Recent content by DrMario

Ouch... Took a lookie-see at the 32 KB 8-bit parallel FRAM on the Mouser website, it cost three times as much as the magnetic RAM (MRAM)... I doubt they will want to give me a free sample for this purpose unless it's for testing phase of electronic hardware before I sell the copies of the...

Yuppers. MRAM at present eat electrical power like it's unlimited slurpee day, however they're working on getting the current consumption down before they could be useful in the ARM microcontrollers. As for FRAM in the Gameboy Advance cartridges, I have seen several titles that use 64 KB I2C (?)...

** Update to the comments on FRAM endurance; apparently, Cypress have somehow managed to squeeze even more life out of the piezoelectric capacitors, meaning Excelon LP (low power = lower voltage) FRAM can now last between 100 - 1,000 trillion cycles before it completely wear out. Too bad newer...

Ceramic DIP chips are now prohibitively expensive to make - even a 60 cent chip (let's say, the 555 timer) can cost $60 if you use the same part into the ceramic DIP. So yeah, keep those chips you have in the possession, as they're kind of dying breeds in themselves. As for Zilog Z80 CPU, it...

I will check them out. As this particular thread group was basically about electronics and whatever that's not laser related, I figured I could try it here. Guess not, but that's ok anyhow. I will have to try it there. * I found out on their page; asynchronous SRAM is kind of timed by chip...

I apologize if it looks like it was put together hastily, I was pushed to deal with the pizza delivery. So anyhow, the reason why I kind of wanted to ask a question is because I am not 10,000% sure about driving the SRAM and MRAM which both are asynchronous so I am not sure if it works when I...

I am going to make my own Zilog Z80 based computer just for sh*t and giggles while also learning about the computer history at the same time. So yeah, I am sure this one wouldn't be the first Z80 related project that got posted here. And I am not that old. LOL But, still the computer history...

Why do I want to use laser? Better optical quality especially for Infrared lights. But you do have few good point though. Following the datasheet, VCSEL is already heatsunk (Cathode tab on the DFN-2 package is where I'd solder the VCSEL on the LED MCPCB heatsink pad along with Cathode pad - the...

Yep. Laser diodes are naturally sensitive to everything including ESD and spikes (funny enough, some lower power Gallium Nitride LEDs can be murdered this way too), I killed a VCSEL due to spikes from cobbled-together laser driver when I was younger - I didn't know better back then. However, now...

This is true, and I totally agree, which is why I wanted to double- or triple-check to be sure. VCSEL diodes are supposed to be more resistant to COD (Catastrophic Optical Damage) owing to the more wide laser cavity face, meaning the heat is simply spread out. In my experience, VCSEL is kinda...

I decided I will just gamble - I am going to use the modified Nanjg AK-47A LED driver with one AMC7135 LED driver LDO regulator deleted. It has soft-modded firmware for 15 - 50 - 100% modes (just so I can control how much Infrared light I will need for the digital camera night vision). The...

Another update - I ordered SJ9000 generic GoPro rip-off specifically for the all-spectrum imaging so it will be handy for viewing in the Infrared if my other cameras won't see it well. It's cheap enough to perform the hardware mod - removing the Infrared filter from the lens assembly.

Hey all. I got my hands on an interesting VCSEL diode (Osram PLPVQ-940A) from Digikey website for almost $10 for the DIY Infrared illuminator for some of my digital camera so I can use it for certain night shoots without disturbing anything in the dark. It's powerful for such a tiny laser -...

It would be a nice deal, even though a bit rich for my blood - still, new Ocean Optics spectrometers go over $4,000, depending on the features.

That's an interesting point, especially with the multimode laser diode lasing threshold. Calibrated spectrometer would be nice to have, still very expensive even used off eBay. Very hard to DIY too, even with FPGA or some fancy software on the microcontroller.