Made By Monkeys

Many Department of Defense programs will not go lead-free because of uncertainties and the risks associated with the current science and materials, reports Military and Aierospace Electronics in an article titled "Lead-free issues continue to plague mil-aero market, says DMEA engineer."

Speaking at the Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum in San Diego in March that engineer, Vance Anderson with the Defense Microelectronics Activity in Sacramento, CA, described the effect of the lead free regulation on the military procurement process for COTS.

(COTS stands for commercial-off-the-shelf-products, which the DOD depends on because they are cheap and reliable. Problem is, most COTS parts have gone lead-free. And though military contractors can opt for high-rel military parts, they are costly -- as much as 10X as COTS parts.)

And therein the dilemma lies:

"Many DoD programs will not go lead-free because of uncertainties and the risks associated with the current science and materials. “There are failures, but we’re not always hearing about it; most of the reporting is coming from government bodies. But believe me,” Anderson says, “it is hitting all the major primes right now, very hard.” The automotive, medical, and telecommunications markets are not immune, and have also experienced the same failures. Such failures are common, but not often revealed, perhaps due to stockholder pressures."

And you think you're having a bad day? A witty, entertaining, and rather gorey take on life at work -- courtesy of our IT department. Click to play

A candidate for the fake shake-to-light flashlight hall-of fame. Note that the circuit board has no actual traces! See more examples at Instructables.

Jon Titus, Senior Reviews Editor over at the DEV-monkey site, is one of the most knowledgeable editors (and engineers) around on development kits and tools.

But even experts can always use more help, as he points out in a recent blog post about the dev kit phenom he calls "Getting thrown over the cliff." Better yet, he offers vendors ideas on how to improve the usefulness of their kits.

"Often when I complete work with a development kit, I feel as though its vendor has led me to a dead end where I face an abyss. Most instructions lack a final warning, such as, "Good Luck. You're now on your own. Few of even the best dev kits explain what to do next with software tools or hardware. Maybe they assume after you work through a simple code-and-load example, you're an "expert." But because developers may have bought a dev kit to learn about new tools and hardware, manufacturers should assume buyers and users are NOT experts. Even the smartest engineers need some help now and then."

Judging by the responses from readers, they clearly agree.

David Mery works in an office where the light is controlled by a single motion sensor that is relatively far from most of the desk-bound employees. When he wrote to the people managing his office to complain that one had to stand and flail about or lob a basketball at the sensor else work in the dark, particularly in the short days of winter (and sent this photo in to prove it), he received this illuminating explanation:

"The sensitivity of the sensors is set centrally for the whole building and is fine for most.

Oh well, David, there's always night vision goggles!

Here's a look at David's office with the lights on and the mal-positioned sensor:

Continue reading "Motion Sensor Leaves Office Workers in the Dark" »

Anyone who thinks the use of buzzwords is criminal should get immense satisfaction from the fact that software maker SAP is being sued by a customer for falling short on the deliverables on what can only be described as a jargon-filled contract. According to the WSJ:

"SAP AG is being sued for failing to deliver an "out-of-the-box integrated end-to-end solution that increases...effectiveness." Amazingly, the meaning of these buzzwords are at the heart of a claim seeking more than $100 million."

Brad Thompson says that the article calls to mind the venerable "fuzz-phrase generator." He writes:

Continue reading "Buzzwords Behind $100M SAP Lawsuit" »

Continue reading "A Faraday Cage For Your Wallet" »

Warning: EMI, that silent and pernicious killer, may be stalking your chihuahua.

Thank goodness the people over at the Bargains Xtreme website are now offering a pet-specific device designed to keep Fido fit and free from dangerous electromagnetic waves. It's especially recommended if your dog has daily cell phone usage!:

"That’s right the company that brings you the Q-Link for humans has just introduced the Q-Link for animals. A Q-Link pet trial was conducted with the idea that new Pet specific Sympathetic Resonance Technology can help protect animals from harmful Electro Magnetic Frequencies, hip aliments, along with many other beneficial effects. The results were overwhelming. Did You Know? Q-Link technology has been used on racing horses for years to reduce stress and increase performance? The all new Pet-Link is compact and light enough for every size pet (22mm x 22mm, 8mm thick - 6.4 Grams) and features a durable waterproof rubber casing with fitted clip ready for your pet's collar."

