Busy? You better believe it - lots of new electronics from PLD/NQRC

NOTE: You can always keep up to date with what I'm doing over in the RCG Vendor section - https://www.rcgroups.com/nqrc-pldani...ectronics-618/

After shuffling my feet around with the idea of closing the NQRC store, I had a change of heart (the bank helped *cough*) and I've gone full-song into developing new things, sure, many of them might never make it to full production but it's been a LOT of fun doing all the new things so far...

Pictures attached of all the new goodies - you can keep in touch with what I'm doing via Twitter as well ( http://twitter.com/nqrc ); I'm almost always designing something new or cursing at the loss of the precious "Magic Smoke" from the electronics.

The first thing to really get some life into my blood was making the first switchmode 1S to 5V booster for the DLG people, it's like my existing linear regulators but this time I went with switchmode because quite a few people asked for it. The result is the PLD-BACALL and I have to say the magnetic on/off is quite neat, though my wife is going insane from all the startup/shutdown beeping

Next thing that came in was the PLD-SLOGGER, which monitors your servo channel for volts, current and pulse-width and then lets you dump it all out via a serial-USB connection later. This went along really well and then I realised the 256Kbit EEPROM just wasn't enough... 16 MEGAbit one ordered, that'll give about 2.5 hours of logging at 100Hz sampling.

The PLD-SCC1 mAh-counter for A123/LiFe (and really, any cell chemistry) went into bigger production today, getting a lot of attention with this item, it's really a device that has come about at the right time, because people are finding the tracking the voltage on A123/LiFe cells doesn't do you much good when you want to know how many mAh are left.

I did receive the PCBs for the big-brother of the SCC1, the PLD-MCC1, which will let you track the mAh consumed on packs as high as 8S and 30~40A currents, still waiting for some parts to arrive for that though - it's a little bit experimental so it might not yet work out on this revision.

Yesterday the final revision (I hope!!!) for the PLD-LOM boards arrived, it's crazy, that's 15 revisions now. This is the danger of getting in to precision equipment, every time you improve one thing you notice another that irritates you, so you enhance that as well - never ends! Needless to say I'm quite happy now with the results, the LOM keeps good precision ( 10uΩ ) and stays well within 0.001% from 1 mΩ all the way up to 10Ω and then to 100Ω.


Finally today the boards for my long-awaited 3A and 5A BAC-ESJ units arrived. I built up one tonight and I have to say I really do like the look of it. I think it's the neat pin-head heatsink on the back that sets it off nicely. The ESJ-3AR and -5AR units have the usual electronic on/off, voltage-blinkout and as usual, good decoupling to make sure your system stays alive and well.



EDIT: I just wanted to make a final note... some people have asked who does all the assembly/manufacturing for me - the answer is simple... me. I do everything from the original design, testing, exploding, assembly, packing and shipping. This is a 1-man shop. The only things I farm out to other people are the production of the PCBs and the making of the wire-looms (believe me, you do NOT want to hand-crimp 100 looms or more).