Here’s some photos of the Protek 608 RS-232 cable teardown: Bill of materials You know a teardown is serious when a BOM is produced! 😛 This may be overkill, but I have plans in future to develop my own transceiver hardware that instead of using RS-232 to connect to a PC, it will use a […]
I’ve finally managed to fire up the original Protek 608 software on an old Dell Inspiron 8100 I found stowed at the office. My previous attempts to run this software failed on Windows 8 and 10, and there’s very little information about how this software looks and operates (it’s quite niche). I decided that it […]
As detailed in a previous post, the physical communications layer is RS-232 – 9600 baud, 7, N, 1. So we know how to correctly connect the the multimeter and handle the data transfer, but how is the data interpreted? What’s the language or meaning? In this post I detail all of this, starting with the […]
I recently received my TreadGaming treadmill video game controller and noticed a lack of basic information about setting it up, how to use it, suitable games, and user opinions. I’m hoping to fill that void, starting with this introduction to the TreadGaming project. Once I’m all up and running I’ll post an update with my […]
I’m sick of seeing this notification! I’ll usually only get 20 minutes play time before the controller requires charging again. I’ve had it on charge for weeks, since the last time I used the PS3. I don’t use the PS3 often, and I’m holding out for Uncharted 4 next year before I consider buying a […]
A review, test, and teardown of a cheap transistor / component tester purchased on eBay. eBay item: LCD ESR Meter Transistor Tester Capacitance Inductance Diode Triode MOS NPN PNP http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/171753821157 Here’s the original review and teardown video: Here’s a follow up video where I test some old germanium transistors:
This is following on from my previous post introducing the Protek 608 multimeter and my software project. In this post I detail the communications hardware, an important consideration for future development. The Protek 608 uses an RS-232 connection to allow for interfacing with a PC. This is a very common connection that most DMMs used. […]
This is the latest of many incarnations for my personal website. I wasn’t particularly planning to rebuild my site, but my last host Acute Networks seem to have gone out of business, and without warning everything disappeared! I managed to resurrect some of my original website content from the archives from around 2010 onward. On […]
The Protek 608 is a 5000 count digital multimeter made by Hung Chang, who have since changed their name to GS Instruments. I’ve owned one of these since about 2009. This multimeter is now discontinued and no longer available new, although they occasionally show up on the second-hand market from forums and eBay. This DMM […]