, but recently the camera crashed in mid-ride after spitting out an unreadable video file. I reformatting the card, which seemed to restore its good humor, and preemptively dropped $36 on a fancy Sandisk High Endurance Video Monitoring Card from a Nominally Reputable Amazon seller:
Sandisk – 64 GB MicroSDXC cards
The package & card production values seem high enough to make me think it’s genuine, despite the white-label thing SanDisk has goin’ on; it matches their website pix closely enough.
Popping it into a USB 3.0 adapter, plugging that into the new-to-me Dell Optiplex 9010’s front-panel USB 3.0 port, and unleashing f3probe produced encouraging results:
sudo f3probe -t /dev/sde
[sudo] password for ed:
F3 probe 6.0
Copyright (C) 2010 Digirati Internet LTDA.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
WARNING: Probing normally takes from a few seconds to 15 minutes, but
it can take longer. Please be patient.
Probe finished, recovering blocks... Done
Good news: The device `/dev/sde' is the real thing
Device geometry:
*Usable* size: 59.48 GB (124735488 blocks)
Announced size: 59.48 GB (124735488 blocks)
Module: 64.00 GB (2^36 Bytes)
Approximate cache size: 0.00 Byte (0 blocks), need-reset=no
Physical block size: 512.00 Byte (2^9 Bytes)
Probe time: 4'26"
Operation: total time / count = avg time
Read: 2'42" / 4197135 = 38us
Write: 1'41" / 4192321 = 24us
Reset: 1.00s / 1 = 1.00s
Just for completeness, I unleashed f3write to fill it with pseudorandom data:
time f3write /mnt/part Free space: 59.46 GB Creating file 1.h2w ... OK! Creating file 2.h2w ... OK! … snippage … Creating file 59.h2w ... OK! Creating file 60.h2w ... 99.99% -- 5.40 MB/s -- 1sf3write: Write to file /mnt/part/60.h2w failed: Input/output error real 180m36.861s user 0m40.520s sys 6m44.024s
Dividing 64 GB by 180 minutes says the write speed works out to 5.9 MB/s, about a third of the “up to 20 MB/s” in the card’s specs. Huh.
Reading & comparing the data goes faster:
time f3read /mnt/part
SECTORS ok/corrupted/changed/overwritten
Validating file 1.h2w ... 2097152/ 0/ 0/ 0
Validating file 2.h2w ... 2097152/ 0/ 0/ 0
… snippage …
Validating file 59.h2w ... 2097152/ 0/ 0/ 0
Validating file 60.h2w ... 965376/ 0/ 0/ 0
Data OK: 59.46 GB (124697344 sectors)
Data LOST: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Corrupted: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Slightly changed: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Overwritten: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Average reading speed: 23.87 MB/s
real 42m31.288s
user 0m47.444s
sys 0m30.232s
So it reads lickety-split, but writes much more slowly. Fortunately, the HDR-AS30 camera pops out a 4 GB file every 22.75 minute = 2.9 MB/s, so the card has a smidge of headroom while writing.
The specs claim “up to 10,000 hours” of Full HD recording. If so, I’m looking at a card good for “up to 40 years“ of riding at 1 hour/ride and 250 ride/year. For 36 bucks, how can ya go wrong?
I’ll take it for a few rides to see what happens …
The packaging includes a link to a Windows / Mac data recovery program, plus the serial number required to activate the download. I’ll continue to eke out a miserable existence with ordinary Linux disk / file maintenance tools, as I’m no longer enthused about “free” programs requiring secret handshakes for activation on a single computer with an OS I no longer use, particularly a program that auto-pumpkinates after a year:
Please fill in the data accurately as this information will be needed to reactivate the software if you ever need to move the software to a different computer.
Your expectations & preconceptions may vary.
