@@williamgraham8319 Lol, love it. I have seen more cool involved projects completed from him than anyone on the planet. Applied Science builds florescent displays, electron microscopes, etc., we figure out why weed whacker won't start. :)
Some more EL folklore. In the 70's one of the ways we luminescent material was to add the zinc sulfide based powder to polyethylene and extrude it like a plastic bag. It was 4 ft wide and 3000 ft long. We could make a few colors like green or blue. We sought out the blue because it would excite a secondary emitter screened on the front of the panel. The secondary emitter was basically day-glow paint that would absorb the blue and re-emit another color. We could silk screen multi-color images on the blue panel and get a wide range of colors you could never get by EL chemistry. We even used color separation and the dot method used to print color pictures in news papers. You could have a full color photographic images. The silk screen process lacked the precision for consistent results but we did on a few occasions get great results. One application for large panels was to put billboard advertising on transport trucks. We did tile an entire dance floor with flashing 2 ft square tiles. The panels regardless of the size were all capacitive and thus hard to drive. We drove them in the low Khz range in resonance with an inductor. Decades before power mosfets we used bipolar transistors or SCRs in the inverters which ran directly from rectified line voltage. I haven't thought much about this for decades. It was my high school job.
@@SuperAWaC I don't recall a lot from 5 decades ago. There were no patents. The process was done in secret by a company that made plastic sheet. It didn't take too long to get a successful result. We made many panels from a 3000ft long roll. I think it was just ordinary poly plastic bag material.
Every one of your projects these last months have been more ambitious than any one thing I have ever attempted. I don't know how you do it. Completely awesome.
@@Flaakk yeah, Ben's projects are arguably unparalleled in depth and uniqueness anywhere on the internet. Seems like a poor reason to dump on any other creators agreeing with that sentiment. For what its worth, i've gotten a ton of inspiration and ideas from NightHawk's excellent presentations of his projects. Yes, maybe I could have gained an appreciation somewhere else for how a piston valve works; but I learned it from him, to name one example of many.
@@FlaakkIt makes me sad that you believe that about my videos. I've worked hard to be transparent about any ideas that come from outside sources. Whenever I build a project based heavily on any one source I say so, both in the video itself and suggesting people check out the source link in the video description. If no such source exists in one of my videos it is because the idea came into my own head while working on some unrelated thing. Similarities in that case to any existing projects are coincidence.
In the 90's my mom bought these hallway nightlights that were flat electroluminescent. I thought they were amazing, and the color reminded me of the light in an old stereo with analog dials. Decades later I saw youtube videos of bioluminescence in the ocean and immediately remembered those flat panel plug in lights. I never knew what it was called but now I do! There's something about that light that draws me in.
@@esdblog6100 Engineers are for the most part, taken for granted by our society. You will see TV shows about doctors, lawyers, police, etc., but one about engineers and what they do is doubtful. The details are just not fodder for the "emotional" rush required by mainstream entertainment. However, one movie called "Quest for Fire" about pre-historic man, made a large point of show casing a tribe that had made huge engineering leaps over another tribe. The "engineering" tribe had developed ways to make fire by artificial means, pottery for food storage, advanced weapons (atlatl), and constructed shelters. Yes, the first leaps were made by people who took raw materials, and re-purposed them to solve a particular problem. i.e. Engineers.
In 1972 I developed a large format 5 x 7 dot matrix EL display digits. About 4 x 6 inches in size. Each half inch square dot had storage and was driven by sort of an R-S flip flop made from cad sulfide photo cells. I had cell arrays made on anodized aluminum foil. Illumination from the back of the EL pixel turned on a cad cell which drove that cell forming a latched driver. We powered down the whole digit to clear it. We couldn't justify 35 drivers or 35 wires for every digit. Multiplexing resulted in too small a duty cycle for any reasonable brightness. A second photo cell on the back of the foil in parallel with the front one was used to trigger the latch. That was driven by a multiplexed EL array which didn't have to be fast or bright. A single scan from this array wrote data to the display which was latched. We struggled to drive these high voltage AC displays in the 70's but the photo cells did it. I used an Intel 8008 processor to drive the system. It was a lot harder in those days.
I'll bet it really WAS harder in those days! I remember a grad student (in the department I was working in those days) fussing with both an 8008 and a 8080A trying to accomplish some strict timing issues on a totally different project, he was really having a hard time getting things to work the way he needed them to. It wasn't his programming skills, it was limitations of the tech at the time, sort of like the "protection diodes" built into Ben's driver chip--that are really just "artifacts of the manufacturing process" that are claimed (by the manufacturer) to be "protection diodes!"
