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SpeakJet Board for the Basic Atom PRO

#21

Well, every component was checked out and all is good except C12 has high capacitance. There seems to be no direct short anywhere on the board. Tonight I will remove C12 and see what happens.

If the regulator still gets hot, then I will have to give up on the board and build a new one. There is really nothing else I can do if the components are tested to be the proper value. Also, I don’t have the proper equipment at home to remove components; I need two soldering irons to remove parts which I don’t have. I can’t expect my fellow coworkers to spend much more time on this since they have their job to do.

I could at best send the board to Eddie if he chooses to do so, but even then, I will still build up a new board anyway.

#22

are you actually using a LM7805 on the board or are you using something else?

honestly if you have the board at work then take the regulator off of the board, remove the ICs, and connect the +5V and GND of the board to a benchtop power supply with some balls behind it and find the short. :open_mouth:

#23

Oh nuts, if he’s using a 2937 then the big cap on the input needs to be removed. The 2937 needs only a 0.1uf on the input and a 10uf on the output. Not sure what this would cause but I know it’s wrong.

#24

nah, extra input capacitance should not hurt anything. if the output cap is still good and more than 10uF it is fine. worst case if he had a really lousy cap on the output with a high ESR the output would oscillate and be really noisy.

#25

Gotcha! :slight_smile:

#26

No no no silly boys, that schematic is old but it’s all I have left after formatting my hard drive a few months back. The power supply circuit I copied of a website which was probably over kill but not the way I abuse things. :laughing:

I don’t remember what regulator I have off the top of my old rusty head, it could be a LM7805, it’s one Pete insisted I use at the time. I wanted to use the one LM sells, but NOoooo, Pete demanded I use a smaller one! :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and Eddie, I got the Balls to blast the board to bits, but this aint my equipment! Can you imagine:

Manager: “Um, what happened here?”
Me: “I was trying to remove a short from this board”
Manager: “What is this board, it doesn’t look like anything we build”
Me: “It’s a robotic sensor board”
Manager: “A robotic what?”
Me: “Yeah, I have a robot that has no feet and stands almost 12” tall if held in your hands because I’m waiting on servos."
Manager: “So I’m paying you to play with a toy robot?”
Me: "Uh, no sir, it is an expensive piece of hardware that teaches a wide range of topics from mechanical design to physics to software and electronics.
Manager: “Ummm, get back to work!”

#27

Um, what I said was use a power supply with enough balls to find the short. some cheesy 500mA toy will not do any better than your voltage regulator. You need a supply with 3A at least, 5A would be better, upwards of 10A and you might hurt your board if the short is stubborn, and it need to be current limited so it doesn’t damage the supply. No broken equipment, no confused manager, maybe a little bit of smoke but that’s like the goal isn’t it? Aanndd you are not supposed to be doing this during work time that is what breaks and lunch are for. :unamused:

alternative method… buy a 6V alkaline lantern battery at walmart on your way home and use that to blast the thing open. little less controlled but it should be enough to warm the problem up adequately… use some old meter leads or something beefy wire with a point on it to get the juice to the board. :smiling_imp:

and you do know you are supposed to back your hdd up before formatting, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

#28

I like to live dangerously and do things during work hours. :smiling_imp:
Besides, its work related - its a circuit board. :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue:

Ha ha… well I saved what I thought I wanted to keep on three CDs but forgot to add my Eagle cad folder, DAMN!

Good news is BachPCB still has my letest board on file and I still have the raw gerber files but no project files or schematics. :open_mouth: 8)

#29

If you want to smoke the short, connect your board to your car battery. Plenty of juice there.

#30

LOL :laughing: you know, I that actually crossed my mind today. :smiley:

#31

Aren’t we leaving the safe zone going on this one? LOL :laughing:

#32

Only if the capacitors remaining on the board are rated for the voltage… otherwise he will find a bunch of new parts to replace as well.

#33

Should get the box from Jim today (so says UPS) so I will take a look at this tonight. I have already written the code I want to try and proved it out using the S_OUT port and terminal window on the BAP IDE so hopefully this isn’t too big of a deal to get running. We shall see though…

#34

This is exciting! If you have a lager speaker, I recommend you use that for better sound. The smaller the speaker, the more distorted the sound unless you have the volume set low, but then you need to hold the speaker to your ear to hear it. The larger speaker can play louder with less distortion.

What IDE are you going to be using for this? Are you going to be able to record the results and post it here? Putfile.com will allow you to upload .WAV files and I wana hear it say “By your command” :laughing:

#35

I need a speaker huh? I’ll see if I can drag something home from my junk pile at work.

I was just going to just have it say “Inconceivable!” :unamused:

Hey do you have an app that breaks text down into phonemes or does all that have to be hand coded?

#36

“You keep saying that word. But I do not think it means what you think it means.”

…But then you’d have to do the accent! :laughing:

#37

It could happen… but I think it’d take a miracle.

#38

Yes a speaker is helpful. :unamused: :laughing:

You can define the sounds as constants like I have done and name them with the same two letter codes found in the manual. Personally I found this easier to simply look at the chart and use the right ones. You could give the codes your own names but then it would be hard to use the chart.

You have to sound out the words and take note of what code you need to use match the sound. Sometimes you need to use a something else to get better results. For example I have used two code combined to make it say the letter “U” I used EE, OO if I rememeber correctly as one example instead of only using EU by itself. Im sure I got the letters wrong but you get the idea.

#39

The PhraseALator comes with a fairly large “dictionary” of words on install. I’m not even sure where I got the PhraseALator files for installation, as it’s been so long since I’ve done anything with them (2004!), but if you’d like me to upload the dictionary file just let me know.

It looks like a lot of work’s been put into it. Here’s an example:

alphabet= \AY \LO \FAST \FF \FAST \AX \STRESS \SOFT \BE \EY \SLOW \TT

#40

That reminds me ther is a software program the lets you type in the word you want and it gives toy the proper code sequence. I have not used it but I guess you can cut-n-paste the output.

Thanks Beth, for reminding me!