Quartz Resonator Test Fixture: Cleanup
Posted by Ed in Amateur Radio, Electronics Workbench on 2017-08-08
Isolating the USB port from the laptop eliminated a nasty ground loop, turning off the OLED while making measurements stifled a huge noise source, and averaging a few ADC readings produced this pleasing plot:
Resonator 0 Spectrum
Those nice smooth curves suggest the tester isn’t just measuring random junk.
The OLED summarizes the results after the test sequence:
LF Crystal Tester – OLED test summary – Resonator 0
Collecting all the numbers for that resonator in one place:
- C0 = 1.0 pF
- Rm = 9.0 kΩ
- fs = 59996.10 Hz
- fc = 59997.79 Hz
- fc – fs = 1.69 Hz
- Cx = 24 pF
Turning the crank:
CC 2017-11 – Resonator 0 Calculations
I ripped that nice layout directly from my November Circuit Cellar column, because I’m absolutely not even going to try to recreate those equations here.
Another two dozen resonators to go …
Amazon Packaging: Lithium Ion Cells
Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, Machine Shop, Oddities on 2017-08-07
The mandatory warning stickers leave no doubt as to what’s in the box:
Amazon – Lithium Ion Battery Warning Stickers
You can imagine my relief when the lithium cells arrived intact:
Amazon – Lithium Ion Battery – packaging
FWIW, the ATK lithium cells arrived in a small box, snugly tucked into a form-fitting foam block:
ATK Lithium Ion Cell – padded box
As long as nothing happens, it doesn’t matter, right?
You’d think Amazon would have learned something from their day in court, though …
Cicadas
Posted by Ed in Oddities, Photography & Images on 2017-08-06
The main cicada season has only begun, so these two may have emerged slightly too early:
Cicadas
They’re “ordinary” cicadas, not periodical cicadas, which certainly matters more to them than us.
They’re completely harmless, but definitely don’t look it:
Cicada 1 – ventral
Their topside armor would look great on a robot:
Cicada 2 – dorsal
Found ’em dead on the driveway, alas.
Monarch Butterfly Egg
Posted by Ed in Photography & Images, Science on 2017-08-05
We watched a female Monarch Butterfly lay eggs on the stand of milkweed behind the house. She also found a lone plant in the vegetable garden that’s now standing in a vase on the kitchen table where we can keep an eye on the proceedings.
So far, so good:
Monarch Butterfly Egg on Milkweed Leaf – 2017-07-29
I never knew Monarch eggs were so elaborate!
Captured with the VGA-resolution USB camera atop the zoom microscope, with VLC applying automagic gamma and level adjustment.
Focus-stacking the three best images helps the ribs toward the leaf, but not by much:
Monarch Egg – focus stacked
After picking out the images, all of which bear VLC’s auto-generated names like vlcsnap-2017-07-29-09h26m25s720.png, stack them thusly:
align_image_stack -C -a milkweed *png enfuse -o Monarch.jpg milkweed000*
Tinkering with the options might improve things, but … maybe next time.
Stereo Zoom Microscope Ring Light: Mounting Tape
Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, Machine Shop on 2017-08-04
The tiny lip holding the new LED ring light into the microscope snout lacked enough traction and deposited the ring light on the desk. Having picked up a roll of Scotch Extreme Mounting Tape to see how well it works to attach LEDs to vacuum tubes, I’ll see how well it affixes a ring light to a microscope:
Stereo zoom microscope – taped snout
The red plastic film separates the tape layers on the spool; the tape itself consists of incredibly sticky, gooey adhesive on a very flexible foam backing. As you can tell from the ragged edges, cutting it requires some effort, with the adhesive instantly gumming up scissors. I applied a razor knife around the microscope snout’s perimeter, pressing from the red film side and pulling the cut sections apart as I went.
The adhesive exposed on the edges of the roll will glue it to anything it touches, so hang up the roll. Laying it on a shelf will definitely cause heartache & confusion.
The instructions on the back label suggest 2 square inches of tape will hold 1 pound:
Scotch Extreme Mounting Tape – label
Given that the ring light weighs a few ounces, tops, those two strips should do fine.
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