SingleChips

SingleChips Embedded Systems Design

The Golden Handshake - Winger General Store 1976The first question in my head at the time was: "Is this guy running for ...
04/29/2026

The Golden Handshake - Winger General Store 1976
The first question in my head at the time was: "Is this guy running for Mayor of Erieau or something?". I had walked to the end of the pier and had just snapped a picture of the sunrise shorty after 7:00 am on Oct. 6th, 2016, installation day for a couple of CDi3.FTe switchers offshore of Morpeth. As I was making my way back to the boat I noticed someone we all knew, walking away from his silver Dodge toward me, right arm extended, he wanted to shake hands. The handshake did happen shortly thereafter, however, the question in my head had morphed to: "Why now?", given we had both worked for the same companies for over twenty years, yet all kinds of potential opportunities over at least two decades had produced exactly zero handshakes. Perturbed by this, I looked around for "big shots" or anything else that could justify the behaviour, didn't see anything, but once on the boat I asked around and sure enough, there was someone else inside the silver Dodge, one that would be ultimately deciding how much to dish out to people on the future unsecured creditors list, eight or so months later. "Perturbed" had now advanced to "disturbed" and so I now required character references, you know, showing off is one thing, brown-nosing is another. The crazy thing in all this is I didn't have to go far to get those character references, in fact I didn't have to go anywhere, had all the answers before the boat left the dock in Erieau, all I had to do is call home...

Adam
|

Lucy Perseveres!After the destruction of 2017 and onward, I have gone back to my boards, the higher-end devices are stil...
03/25/2026

Lucy Perseveres!
After the destruction of 2017 and onward, I have gone back to my boards, the higher-end devices are still locked away and unavailable to anyone, but Lucy, a very capable lean-and-mean switcher could be available as a rental.
The board allows the connection of a single analogue pressure transmitter so it can facilitate a "line controller" function but the transmitter's use is optional. In other words, this board can either be a line controller with a transmitter or a lean-and-mean switcher without one.
But if the intent is submersible use, additional steps must be taken in order to have the electronics survive, zip-lock bags never an option.
So what would it cost to make something like this board, batteries, interconnect, etc., submersible? Oh, the answer is 10-12K parts and labor, excluding the board of course. And that's when you'll hear: "You know how those contractors are" if there's a bunch of engineers around, or "You know how those engineers are" if you're surrounded by contractors.
The divers know instinctively I didn't abandon them, no issues there, so why am I doing this? Not sure, but I think the lake operation might have managed to hang on to a bunch of actuators, and who knows, some managers might get tired of buying salt!

Lake is in harvest mode!

Adam

03/24/2026

The Trigger (to wrap up the R&D) The trigger signal was unmistakable to miss, in the middle of July 2014 I was around Rocheste... Built my first Galena Crystal Detector, AKA Cat's Whisker Detector, radio five decades ago at age 10 in Greece, have been living in Niagara, Ontario, Canada for four deca...

03/24/2026

The Rentals - Intro After more than 10 years on the job, during a visit to PortC sometime between late 2004 and early 2005, I had ... Built my first Galena Crystal Detector, AKA Cat's Whisker Detector, radio five decades ago at age 10 in Greece, have been living in Niagara, Ontario, Canada for four....

Latest CDi3s Assembly Sneak PeekHaven't potted anything since fall 2018, some new things to touch on in this latest atte...
04/05/2023

Latest CDi3s Assembly Sneak Peek
Haven't potted anything since fall 2018, some new things to touch on in this latest attempt:
1. The battery voltage reported by the unit is now calibrated so we need to make sure we record the battery calibration values before potting, impossible to access the battery terminals after assembly completion. Calibration ensures the reported battery voltage will be within 10-15 mV or so of the actual battery voltage, very important if the unit has to shut down due to a low battery condition.
2. The original switching charger has been replaced by the combination of the black PCB linear charger and a switching pre-regulator. This pre-regulator is difficult to see in the picture, follow the thicker white wire at the top to the left and down, the little board is about one square inch.
3. The old brass #4-40 interconnect hardware has been replaced with stainless steel equivalents, five of the six 4-wire groups you see in the picture make it to the outside of the box.

This one assembly can now support all the eight functions I've spoken about before so from our point of view it is extremely unlikely that a P5 submersible materializes in the future, which is of course the reason I designed this board in the first place.

Adam

2023 PotentialsWe have eight functions in one assembly now, eight digital ones in the CDi3. I've talked about functions ...
03/16/2023

2023 Potentials
We have eight functions in one assembly now, eight digital ones in the CDi3. I've talked about functions five and six before, D5 and D6 in this context, they can both do "lean and mean switching" as well as "Very Low and Very High - Duty Cycle Switching", VLVH-DCS. One minute "on", a week "off"? Sure, no problem, your interval is 1440, there is one "on" and seven "offs" and you limit the "on" to one (1 minute). The other new thing for the CDi3 is function D7, Digital Seven, where the controller behaves just like what the divers call a "PDL5 Flow Meter", where a solenoid is used to switch both camco pressures to a single transmitter. Didn't want to give that up, you know, "Plan B" kind of thing.

Adam

11/02/2021

ILOT in 1.3 seconds
Wakes up, reads everything, stores everything, and goes back to sleep in less than two seconds. Blue light = charger on high, green light = reading 3 pressures and 1 temperature, red light = board powered up. This whole video is exactly two seconds long.

Adam

Long Live the Ferraris! Both of Them!I do have something in mind for around Halloween, in the mean time we can look at s...
10/30/2021

Long Live the Ferraris! Both of Them!
I do have something in mind for around Halloween, in the mean time we can look at some Ferrari facts.

Adam

The Red ModRed mod finally implemented on all boards, last three pictures in this set is a CDi2 board originally built i...
10/28/2021

The Red Mod
Red mod finally implemented on all boards, last three pictures in this set is a CDi2 board originally built in 2000 and tested on the Andrea Marie in the summer of 2002. The PDL that wasn't.
Link: https://www.singlechips.com/html/CDi2.P6.shtml

Adam

Our Own BME Wifi Building Block - Finally!It almost feels like 2012 again, and in that year everyone was talking about t...
10/27/2021

Our Own BME Wifi Building Block - Finally!
It almost feels like 2012 again, and in that year everyone was talking about the Barton Meter Eliminator! Everyone except some people from Toronto, who never heard a word! It was a lucky coincidence, obviously. Lucky for some local BMOs, Barton Meter Operators. NuovoPicus is up and running, what it becomes nobody knows.

Adam

Address

Welland, ON

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when SingleChips posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to SingleChips:

Shortcuts

Share

Category