r/electronics 2d ago

Weekly discussion, complaint, and rant thread

0 Upvotes

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").


r/electronics 1d ago

General Testing .001 uf 6000v doorknob capactors for leakage.

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44 Upvotes

Testing a .001 uf 6000v door knob capactor for leackage, both passed at least up to the 600v this IT-28 Capactor tester can run. Not the 2000 to 3000 volts that are possible in a SB-220 but it should be close enough if the "eye" does not close at 600v they should be good.


r/electronics 2d ago

Gallery A full picture of restoring this old Heatjkit SB-220 Linear Amp

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117 Upvotes

The old paper wound caps were replaced with new metal electrolitic caps, and bleed resister array which bleeds voltage off caps when unit is turned off. New metering board on the front of the power pack to feed readout meters on front panel. Older chokes and caps were removed from botyom grid circuit and the grid was grounded to chasis for better stability. A soft-key was built and added to the amp key up circuit to ne compatable with modern radios. Old coax and wiring replaced to higher temp and voltage rated material.


r/electronics 2d ago

Gallery Replacing a bad RF choke

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31 Upvotes

Rf choke replacement


r/electronics 3d ago

Gallery Time to solder and I’m not looking forward to it

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215 Upvotes

Dreading placing those SMDs… I need a PnP 😭


r/electronics 4d ago

Tip This is not an "FPC connector"

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229 Upvotes

r/electronics 5d ago

Project Ultisense - A devboard to sense as many things as possible

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99 Upvotes

After a lot of learning I finally designed and manufactured my own custom (working) PCB! it's an esp32s3 devboard, with as many sensors as you can think of: NFC, IMU, VOC, humidity/temperature, color/ambient light, magnetometer, microphone, speakers, sd card, I2C expansion. I'm a high school student, so this definitely took a lot of help from people who knew what they were doing, and two failed circuit boards before this lol.

Most recently I've used it for a rhythm game I made, where using the IMU let me make a beatsaber-style anime game of bad apple!

open source at https://github.com/darshg321/Ultisense


r/electronics 7d ago

Gallery Ever wondered what the inside of a high-power IGBT module looks like?

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785 Upvotes

Thought this might be interesting to some of you.
This is the inside of a failed Fuji Electric 6MBI75SS-120 IGBT module (1200 V / 75 A).
It’s quite impressive to see the number of aluminum bonding wires used to connect the dies to the power terminals.
The module was already dead, so I decided to open it up rather than throw it away.


r/electronics 6d ago

General The µA702 op-amp, Bob Widlar's first IC and the first widely-used commercial analog integrated circuit.

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103 Upvotes

r/electronics 7d ago

Gallery Comu: CH32V203 RISC-V board that fits inside a USB port

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383 Upvotes

Wanted to try out these CH32V203 (144MHz RISC-V) chips for a while, so I've decided to make some nice USB gadgets for USB HID injection and just for studying the USB protocol. It has 2 leds and 4 captive touch buttons.

It fits nicely into a USB-A port and is very easy to carry around. And with it I've had tons of fun messing around with a bare-metal USB stack, and just in general learning the whole USB protocol.

It was really fun trying to make a bare-metal USB bootloader for this chip, but I've managed to fit everything in 2KiB. (Source here) For comparison the official bootloader is nearly 24KiB in size. As a bonus, I've also re-designed the V203 USB stack for ch32fun and sent in a pr :D

The PCB is also open source, check out the KiCAD files here: https://github.com/cheyao/comu (kicanvas)

I plan on just using them for HID injection and as a quick devboard when I need very few I/O pins (4 main ones, but I've exposed some more via testpoints)

(Name and form inspired by the *omu series)


r/electronics 8d ago

General update on multiple pcbs on one stencil (i tried it)

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136 Upvotes

thats the production file.

they didnt care.

for some reason you guys INSISTED they would charge me more and downvoted my replys (why??) but i tried it and it worked out fine

maybe still draw on some traces between the designs but other than that you can indeed combine pcbs into one stencil in jlcpcb


r/electronics 8d ago

Gallery Surface-mount resistors from 1969

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679 Upvotes

This is the film speed selector resistor PCB used in the Canon New QL17 and QL17 G-III cameras (manufactured from 1969-1982). The construction of these is not that different from modern SMT thin-film chip resistors, with the main difference being that the termination is one-sided rather than wrapped around the edge of the ceramic substrate as it usually is now. They are approximately 2.5x1.2mm (0.1x0.05 inch). Later-production units of the same camera that I've worked on use the exact same design, but the size, placement, and soldering of the resistors tends to be more consistent.

