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TheBloke

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  • Birthday 11/15/1979

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    Tom Jobbins

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  1. Very interesting idea John, I'm going to have to try that. That said, I've had no problem doing it with non-professional, highly affordable equipment I paid £50 for the UNI-T UT325 thermocouple ($50 in the US) which can log to the PC via USB, and then I bought a couple of Type K probes for about $8 on eBay. I have some rated up to 250°C, which have <1s response time, and some slightly slower ones up to 350°C. Though I haven't had a problem taking the 250s to 300 on occasion. The most important thing I've found is to touch the probe to the coil, so I use a widely spaced coil and helping hands or similar to get the probe touching one wrap of the coil. In the past I've also experimented with using silica or cotton wick as padding to press the end of the probe to the wire. Here's a photo I took a couple of months back when I was probing the DNA 40 to measure the required offsets to vape Titanium on it. (The second probe was for background temperature and is not necessary.) I'm definitely going to try John's method as well as it sounds smart and might make life easier in some respects. I just thought I'd mention that it doesn't require professional equipment - and prices - to measure the coil directly, in-situ. For $58 you have all you need.
  2. Yay, just updated to 6/30 and the flashing is gone. Thanks again!
  3. Awesome! Thanks so much. Really happy to see that FW updates are coming out so fast. A superb sign for the future.
  4. OK thanks a lot guys. I do intend to analyse, but likely not to the extent or sophistication that you will be SSV! Once I've got settled in I will wire up the battery and do some comparisons, see if I can detect any difference. That LifePo4 does look good, something I might consider in the future.
  5. Oh really? Can you elaborate on what sort of issues I might see? I just had a quick check on a few component sites and 12V 25+A linear supplies appear both to be rare, and horrendously expensive. So if it won't work out I'll just revert to using battery. But it'd be great to understand what might go wrong, so I can understand the risks and be on the look out for symptoms if I do go ahead. Thanks!
  6. OK awesome John thanks. To be clear I have selected Power Supply in EScribe (and uploaded), but I don't actually have a PSU connected yet - so perhaps it will stop when I do? Or should just PSU mode alone in EScribe be enough? Anyway I should have it wired to PSU some time tomorrow so I'll update then, either way. Thanks again!
  7. Thanks. Will it go away when a PSU is connected? I was asking in another thread if I could use the PSU without attaching the balance connector at all, and was told I could as long as I set it to Power Supply in EScribe. Or is it the case that I technically can, but I'm going to get flashing screen the whole time unless I have a balance connector? And therefore I have to do this three-resistor divider thing to pass a fake input to the balance connector?
  8. Hey guys I just got my screen attached and the board USB connected to the PC. And customised my start screen, of course All looking fine, except for one odd thing. The main screen of the device - showing ohms, volts, temp and 8.5W - is constantly flashing. Perhaps twice a second, very regular. Other screens are not flashing - eg the welcome screen, and the UPLOAD SETTINGS screen. The up/down buttons work as expected. Settings download/upload works fine. Given it's not all screens flashing, I'm thinking maybe this is expected behaviour - perhaps the flashing is meant to indicate that no power source is connected? I just wanted to check as I'll hopefully be soldering it all tomorrow so better to know sooner or later in the (very) unlikely event this is any issue. Thanks! Tom / TheBloke
  9. Thanks very much for the super fast response John and James! That's great to hear. Firmware upload is no concern at all for what I want to do, which is the sort of automated research/testing that you describe. It would be useful in a theoretical future cross-platform EScribe system, but I suppose if such a system ever starts being developed by the community then we could discuss with you a way to port that feature at that time. Changing settings would be nice right away, or at least I am assuming it would be. I haven't yet fully researched what I can do via the Research interface. But for example, I can definitely imagine wanting to vary pre-heat settings between tests. So it would be nice if (at some point) that binary format was released, so I/we could write code to create our own settings bundles and upload them prior to triggering a test. I was thinking maybe Presets would be a way to go - if the Research system allowed switching presets prior to firing, I could pre-configure up to 8 tests in 8 presets and switch between them that way. But a quick glance at the manual suggests it doesn't allow changing presets? I can change temperature, power and other things but not tell it to switch to a preset first? Or perhaps there's an undocumented CLI command for that? Anyway I don't want to take too much of your time now. I hope to have my board up tomorrow or the day after, and I can learn a lot by playing. What you've told me is already immensely encouraging. If you would be able to send me that list of CLI commands that would be very much appreciated - I understand it might not be complete, and that it won't be a priority for you to update it any time soon. That's all fine. Just whatever you have will give me more than enough to experiment with I'm sure. Thanks again guys! This is going to be so amazing for experimentation, it's awesome.