And when I said I wanted to learn all those kinds of things (manufacturing, cad, electronics, computer programming), people said it was impossible or that you can't be good at all of them. No, it's possible, now I know, it's only hard. You're my inspiration and I should get rid of people that say we can't do it.
@@nrdesign1991 yea Dave please build us an green-blue EL Digital multimeter with an uA range measurement function, and then call it the 'Apollo precision DMM' :D
if only this kind of media had been available on cable networks when i was a kid... the absolute peak of edutainment was modern marvels. this guy is something else, a pillar of modern society.
37 people so far that hate bioluminescence?! I never understand people’s displeasure with someone that works so hard and produces such interesting videos!
Please do!! I don't think Ben went to the Smithsonian to get original measurements and I imagine you had different ideas for driving it. I love both of your projects!
I think you should keep working on yours. If memory serves you were working on an authentic driver using micro relays this board uses modern IC driver, but maybe it makes sense to focus on recreating the driver and combine it with this EL display board.
As a physics teacher: I am greatly impressed by your application of so many skills. But in this video, in particular, grateful that you shared the problems, your frustrations, patience AND solutions. This is, indeed, great modelling of problem solving for my students. Many thanks
These HV chips were designed by Mead then Diconix (now Kodak) and originally produced by HP in the 1970s to drive an electrostatic inkjet printer known as the Dijit. The problems you experienced with the diodes were known to the engineers and I recall the explanation was a limitation of the silicon...
I think a lot of these "protection diodes" are more artifacts of the PN silicon stacking process during manufacturing, and less "engineered" diodes having usable specifications.
Aaron H The HV507 drivers were used in an electrostatic printer project I worked on 5 years ago. My solution to keep the HV507s from being zapped was to put a megohm resistor in series with each electrode line. The individual electrode capacitance was small, so the added resistance didn’t adversely affect the settling time. The current is limited to 300V/1Mohm = 300 microamps. And yes, before this change, I had a tray of HV507 ICs and a Metcal soldering iron, and got really good at rework.
As an electrical engineer this is one of the most amazing debug video's I have been through. I went into software and digital, but this might get me back to making some circuits
I go here to see unimaginable things done in a garage. I feel like I should be prepared for this after that electron scanning microscope build but I still get surprised every time. Great job and thanks for sharing!
Guys like you will be needed in the future for repairing the stuff of today. Imagine someone who wants to drive his Tesla in 20 years as an Oldtimer! You're a genius.
as always, im baffled by the amount of effort you put in every single video. Makes for a stark contrast to most youtubers. I can't say i'll build one, but i certantly enjoyed watching
You have done the electric community a public service. One of Many! Thank You And a very cool project. Building a DSKY display is on my bucket list, you might have saved your fellow nerd a few hundred dollars before figuring out this crazy solution or just plain giving up. Thanks Again; A very cool design
Into the video 2.5 minutes and was laughing at the "spending 20 hours squashing bugs is enjoyable, in theory" . I think all true programmers, engineers and hackers feel this way, I have given up so many times working on a program only to walk away get half way across the room and go "what if we did this?" I would point out that anyone capable of doing this project would enjoy the "bug squashing" part much more than a puzzle labeled part 1, part 2, part 3.... just my humble opinion.
I love debugging but this drive to do it definitely depends on the tools available. A couple of months ago I was debugging some code for an old chip that I didn't have any manual for and no tools for. The feedback I got was "working", "half-working" and "not working". It's sometimes easier to start again rather than chase bugs :(
Finding a bug is certainly an exhilarating moment, but more in the way finally letting your dick out of the vice would be, to use an AvE reference. I do debugging when needed but definitely wouldn't do it "for pleasure"...
I'd have to agree with these replies. I enjoy fixing problems in things I've designed & built, but only AFTER I fixed them. I'd MUCH rather have things work right the very first time I powered them up! (Yeah, "it feels so good when I stop!" Ha!)
Thanks to Applied Science, I make liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen on demand in my basement! So far I have not attempted to replicate any of his other projects :)
We certanly do need more guys like Ben that can show other people the way to go and how to act mature and intelligent, people like Ben certanly does not grow on trees on TH-cam i agree with that.
wow, just wow. WOW. I ... *hats off to you* Just take a step back for a minute - you did *YOURSELF* what NASA did with an entire team - from a pane of glass to a final and troubleshot workable product The amount of steps and time taken to do what you have accomplished is astounding Thanks for spreading your knowledge, very much appreciated!!
