Hiatus, or .. I'm sorry, but.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that: This blog was never indented to be anything about me in person, my life, health or other personal issues. I have wanted to document some old projects of mine, make some new hacks , repair various things and do/write similar tech geeky stuff.

But, with this prolonged inactivity I feel the need to open up the situation somewhat. And thus I'll write this short post of things gone and happening.

As of now, I don't have any official diagnose for this, but as far as I can describe it: I'd call this a something similar to CFS . Amongst the major problems related to this blog are, lower cognitive skills (esp foreign language), excessive sleeping and lack of energy to do anything above the bare essentials. And unfortunately, making this blog (and videos) are really something I have had no energy whatsoever.

This is not anything new, the basic symptoms have been around for years now, but the intensity of the exhaustion has been really bad at last winter. At the moment I can't offer any guarantees that my condition will get much better in near future. I do hope that there will be some new insight to the situation due med specialist I met last week, but only time will tell if there's any new clues to be found on those numerous vials of blood I have donated to the cause.

So, for those reading this. I'm truly sorry for letting you down.

Joanna

Diytao #8, vlog: Fixing with Sugru

Hi,

After a long while I made a new video of fixing things. This time it's about using Sugru and paper clip to repair the broken zipper of the winter shoe.

Onward with video..

Video #8

As a side note, I tried to make a new intro video. But I have to admit I'm not sure if it's a good or not. Feedback is well appreciated. And, yes, no money was harmed on shooting. ;-)

Xmas present from Digi-Key, #digi-wish

Pickit 3 package

During Christmas 2013 season the Digi-key run a Digi-Wish competition which I took part. And as amazing it seems to be, I happened to win. I asked for either a FPGA-devkit or Pickit 3 demo kit and I got the latter one.

So, here are some pictures of the packet and the content. This bundle was delivered by DHL some days ago.

Naked Pickit 3 and devboard

Pickit 3 comes bundled with the nice looking Pic18 demo board and red usb-cable. The included Mplab programming environment CD apparently contains version 8 of the software, which I don't really need since I have for some time ago downloaded the latest version Mplab-X from Microchip site. 

Comparison shot Pickit2 vs Pickit3

As seen from the pictures I also took the Pickit 3 apart immediately and compared it to my old Pickit 2, looks like they have done quite a bit changes between product version.

The Pickit 2 uses an Pic18F2550 micro controller, that is on higher end amongst 8 bit Pic chips.

While the Pickit 3 has 24FJ256GB106, which is 16 bit micro controller with USB OTG port in it. There are also a lot of unused pins and peripherals at the Pickkit 3 controller, so I have to wonder didn't they find any simpler/smaller chip for this version of programmer.

Pic18 demo board

The demo board that came alongside Pickit 3 looks real good, with smooth gold finish and black solder mask. I have not yet any project for this, but I'll need to check the  Pic18F45K20 datasheets and see what this particular chip can do. So far I have only used those low end Pic16 series on all my projects and I'm quite sure there will be some differences.




I also did record video of the unboxing and Pickit 3 tear down/review. I will add the link here as soon as I have edited and uploaded it to Youtube.