In my previous article I discussed how I intended to convert an old PC into a controller that I could use to automate the temperature control required to ferment and conditional beer. If you haven’t already read that introduction then I’d encourage you to do that so you know what...
Process automation: building a process controller
posted by Andy
Not a lot of people know this, but I brew my own beer as a hobby; and I’m not talking about the murky coloured astringent tasting dodgy brews of yesteryear. The beer I brew is probably best described as craft ale. I do the whole process, much like a brewery would. I design recipes, crush...
A laser-cut acrylic case for my server power supply controller
posted by Andy
In my last article I built a controller board around the Artesyn NXA66 server power supply module that I picked up very cheaply on ebay. This board gave me the ability to control the key functions of the module and formed the basis for a rather nice, high current desktop PSU for voltages of...
A high current power supply built around a server voltage regulator
posted by Andy
Regular readers of this blog will have already seen the article that I published about 4 months ago where I attempted to reverse engineer a voltage regulator module originally designed to fit into a Dell server. The theory was that these would be high quality, stable and robust designs that...
GPS Disciplined Oscillator review and teardown
posted by Andy
You may recall that about a year ago I built a frequency counter based on an FPGA and an Android user interface. I called it Nanocounter and you can read about it here if you haven’t already done so. One of the basic requirements for building a frequency counter is the ability to...
Reverse engineering a server CPU voltage regulator module
posted by Andy
A recent ebay fishing expedition yielded an interesting little part for the very reasonable sum of about five pounds. It’s a voltage regulator module from a Dell PowerEdge 6650 Xeon server. I originally bought this because I had the idea of salvaging parts from it to use in another...
Old, not obsolete. Working with the Xilinx Virtex-E FPGA in a huge BGA package.
posted by Andy
Let me see now, it must have been about two years ago when this story started. I was bored. I can’t remember why but when I’m bored I often surf ebay just to see what interesting bits and pieces are out there. Mostly it’s the same old stuff repeated over and over. Cheap bare PCB modules from the far east at the low end and chancers wanting $1000 for a broken oscilloscope at the other. This time though I found something interesting. Someone in Sweden was selling a job lot of forty factory-sealed Virtex-E FPGAs for what amounted to two quid each. And they were big ones — the XCV600E-6FG676. ‘Virtex’ is...
An acrylic case for Nanocounter
posted by Andy
You may have already read my writeup about my first experience with laser cutting and the case that I produced for my reflow oven controller. If not then you can always get up to speed by clicking here. Creating a design for laser cutting involves laying out the different pieces into a...