If anything to be learnt from this video it will be the fact that science is all about patience! I love how patient and determined you were in doing this. Big thump up!
By chance, are you involved with CuriousMarc's project to restore an Apollo Guidance Computer, including the DSKY? If not, I have a feeling he and the team he's working with might be interested in your notes.
Ahem. My only contribution to the project was pestering Ben if he could do it, just the display maybe, without the driver. And forwarding the original NASA DSKY files we (we as in Mike) had unearthed at NARA. Then like the rest of you I got the occasional updates, but knowing what he was trying to eventually do... I did not expect this to get engineered all the way to this level! Just, wow!
Wow! I'm sure after you blew out 10 or so HV507s at $14 each, you got really determined to win and you did! Congrats, thanks for the detailed debugging discussion. I hope your getting a little Microchip kickback because I suspect they'll be selling a bunch of HV507s in the coming months.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT It's not that they don't have working protection diodes, it is that the scenario exceeded their specifications. Protection diodes are really only meant to clamp/dissipate short relatively low energy impulse bursts like static shocks, not to be able to take the brunt of a large overvoltage. It is like complaining that the body diode of a fet cant sustain the full forward current for a significant amount of time ... because it was never meant to.
Teach me master! I cannot possibly imagine how much work went into this project. From screen printing the displays to whipping up a custom driver board! This was insanely epic! That's also what makes me love vintage electronics.
Excellent work Sir. Your main Bug reminds me of about 28 years I spent working with Ion Implant equipment in the Semiconductor bus. I realized that "any time you have a complex piece of equip. that includes a HVPS eventually you're going to have HV corona, arcs that produce voltage or current surges and even powerful RFI that can find its' way across the room to be received by antennas comprised of PCB traces on unrelated electronics. In these systems you will find that approximately 15% of all the circuitry is for various types of surge protection. Roughly 99% of the time these components do nothing but add a few picoFarads of capacitance to digital or analog signal paths but, when they're turned on, they save costly devices. It's very important to bear in mind that the protection components are often sacrificial. That hold for PS Rail, Clamp Diodes. Their PN junctions suffer a small amount of HV Punch through damage with every protection event and with that their leakage current will grow unti the point they cause DC operating conditions to degrade to the point that the main circuitry becomes unstable or stops entirely. Then, you simply replace as many of the Clamp Diodes as practical and the system will work like new again. Next time you build anything that uses higher voltages, just plan on these things from the start. I've seen NE2 neon bulbs used on 10VDC analog PS control lines. Two 47 ohm resistors in series with 1N914 clamp diodes to supply rails at the center and the side that is tied to any wire leaving the PCB. Slow baud rates rather than fast even make serial communications far more reliable in an electrically noisy environment. The slightest glitch on a comm line will upset a high baud rate port but goes completely un noticed at a low baud rate.
I'm guessing you're talking with CuriousMarc. By the way, it was folks like you who got is to the Moon. Decades ago I got introduced to a J--K flip flop and very few younger guys even know what it is. Its great to see someone who is stretching my understanding of analog circuits. Thanks.
I was amazed just at the sheer enginerding needed for the glass panel and then the electronics issue. Having chased my tail for 2 months with the wire EDM controller board and various noise issues has taught me a few things and the puzzle of 'why did it work before but not now' is tickling all the right places for me to continue :)
"Squishing a bug that's consumed 20 hours of your life is pretty enjoyable, in theory", while in practice you create an even worse one fixing the old one and then that takes a week to resolve and after getting it done the customer would like the feature removed. Thank you for open sourcing it, people like you help us move forward so much. See 3d printers. From 200.000 dollars to 2.000 in some ten years.
I understand maybe 25% of each video (being generous I think). But damn it's all so fascinating. That there are people out there that create and invent and I'm in constant awe.
Its 2:22 AM should get some sleep, nah, Applied Science uploaded another almost 1/2 hour long vid! Really love those long ones. Especially the in-depth ones!
In My MANY years watching Science and Engineering material on TH-cam, this was by far the most impressive combination of ideas and innovations by way of defeat and victory yet; I am in awe !!! Thank You Professor Ben !!! Also thanks to CuriousMarc and his restoration of the Apollo Guidance system !!