Of course you could save yourself the $59.95 and wrap your dog in aluminum foil.

Sister publication Design News reports in its Lead Free Zone Blog that The Irish retailer, Boots, has the dubious honor of becoming the first company in the EU to prosecuted for violating the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, which aims to divert electronic devices away from landfills:

"The retailer pleaded guilty to charges brought against the company by the UK Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Boots officials admitted the company failed to post a notice in their shops alerting customers that the prices of electronic products include a contribution to a producer recycling fund that ensures old electrical and electronic products are collected and recycled appropriately. Boots also failed to include a notice in a newspaper ad that a contribution is made to the fund from add-on’s to the retail price. Notices in shops and in advertising is required by WEEE."

While there's evidence that some low-cost lighting products made in China are of dubious quality, I have no data, anecdotal or otherwise, on quartz clocks manufactured there.

Though if a clock costs you only $1, I suppose you can expect to get what you pay for.

José Pino has apparently run into more than a few cheesily-made quartz clocks, or just has had extremely bad luck, as he's come up with a nifty circuit to get one-second (1hz) pulses from a broken quartz clock. He writes:

"Quartz clocks break easily (especially if made in China) after a while. The gears lose lubrication and the dust gets the job done. Fortunately, the electronics of the clock work for many years without problem, so you can "hack" a quartz clock to get a timebase generator, which can be used in any project that needs exactly one-second pulses."

Check out the full instructions (including step-by-step photos and circuit diagrams) and other gadgets on his website.

Sister publication EDN presents an engineering who-dunnit in its latest Tales from the Cube, involving two engineers who were asked to investigate why the company's telephone switches were failing to switch activity from one machine to another. As hardware engineer Pierre Renaud relates:

"Everyone thought the culprit was a bad batch of DRAM chips because the older boards had been in the field for years, and this problem had never occurred before. So, my boss assigned me, the hardware guy, to team up with my software buddy to see if we could diagnose the problem....Although this event happened years ago, its lesson still remains as one of the more important laws of the art of debugging: Bugs don’t disappear with time."

Read about their full investigation here.

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Are there any real magnetic induction shake-to-charge flashlights out there? Phil Karras relates his run-in with some more flagrant fakes on his website:

"I'm not saying that the flashlights were not worth the $2.50 I paid, but they were not as advertised. The flashlight box clearly stated in poor, but understandable English, that the flashlight did NOT use batteries, all you had to do to make it light was to shake it back and forth.

On my way out I heard someone say that there was no magnet inside the flashlight. Instead of going right back to the vendor, though, I went home and ran an experiment. I left one of the flashlights on while I went out for a couple hours. When I returned, the flashlight was dark. I picked it up and shook it, but no amount of shaking would make it shine again."

Continue reading "Shake-to-Charge Flashlight Cheats By Using A Battery" »

Warning: Toaster covers may be dangerous to your health. That is, if you own a Salton Cook's Essential 4-slide-wide electric toaster, which was voluntary recalled because of a tendency to turn on automatically and ignite items placed on top of it. The toaster was made in China.

According to a release by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with
the online retailer QVC:

QVC has received information that ten toasters reportedly turned on spontaneously, including one incident of fire damage to kitchen cabinets and two incidents of toaster covers burned. No injuries have been reported.

Maybe a toaster cover just isn't a good idea after all, given this online review
at eopinions:

Continue reading "Electric Toaster Runs Amok" »

John Goldsmith sends in this example of a shake-to-light torch he purchased at a filling Station - it was a cheap offer if you bought enough petrol. Well, he got what he paid for.

"As the closeup photo shows, the power comes from a magnet and coil, being stored in a 0.22 Farad (not microfarad!) capacitor on the PCB. The on/off switch has a little magnet on the slider and a reed switch on the PCB. This maintains the integrity of the watertight housing. The operating magnet is actually some small powerful magnets embedded in a larger lump, presumably steel. A nuisance as it drags all the recent UK coinage out of your pocket. I'm sure the unit would be more efficient with metal springs as end stops - the rubber used seems to absorb all the energy. I recently bought a wind-up 3 LED unit which is much brighter and much longer running (and less embarassing to operate).

