Category: Raspberry Pi

IGBT EconoPACK test for my homebrew variable frequency drive.

I mocked-up a test of my IGBT Infineon EconoPACK. I had a 24VDC to 95VDC 200w boost brick and fed the IGBT that just because… It made a nice isolated power supply. After I got everything together I feared I had gotten a bad module, but because I know myself I went over everything and realized I failed to pull the /RESET up and so I figure that’s my most likely cause of my inability to get this thing to switch. Everything on the board looks good.. I guess I’ll give it a try again tomorrow. I just got my Pi booted up but I’m hoping I can easily jump in and use it to drive this IGBT pack. If not I’ll just fall back to a PIC. Driving the pack is straight forward; I was just hoping to save myself some development time. This will be my first VFD.. I’m hoping not my last. I scored a 230V 3 phase motor that is about 2 HP. I’m about 95% sure of what I’m going to use this for but I’ll admit it wouldn’t be the first time I stole parts from one project to build another. I’ll see what this Pi can do this weekend after I get back from taking a hike with my daughter on Saturday. I guess Monte Cristo is getting shut down for two years and I want her to experience it. Eight miles is the limit to her hiking abilities right now but she’ll make it, 700ft of elevation gain.. she probably worked harder walking around disney land.

I pulled most of the parts of this project out of storage. While going through old parts I brought back from my house in SD I also found some nifty scintillation detection goodies, gobs of tools, some of my CDP1802 Elf II stuff and a ton of other stuff that I’m sure will make it’s way to my blog. I found a few boxes of 2-20GHz  stuff I was ratting away for some EME project but I think I’ll just give that away to a HAM radio club.

My first attempt at testing the IGBT EconoPACK.. this one is oversized but the price was right. 1.2kV 450A... yeah... way over sized.
My first attempt at testing the IGBT EconoPACK.. this one is oversized but the price was right. 1.2kV 450A… yeah… way over sized.

Raspberry Pi Give-Away

Fish Fry announced that they are giving away a Raspberry Pi B through Element 14. If you have the time there is a short interview about the Gertboard add-on or whatever you want to call it with Gert van Loo  — More information can be found on google or my favourite place https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11773 Not an intentional plug for sparkfun; I don’t have any sponsors or any of that nonsense.

Check out the details on the Raspberry Pi give away at:

http://www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20130510-fishfry/ (opens in new window)

I should probably do more tinkering than posting but I am waiting until I go back to South Dakota and work on my farm house were I have a few LCD monitors ratted away. We only have laptops now so I can’t boot up my Pi yet. I’ll bring it with me to keep me company on those cold nights. T-minus 12 days. Lately I’ve been tweaking on my Tektronix FG 501 signal generator. I’m attempting to make it sweep but my voltage ramp circuit is apparently crap. I should just suck it up and buy a better piece of equipment; I’ll start eBay lurking. The FG 501 is an excellent signal generator if you can find one. My FG is in a single unit cabinet although you can buy multi-bay backplanes for these plugins and that’s where they get fun! Too bad it’s usually expensive and really I should be saving up for something that could be calibrated. I wish Fluke had something decent in FGs; I have an inside connection on heavily discounted vendor returned items.