Amazing amount of effort to conquer these extremely subtle and difficult bugs, I thought for sure you’d have a hardware solution to the segment drive exploding issue, so producing a clean and clever software fix is very impressive.
Power electronics is quite painful. A couple of comments: - The drivers protection diodes are most probably there (they are an inevitable byproduct of the transistor construction), though they probably die after you yank them to -40V. The problem is that they can only conduct so much current (it should be specified in the datasheet). The current is given by Ic = C * dv/dt (capacitor current). If all the other drivers try to force a large dv/dt the current will be just to large for a single driver to handle even if the output transistor is still ON and the protection diode is there in parallel to give a hand. - If all segments are lighted up except one, you might still have problems on just that one driver, no? If I were you I would put limiting current resistors in all drivers outputs (yep, it's a pain in the ass). With that done you might not even need anymore to shift the control signal with respect to the common signal.
justpaulo- ohmygosh you're so smart, you know so much (repeating things others have posted), BUT do you know the difference between "to," "too," and "two?"????!
These specifics are above my level of experience and prior understanding, though I studied & worked for years in the electronics industry. But it is explained so clearly here - design, connection methods, plus failures and all - that I really feel educated upward a level -Thanks! And the electroluminescent glass display is a super-cool look!
I find it great that you also tell about the mistakes you made, so that we don't have to. Not saying that I am going to make one of these any time soon...
Saw this video highlighted in my Adafruit RSS today. Amazing project! Congrats on fighting through hundreds of dollars of blown components only to find out you needed a delay on a shift register. This video helped me feel like I'm not alone in how I approach complicated projects. Trial and error. You deserve an award for the first practical use of EL paint. 300V though? You sir have my respect for putting up with that. Not a fan of it being water based. Would be awesome if it was epoxy but then the EL stack error learning curve of your build would have been the more expensive trial and error part of your project. You're going to fail before you fly. You made a thing of beauty. Awesome video, awesome build.
@@garrett2449 lol @ Errata :-) Clamping Voltage for HV507 is -30V or Vpp (60-300V) +1.5V @ +/-1mA according to the data sheet, so a -50V ringing will kill it. I mean it is a self printed, one-off display, it is not as if you would calculate or expect these effects beforehand, the capacitance per segment is quite low, too low to make anyone care about single channel protection. Phase shifting the outputs is a good solution to this kind of voltage doubling effect, nice that it could be solved in software. It came out very nice and i learned a lot from the video.
The EL display looks kind of cute and old-fashioned. I do certain electronic projects purely for the fun and challenge part. But if I had encountered the kind of challenges you faced during the design as well as the trouble-shooting phase, not to speak of the cost, I would have easily abandoned the project assuming I started it. I really admire your perseverance and the determination to succeed which you finally did.
This is such a neat project. Great job working through all the technical problems to arrive at a gorgeous working display! I could imagine a neat clock being built with one of these displays.
Man, the more I see of your impressive work the more I'm convinced you could build a carbon (or carbohydrate) fuel cell which is a technology in its infancy but I'd REALLY like to see it.
In a high voltage application such as this, I'd recommend using optoisolators in between the low and high voltage parts of the circuit. It's going to require a lot of those, but it will provide galvanic isolation so the high voltage side can't interact with the control circuitry directly.
So I can finally have the 1980s style bar graph/percent bar display for my EVs power consumption (volts, amps, battery % etc) and regen that I’ve always wanted? 🤤🤤🤤
26:11 I was thinking at this exact moment "what if you didn't shoot for the full 300V, and ran it at a lower voltage, if the chances of a random failure could be minimized." Great video, very well formatted, you cover all the details I could ask for.
For electrical contact from PCB to conductive ink, you can consider spring loaded EMC contacts. They are typically used for shorting PCB ground to metal chassis. They can accommodate irregular contact surfaces, being spring loaded. Great video!
Wow! This project is so cool on many levels, from the Apollo aspect to elaborate electroluminescent control. Thank you for sharing this with us and thinking we could do something at this level!
TH-camr curiousmarc has an ongoing series resurrecting the Apollo guidance computer but it's pretty popular so I'm sure you already know about it. I don't know if he has or had access to the display module, though, don't see it in the relevant videos. Love the work!