  10. Hey guys, I was very excited to see two things in EScribe: References to the Serial Command Line Interface, apparently a CLI for communicating with the DNA 200?The fact that, on installation of EScribe, it installed a USB-to-Serial driver (not a generic one, one created by (for) Evolv.) This gave me the following thoughts: It seems possible that all communication between host and DNA 200 is in the form of CLI commands.Suggesting EScribe is a UI on top of a system of sending text based commands and parsing their responses?And therefore, everything EScribe can do can also be done via CLI commands?Further, it appears the host-to-DNA communication is a generic serial interface, wrapped in USB-to-serialTherefore, any host computer which can host a USB-to-serial driver (ie., all of them: OSX, Linux, Android) could communicate with the DNA 200, if we knew the complete list of CLI commands to use? (And possibly, if an appropriate driver is made, depending on what Evolv's own driver does that's special.)And therefore, it would be easy to re-create ESCribe on multiple platforms; creating a new cross-platform UI which, as I am assuming for the PC version, is simply a pretty UI on top of a CLI command/response system to the device? I would be most grateful if someone from Evolv could confirm if my assumptions are correct, in particular items 3. and 5. above - can the CLI do everything that EScribe do, and is the PC-to-DNA interface just USB-to-serial as the driver installation seemed to suggest? Looking at the driver files installed by EScribe, it does appear to be generic USB-to-Serial, but perhaps with some special setup required - such as creating multiple serial ports (separate output and input channels? multiples of each?) I would also love to be able to see a complete list of the CLI commands available via the Serial interface. Is there some documentation for this, or if not is this something that's planned in the near future? My interest in this is two-fold: In general, the idea of a cross-platform EScribe, as I discuss aboveBut much more pressing than that, I would love to be able to communicate with and control the DNA 200 via scripted CLI commands. I am a UNIX/Linux architect and developer of some experience. Therefore a command line interface is always my natural preference. I am planning to do some detailed testing and analysis with and of the DNA 200, exactly the sort of stuff enabled via the Research system. It's wonderful that I can do that in EScribe. But I hope to be able to move outside EScribe, communicating with the 200 via external scripts. This will facilitate automation, scheduling, and logic: the ability to create a series of tests, with permutations and conditions, and run and re-run them easily and repeatably. I would therefore love to be able to set up an interface to the 200 outside of EScribe, treating the board as a generic serial device to which I send commands and receive responses. If no such command list currently exists, and it's not a priority for Evolv to create one, then if it is confirmed that EScribe is simply a UI wrapper to a text command-based system, I will see if I can snoop on the USB-to-serial interface and log all the commands being sent and their responses. That should be a quick and easy way to create a list of all the supported commands and examples of their output. Thanks very much. I can't wait to get my board up and running and start experimenting with all this!
  11. I meant the other way around - the maximum power that will be drawn is 23A The max power you need is 23A, as opposed to the maximum power supply you need I will edit for clarity
  12. As others said, the maximum power drawn is 23A so any power supply of 23A and above is fine - which in reality will mean a PSU of 25A or above. This is the one I bought, 12V 25A: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-5-12-24V-Universal-Regulated-Switching-Power-Supply-for-LED-CCTV-3D-Printer-/111544566393?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&var=&hash=item19f8930279
  13. Awesome! Thank you. That's great news. So I can get going quicker, not even bothering to solder on that balance port, just wiring directly into my PSU. I can switch it over to battery later, as and when I'm ready to try and make it portable Thanks again.
  14. Here's a second PSU question, rather a basic one! How do I work out what amps my 25A DC charger will draw from the AC? So I know what fuse to put on the AC side. The DC charger is going to send a maximum of 23A in 12V to the DNA 200. It's pulling that from 230V AC. So what's the calculation to find the 230V AC amp draw of a 23A 12V DC PSU? From my googling, I think it's something like: Power delivered = 12V * 23A = 276WPower required at 83% efficiency of PSU = 276 / 0.83 = 332WAC current in = 332 / 230V (AC) = 1.44 Amp AC So my back of the envelope calculation seems to be I won't need more than about 1.5A. I think the smallest fuse I have is 3A so that's totally fine. But have I done all this correctly?
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