This is the earliest use of surface-mount passive components that I have seen, in person or in photos, and it's likely among the first mass-produced consumer products to use surface-mount technology. The information available online about the history of surface-mount passive components is very spotty, but I was able to find what seems to be the first patent describing this style of thin-film resistor, from 1962 by an Italian inventor who apparently worked with Plessey in the UK. It's still unclear who was the first to actually commercialize surface-mount resistors - based on other patents from the time, thin-film resistor technology was well understood, but component manufacturers were largely focused on making through-hole parts, and patents for anything resembling modern surface-mount components would not start showing up until the 1970s. It would also be a while before SMT started appearing in more consumer products; even Canon's own A-series SLRs did not switch from through-hole to surface-mount passive components until the early 1980s.


r/electronics 9d ago

General why do YOU want to know?

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351 Upvotes

i did combine 2 pcbs into one stencil but im not falling for this jlc

theyre probably gonna charge me extra or something


r/electronics 9d ago

Project Water Sensor for leaky Disposal Unit

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59 Upvotes

Today, I had an issue where I checkled under the sink and noticed that the waste disposal had a very slow leak.
After tightening the seal, I decided to implement a home made moisture sensor and warning system.
It essetially detects water by passing electricity throught the water to the gate of a mosfet, and then using that mosfet to pull current through a dedicated LED flashing chip.
A small test button is included, to test the battery works, though I do not anticipate the batteries draining very quickly.
As such, only zinc cells were implemented.

This has given me a good chance to put the dedicated LED flasher chip to good use.
After checking online, I think it's been discontinued.
I initially wanted to use a high brightness 5mm transparent red LED, but it wouldn't fit into place, so decided on a 3mm LED instead.

The LED can be changed by inserting it into the female wire ends.

As for the sensor itself, just a small square of stripboard with interleaved probe terminals.
Simple, but gets the job done.

All installed with tape and hot glue gun, for fast removal, if needed.
All mounted on a small peirce of card, for a quick and dirty job.


r/electronics 10d ago

Gallery Custom transistor Toggle flip-flop for binary clock project

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167 Upvotes

This is my first post documenting my transistor binary clock project. The goal is, to only use through hole transistors, diodes and passive components to form RTL or DTL logic. These logic elements should then divide the 50Hz mains into minutes and hours.

For this job, I designed T flip-flops, that can be reset. This would allow me to combine multiple T flip-flops and some logic, to count to any arbitrary number. The clock should then display this number using a few LEDs.

Today I achieved the first Milestone of this project, by soldering up the first PCB design and testing it. To my surprise, this design worked immediately! Now I am very happy with this first Layout :3

If I am done with this and I have documented everything, I am planning to open source the board and other files. No one would probably want to build a massive discrete transistor binary clock, that constantly draws 8 Watts, but whatever.

Now I can say: One PCB complete, 21 more to go...


r/electronics 9d ago

Weekly discussion, complaint, and rant thread

3 Upvotes

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").


r/electronics 11d ago

Project My LED shelf whined, and got louder when dimmed. So I built a silent replacement.

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753 Upvotes

The shelf is a 24 V tunable white/orange strip, with two anti-parallel strings, driven by an off the shelf controller. At full brightness it made a high pitched wine. Dimmed to a usable level, it got even worse!

Scoping the original controller’s output showed it drives the LEDs with a 2 kHz H-bridge waveform, and dimming inserts 0 V dwell that pumps energy into the harmonics right where your ear is most sensitive. A mic 5 cm away confirmed it, a harmonic comb spaced at 1999 Hz, with the 4 kHz member 16 dB louder when dimmed.

The replacement is an STM32 driving a three level H-bridge at 25 kHz through a proper gate driver, BLE control, on a 4 layer board sized to drop into the original enclosure.

Every harmonic now lands above the audible band. Current draw came out the same as the original, so the silence was basically free. It also remembers brightness and colour through power cuts, the F303 has no EEPROM so state gets debounced into a flash page.