Great to see the tools you developed seperately come together .Like building a pyramid. Always a pleasure. A 1K between the 5V and 3V3 comms will use the esd diodes in the 3V3 system to clamp and wont overload the diodes . Great work. Like a mystery novel. When you showed the actual problem I thought slew the edges which you did later and gave me a warm glow. But that was the easy bit.
The problem that one would have to overcome with this idea is that the electroluminescent paint is opaque. I don't know if you'd ever get it truly transparent because of this limitation.
@@davidk8893 Transparent EL displays are made by Beneq / Lumineq (ex Planar). This technology is far more advanced and requires complicated equipment for epitaxial process.
Thank you for doing these experiments so that I can learn without the time and resources and errr... skills that you have access to. From chemistry to electronics, you tinker like I do, but bring it to a new level. Your videos save me a lifetime of work. Cheers!
I really appreciated the idea to give your display to Curiousmark restoration project... It has been *AWESOME* from you, since you applied *REAL SCIENCE* to make it! congratulations!!! Hope they can include your diplay in the final project phase|! Thanks alot for your *REAL HI TECH* projects!!!
Amazing work! And still days away from the Apollo 10 launch! Those silver dots on the display got me wondering. I was guessing that the actual DSKY had independent common electrodes for each display register; hence the many visible electrodes. Thankfully, some of the original schematics are now publicly archived. Have you seen these? This is full of great info on the AGC in the LM Module. archive.org/details/acelectroniclmma00acel_0 Looking briefly at the original AGC display schematics (Figure 4-229) from the LM, they seem to have completely isolated the signal circuits by using a matrix of specialized miniature relays! This is cleverly done by the using double coiled relays and a few diodes to creating a basic AND gate to drive each segment. I'm sure there's a lot more goodness here that I miss too.
How about applying the z-tape to the circuit board, instead of the glass? Then when you pulled off the tape, you'd be pulling on a robust copper-clad board, instead of a coated piece of glass.
I have a mechanical engineering degree, but have spent most of my career doing more electronics, sensors, and electromechanical systems. I somewhat enjoyed my time at university, but didn't think that it prepared me well to be a useful engineer.
Your channel is easily among the best on YT. I fully agree with the fact that if one always take the easiest shortcut one will newer realy learn the root of the contruction and You will newer bee that guy who know how to build a radio from a brooken pencil and a mashed sodacan instead of panic if something goes wrong for example. The actual function is sometime irelevant, it's the learning and understanding wich is the important part. The same reason why i dismantled things when i was a little kid and also trid to put it all back then, or construct something new from scrapped parts instead of just walkig ount and buyng that bloody cellhpone to fake the result, that would indeed work perfect for a movie prop, but people who do so are missing the entire point as You mentoned here.
Awesome work Ben. Thanks for sharing and in particular taking the time to explain as to why you did this. There is always at least one person who misses the point and says, "why didn't you just …". They're probably the same ones who vote videos like this down rather than up.
squashing a bug, pretty enjoyable "in theory". There's a brief moment of joy, but then followed by that realization of the time spent. Not always so joyful. :)
Outstanding. I'm amazed you worked out what it was that was going wrong, with so little to go on. Just enough life in the chips to get an occasional scope trace I guess - save it immediately, don't lose it! I see the stupid diode thing was the gnarliest problem, but I'm still blown away that you can create the glass stack with relatively common materials, essentially in your kitchen. For me the glass stack would come under the heading 'magic material unfathomably made somewhere else by pixies with special powers'.
You're effin' adorable. Wondered why I enjoy listening to you explain anything, it's your humility. If squashing bugs for 10 to 20 hours of your life is enjoyable, to you, in theory... it's good enough for me. Thanks.
This is so fascinating, thank you for sharing the pitfalls and solutions. It's sometimes the case that people don't share the "gotchas" which would be good to know about in advance. Some nice solutions - and the display looks awesome!
Very impressive... I'm not going to pretend I understood everything but it's obvious I need to educate myself on my electronics before beginning my physics degree. Gret video!
Applied Science chooses to build an electroluminescent display and build the other things, not because it is easy, but because it is hard!
I understood that reference
Very clever comment and project
@@williamgraham8319 Lol, love it. I have seen more cool involved projects completed from him than anyone on the planet. Applied Science builds florescent displays, electron microscopes, etc., we figure out why weed whacker won't start. :)
goat comment, wd.
People like him are the real heroes of the world.