Having looked closely, John also discovered a problem with the magnet.

Continue reading "Shake-to-Charge Torch Doubles as a Metal Detector" »

David Merrill discovers unintended sound effects from an LED display:

"I didn't realize that an LED could make *audible* sound until my friend/colleague Sajid called me over to have a look. What can I say - it's true.. This is a circuit with NO SPEAKERS, making audible sound.

Watch (er, listen) to the video.

England's commissioner for children and a civil liberties group are taking their jobs way too seriously:

According to the AP, they're mounting a campaign to ban the Mosquito -- a device intended to repel packs of yobs by emitting an intensely annoying high-frequency (17.4 kHz) tone.

Old people are immune to it, because the ability to hear high frequencies drops off as the birthdays mount.

"This device is a quick fix that does not tackle the root cause of the problem and it is indiscriminate," English Children's Commissioner Al Aynsley-Green said."I'm very concerned about what I see to be an emerging gap between the young and the old, the fears, the intolerance, even the hatred, of the older generation toward the young."

The British government subsequently told the BBC that it has no plans to ban the technology, though it stressed it should be used as a "last resort."

But in a delicious twist of irony, young people have found a way to leverage the technology to thwart oldsters.

Continue reading "U.K. Calls Kid Repellent a "Last Resort"" »

When poorly aimed, a flashlight's multiple light sources can create a serious Van Gogh effect!

Doug Ritter writes about the clone flashlight that produced this hallucinogenic effect on his equipped to survive website, where he reviews outdoor gear and survival equipment. He writes:

"The "Pilot" lights by Holly Solar Products are a virtual clone of the original triple AA-cell Trek light, though of lower quality fit and finish, with a twist. Besides the Pilot 2 ($30) two-LED model, they also offer both a one- and a three-LED version. The single LED model, Pilot 1 ($20), didn't seem to offer much except extra long life and it was quite bulky for the light provided. The Pilot-3 ($35) served as an excellent example of the difficulty that having multiple light sources that are not well aimed can cause, as it provided three distinct lit areas. Not too bad for finding your way, but seriously annoying when trying to use the light for close-up work."

Having been born and raised in Minnesota -- Land of 10,000 Lakes, as modestly claimed -- I've always had a fondness for fishing. We mostly caught sunfish and walleye.

Though I had a strong aversion to baiting the hook, when I saw this circuit designed by engineer Dave Johnson, who runs the website Discover Circuits, for harvesting your own bait, I just had to pass it along! Explains Dave:

"When I was a kid my engineer uncle built a circuit similar to the one below. My cousin and I used it to force earth worms out of the ground to be used for fishing. It worked like a champ. Please be careful since there is high voltage at the probe tips."

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If an incredibly low price isn't an obvious enough tip-off, here's a surefire way to tell a cloned product from the real thing: In a lame effort to "prove" that the fake has been through some sort of rigorous quality-control process, it usually carries at least one official-looking label to that effect.

Take this $20 clone of the $270 U2 SureFire Ultra LED flashlight, which is one of the toughest and brightest flashlights out there. The clone is the one in front with the gold "Q.C. Passed" label on its bezel.

Of course, there's other telltale signs that this Chinese-made light doesn't come close to the real thing, as Craig Johnson, operator of the website www.ledmuseum.org, a site devoted to all things LED (including some highly entertaining reviews of LED-based products), discovered on closer inspection:

Continue reading "U2 Surefire Flashlight Clone a Cheap Imitation" »

A frustrated design engineer whose company uses a proprietary lithium-ion battery made in China complained recently here in the Made by Monkeys blog about significant problems with those batteries swelling up.

Bloated batteries sound like fodder for yet another “Made in China” recall story – and it’s not inconceivable that some manufacturing defect could turn out to be the culprit in this case.

But when it comes to lithium ion batteries, it turns out that how you charge one can mean the difference between a well-functioning device and one that bears a resemblance to a certain top criminal underlord in the galaxy.

Continue reading "Lithium-Ion Battery Swells Up Like Jaba the Hutt" »