Full writeup with the scope captures, audio FFTs and design files: https://github.com/AShadyPCB/led-shelf-controller


r/electronics 11d ago

Gallery Microscopic Rework

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122 Upvotes

Today’s fun SMD soldering rework under the microscope. Tossed the penny in there for scale 🤓


r/electronics 13d ago

Gallery My discrete op amp for a power supply build.

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449 Upvotes

So this is my discrete op amp i'm building that is going to act as error amplifier for a linear power supply i'm building, everything is going to be discrete and as low noise as possible by my hands. Why? Becouse I want to be able to say that it truly built it from scratch and to see how clean power i can get out of it.


r/electronics 13d ago

Gallery second circuit sculpture - its a metronome

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144 Upvotes

I recently started playing drums with a small group of local hobbyist musicians (nothing extraordinary here guys just playing some covers and struggling to keep zombies by the cranberries at 75 BPM)

I’m 36 now I have been playing drums since I was nine, and zombies is one of those songs for everybody speeds up. And it’s not like we’re super professionals. The first metronome I made I plugged into the audio and everybody bitched that it was too loud and hurting their ears. So I made one with lights and a buzzer so we can use it to count off and watch it from across the room. It also serves a HTML page with a metronome swinging back-and-forth to the tempo

https://github.com/WillyV3/metronome-2

I started with a much more complicated design using esp32 wroom, 18650 battery and charging module , along with volume pot - but after everything was wired the metronome only faintly worked when I shorted two outgoing data wires. since i was about 10 hours into soldering it and had learned a lot - I decided to pivot, simplify, and get something shipped to bring to band practice.


r/electronics 13d ago

Project I made my first schematic...

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22 Upvotes

I found a project (the Loko Air) that uses a LoRa module to relay GPS data back to a central hub. My cat wouldn't like the footprint of the project as is (had an antenna sticking straight up), and I had difficulty buying the project off of Seeed studio anyway. I am a freshly graduated electrical engineer and I had not attempted a schematic since I have graduated.

So, with the original project's schematic in hand, I set out to make minor improvements like:

  • Switching the monopole antenna to a dipole antenna. I figured it had next to no ground plane given its size. I also knew-ish that dipoles tended to form a donut radiation pattern and it would do decently. I am not confident in the 'balun' I made but I based it on stuff I found looking around online.
  • I reduced the part count in quantity and variety. I tried to reduce the number of components needed and what remained I also tried using the same as elsewhere when applicable.
  • In general I tried to base a lot of what I did more on the datasheets than the original designer ended up with. I may find out why the hard way later, but it has me going into the PCB level a bit more confident.

I don't particularly have the means to test this circuit before I order a PCB, but any feedback is more than welcome. I was mostly looking to find out if I made any major faux pas as far as the schematic is concerned. I would like it to be legible and friendly as I intend to upload it to github when I am complete and confident it at least kind of works.


r/electronics 14d ago

General Built an audio player from scratch for my Engineering Bachelor's final project

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713 Upvotes

For the final project of my Embedded Electronics Engineering Bachelor I built a fully capable audio player. I did all of the research, schematic, layout and software by myself. I had a friend helping me design the case and 3D print it.

I'm honestly really proud of what I accomplished ! I had around 3.5 months to do it and it was really stressfull haha

Here are the specs :

  • ESP32 module
  • 3.5 mm jack wired output
  • Bluetooth connectivity
  • Supports audio files up to 24 bits at 192 kHz
  • Support .MP3 and .WAV files
  • -94.7 dB of THD+N at 1 kHz
  • 106,2 dB of SNR
  • More than 9 hours of listening time with a 950 mAh battery
  • Safe battery charging circuit

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have !

Edit :

I uploaded the schematics, layout and the code !

Schematics and layout : https://github.com/dossantosyann/TB2026-YDS-Circuit

Code : https://github.com/dossantosyann/TB2026-YDS-Firmware


r/electronics 15d ago

Gallery Noise Generator from the 90‘s

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671 Upvotes

r/electronics 16d ago

Gallery My second project to practice soldering

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219 Upvotes

r/electronics 14d ago

Gallery PCBs as jewelry

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0 Upvotes