Some more EL folklore. In the 70's one of the ways we luminescent material was to add the zinc sulfide based powder to polyethylene and extrude it like a plastic bag. It was 4 ft wide and 3000 ft long. We could make a few colors like green or blue. We sought out the blue because it would excite a secondary emitter screened on the front of the panel. The secondary emitter was basically day-glow paint that would absorb the blue and re-emit another color. We could silk screen multi-color images on the blue panel and get a wide range of colors you could never get by EL chemistry. We even used color separation and the dot method used to print color pictures in news papers. You could have a full color photographic images. The silk screen process lacked the precision for consistent results but we did on a few occasions get great results. One application for large panels was to put billboard advertising on transport trucks. We did tile an entire dance floor with flashing 2 ft square tiles. The panels regardless of the size were all capacitive and thus hard to drive. We drove them in the low Khz range in resonance with an inductor. Decades before power mosfets we used bipolar transistors or SCRs in the inverters which ran directly from rectified line voltage. I haven't thought much about this for decades. It was my high school job.
you wouldn't happen to have any patents for those specific extruders, would you?
@@SuperAWaC I don't recall a lot from 5 decades ago. There were no patents. The process was done in secret by a company that made plastic sheet. It didn't take too long to get a successful result. We made many panels from a 3000ft long roll. I think it was just ordinary poly plastic bag material.
Cool! Please do a video detailing the process!!
Every one of your projects these last months have been more ambitious than any one thing I have ever attempted. I don't know how you do it. Completely awesome.
You're no slouch either!
@@Flaakk Oh yeah, and what sort of projects are you doing? Oh, you haven't done any? piss off
Ryan complimenting NightHawk complimenting Ben....
I feel like Wayne and Garth bowing before Alice "we're not worthy, we're not worthy" ;)
@@Flaakk yeah, Ben's projects are arguably unparalleled in depth and uniqueness anywhere on the internet. Seems like a poor reason to dump on any other creators agreeing with that sentiment. For what its worth, i've gotten a ton of inspiration and ideas from NightHawk's excellent presentations of his projects. Yes, maybe I could have gained an appreciation somewhere else for how a piston valve works; but I learned it from him, to name one example of many.
@@FlaakkIt makes me sad that you believe that about my videos. I've worked hard to be transparent about any ideas that come from outside sources. Whenever I build a project based heavily on any one source I say so, both in the video itself and suggesting people check out the source link in the video description. If no such source exists in one of my videos it is because the idea came into my own head while working on some unrelated thing. Similarities in that case to any existing projects are coincidence.
In the 90's my mom bought these hallway nightlights that were flat electroluminescent. I thought they were amazing, and the color reminded me of the light in an old stereo with analog dials. Decades later I saw youtube videos of bioluminescence in the ocean and immediately remembered those flat panel plug in lights. I never knew what it was called but now I do!
There's something about that light that draws me in.
Indiglo watch faces were that same color. It’s was a wonderful blue.
Just wow! That is awesomely impressive! Congratulations on surmounting so many obstacles!
I saw the title and immediately thought of you and your channel!
Now you *can* invite Adam in his Apollo suit!
I was going to suggest you two hook up. He did an EL DSKY and you have the Apollo AGC to drive it!
Please collaborate
@@913WildCat They already can since everything is open source.. I'd love to see the TH-cam collaboration too.
You are on a whole other level. Insanely impressive!
+
This is the guy that CT'd a frozen chicken in his garage using old parts from eBay. On a whole other level is putting it lightly.
Well he is just an engineer. We do things like this everyday, but nobody cares. That is funniest part of profession.
@@esdblog6100 Engineers are for the most part, taken for granted by our society. You will see TV shows about doctors, lawyers, police, etc., but one about engineers and what they do is doubtful. The details are just not fodder for the "emotional" rush required by mainstream entertainment. However, one movie called "Quest for Fire" about pre-historic man, made a large point of show casing a tribe that had made huge engineering leaps over another tribe. The "engineering" tribe had developed ways to make fire by artificial means, pottery for food storage, advanced weapons (atlatl), and constructed shelters. Yes, the first leaps were made by people who took raw materials, and re-purposed them to solve a particular problem. i.e. Engineers.
In 1972 I developed a large format 5 x 7 dot matrix EL display digits. About 4 x 6 inches in size. Each half inch square dot had storage and was driven by sort of an R-S flip flop made from cad sulfide photo cells. I had cell arrays made on anodized aluminum foil. Illumination from the back of the EL pixel turned on a cad cell which drove that cell forming a latched driver. We powered down the whole digit to clear it. We couldn't justify 35 drivers or 35 wires for every digit. Multiplexing resulted in too small a duty cycle for any reasonable brightness. A second photo cell on the back of the foil in parallel with the front one was used to trigger the latch. That was driven by a multiplexed EL array which didn't have to be fast or bright. A single scan from this array wrote data to the display which was latched. We struggled to drive these high voltage AC displays in the 70's but the photo cells did it. I used an Intel 8008 processor to drive the system. It was a lot harder in those days.
That's pretty epic!!
I'll bet it really WAS harder in those days! I remember a grad student (in the department I was working in those days) fussing with both an 8008 and a 8080A trying to accomplish some strict timing issues on a totally different project, he was really having a hard time getting things to work the way he needed them to. It wasn't his programming skills, it was limitations of the tech at the time, sort of like the "protection diodes" built into Ben's driver chip--that are really just "artifacts of the manufacturing process" that are claimed (by the manufacturer) to be "protection diodes!"
And when I said I wanted to learn all those kinds of things (manufacturing, cad, electronics, computer programming), people said it was impossible or that you can't be good at all of them. No, it's possible, now I know, it's only hard. You're my inspiration and I should get rid of people that say we can't do it.
Epic!
Wow! Definitely high praise. Guess I'm gonna definitely watch! (Woulda anyway).
As I was watching this, I was thinking "Damn, I wish I could see Dave's reaction video to this."
Exactly what i was going to say Dave. Epic, epic indeed!
Makes me wonder if you'd have your next Multimeter have an EL display, just because you could.
@@nrdesign1991 yea Dave please build us an green-blue EL Digital multimeter with an uA range measurement function,
and then call it the 'Apollo precision DMM' :D
if only this kind of media had been available on cable networks when i was a kid... the absolute peak of edutainment was modern marvels. this guy is something else, a pillar of modern society.
I like how he's giving tips as if I'm actually able to try this myself
37 people so far that hate bioluminescence?! I never understand people’s displeasure with someone that works so hard and produces such interesting videos!
Well Ben - you beat me to the goal for an EL DSKY display. Hats off to you. Should I even continue with mine I wonder....
Please do!! I don't think Ben went to the Smithsonian to get original measurements and I imagine you had different ideas for driving it. I love both of your projects!
I think you should keep working on yours. If memory serves you were working on an authentic driver using micro relays this board uses modern IC driver, but maybe it makes sense to focus on recreating the driver and combine it with this EL display board.
More the better, I think lots of us watch both of you and would love to see your take!
I think you should still do it. As far as I understand your goal is to be as close to the original as possible. I think it is worth pursuing. :)
I think he should give you a screen. I was wondering how long it would take you to find this.
As a physics teacher: I am greatly impressed by your application of so many skills. But in this video, in particular, grateful that you shared the problems, your frustrations, patience AND solutions. This is, indeed, great modelling of problem solving for my students.
Many thanks
These HV chips were designed by Mead then Diconix (now Kodak) and originally produced by HP in the 1970s to drive an electrostatic inkjet printer known as the Dijit. The problems you experienced with the diodes were known to the engineers and I recall the explanation was a limitation of the silicon...
So the manufacturers know this feature doesn't work, but continue to include it and advertise it?
I think a lot of these "protection diodes" are more artifacts of the PN silicon stacking process during manufacturing, and less "engineered" diodes having usable specifications.
I figure these chips are harder to use than just plain old H-bridges you can get in SOT-23…
Aaron H
The HV507 drivers were used in an electrostatic printer project I worked on 5 years ago. My solution to keep the HV507s from being zapped was to put a megohm resistor in series with each electrode line. The individual electrode capacitance was small, so the added resistance didn’t adversely affect the settling time. The current is limited to 300V/1Mohm = 300 microamps.
And yes, before this change, I had a tray of HV507 ICs and a Metcal soldering iron, and got really good at rework.
@@w6wdhany idea what the build costs in total? I can't afford nvm haha
As EEvblog said: EPIC! This video should have a million views ! Thank you from Oslo, Norway!
As an electrical engineer this is one of the most amazing debug video's I have been through. I went into software and digital, but this might get me back to making some circuits
It bothers me that recent electronics have lousy displays. I think it is good someone is exploring this art.
I go here to see unimaginable things done in a garage. I feel like I should be prepared for this after that electron scanning microscope build but I still get surprised every time. