Hackaday Newsletter 0x8D

Multimeters, Manometers, Calipers, and Co. [HACKADAY]() Can Google’s New AI Read Your Datasheets for You? [Read Article Now»]( You Can’t Make What You Can’t Measure By [Elliot Williams]( What’s the most-used tool on your bench? For me, it’s probably a multimeter, although that’s maybe a tie with my oscilloscope. Maybe after that, the soldering iron and wire strippers, or my favorite forceps. Calipers must rate in there somewhere too, but maybe a little further down. Still, the top place, and half of my desert-island top-10, go to measuring gear. That’s because any debugging, investigation, or experimentation always starts with getting some visibility on the problem. And the less visible the physical quantity, the more necessary to tool. For circuits, that means figuring out where all the voltages lie, and you obviously can’t just guess there. A couple months ago, I was doing some epoxy and fiberglass work, and needed to draw a 1/2 atmosphere vacuum. That’s not the kind of quantity you can just eyeball. You need the right measurement tool. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my disappointment in receiving a fan that wouldn’t push my coffee beans around in the homemade roaster. How could I have avoided this debacle? By figuring out the pressure differential needed and buying a fan that’s appropriately rated. But I lacked pressure and flow meters. Now that I think about it, I could have scavenged the pressure meter from the fiberglassing rig, and given that a go, but with the cheap cost of sensors and amplifiers, I’ll probably just purpose-build something. I’m still not sure how I’ll measure the flow; maybe I’ll just cheese out and buy a cheap wind-speed meter. When people think of tools, they mostly think of the “doers”: the wrenches and the hammers of this world. But today, let’s all raise a calibrated 350 ml glass to the “measurers”. Without you, we’d be wandering around in the dark. From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Radio Station WWV: All Time, All the Time]( By [Dan Maloney]( Want your time info straight from the atomic clock? Tune in to WWV! [Read more »]( [How Germany’s Troubled Pebble Bed Reactor Came Of Age In China]( By [Maya Posch]( A safer type of nuclear reactor has western roots, but is being perfected in China. [Read more »]( [Tech In Plain Sight: Super Glue]( By [Richard Baguley]( Cyanoacrylate was discovered by accident when Harry Coover couldn't get his parts out of the mold. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast Episode 248: Cthulhu Clock Radio Transharmonium, Thunderscan, and How to Fill Up in Space]( By [Hackaday Editors]() What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Bunnie Huang’s Shenzhen Guide Gets A New Edition – Written By Naomi Wu]( [Make Carbon Fiber Tubes With An Open Source Filament Winder]( [Polish Train Manufacturer Threatens Hackers Who Unbricked Their Trains]( [5Ghoul: The 14 Shambling 5G Flaws Used For Disruptive Attacks On Smartphones]( [Hilarious Security Flaw In Counter Strike 2 Is Now Patched]( [ThunderScan: The Wild 1980s Product That Turned a Printer Into a Scanner]( [Hackaday]() NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA