admin – Page 3 – Adrian’s electronics blog

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Avionics

Aircraft avionics teardown – Honeywell symbol generator

admin
15/05/2021

I obtained another interesting piece of aircraft avionics – this time a symbol generator computer that is used for generating the graphics and video signals for the CRT displays in the cockpit. From what I can gather there is typically 2-3 of these units in the aircraft with each symbol generator driving two displays so […]

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NTP clock only version of my ESP8266 based display

admin
27/04/2021

As there was interest I have released firmware for my YouTube statistics and clock internet connected display featured in my previous post for users who just want an NTP clock and don’t require the YouTube counter functions. This clock automatically gets the time from the NTP server and synchronises it with the software based RTC […]

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ESP8266 based NTP clock with YouTube statistics display

admin
08/03/2021

I made some internet connected 8 digit 7 segment LED displays using a NodeMCU and Harris semiconductor ICM7228A LED driver ICs the latter of which were salvaged from old aircraft avionics. As the chips would unlikely sell on eBay I decided to make them into a project and improve upon my earlier YouTube counter project […]

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The DM134B 16 bit shift register with constant current LED drivers

admin
06/02/2021

I have quite a few DM134B IC’s which are 16 bit shift registers complete with constant current LED drivers built in so I decided to make something useful from them. The chips require minimal components; LED current is simply set via an external resistor which is far better than having to use 16 individual resistors. […]

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Racal Avionics data entry device / CDU teardown and test

admin
06/02/2021

This will be the last teardown video for a while and this time I have a Racal Avionics CDU allegedly from an RAF Nimrod which I obtained some time ago and discovered that it communicates with a host system over standard RS422. Now, thinking I might be able to connect it to my PC or […]

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General

Using large / high current 7 segment LED displays with the MAX7219

admin
23/01/2021

I have some largish 7 segment displays which are 0.8″ in height but I found that they were dim when driven from a MAX7219 even at full brightness. I found that this was because the LED displays I were using need around 15 mA for a decent amount of brightness, 25mA ideal. However the MAX7219 […]

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P&G aircraft cockpit voice recorder (black box) teardown

admin
16/01/2021

In this teardown video I’ve got something pretty cool; a black box from an RAF Nimrod MRA4 which was a failed project and numerous aircraft were built but were never delivered to the RAF and were later scrapped. This one does show some signs of wear and tear although it may well be damage due […]

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General

Clone Wemos D1 mini boards intermittent resetting and other problems

admin
09/01/2021

I’ve recently been experimenting with the ESP8266 modules and made a YouTube statistics counter as the first and experimental project. I used a NodeMCU for that which gave me no problems at all. However there is a smaller board, the Wemos D1 mini which on first impressions looks like a more ideal board for final […]

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Oddball military hardware – GRF Control Panel

admin
27/11/2020

I bought some more crap; this time another eBay find which appears to be a control panel for a video processing unit that takes the recorded video from a Tornado jet’s onboard VHS video recorder (yes, really!) and exports it to another media format along with some video processing. It has several analog switches and […]

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Merlin Helicopter CDU update – serial port probing

admin
24/11/2020

I have been trying to see if the Merlin Helicopter CDU I wrote about in my previous article could be repurposed. I found that it has a number of serial ports which are a mix of RS485 and RS232 and was hoping that key presses would present something on the serial port(s) or the display […]

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Rants

Is it even worth repairing consumer goods nowadays?

admin
02/12/2017

30 years ago… Yes. Now not so much. Take for example a repair of a Panasonic DMR-BWT720 blu-ray recorder which I was handed for free as it had failed and had been replaced with a newer model. The fault – freezes / runs slow and fails to record sometimes. If it does record the image […]

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Projects

Sanyo 1970’s LED clock / radio resurrection (well sort of)

admin
21/11/2017

In the quest to make something useful out of a load of old junk I’ve found in my cupboards I came across my old clock radio I’ve had since 1978 a while back and decided to do something with it rather than throw it out. It actually worked but it had an ‘accident’ with the […]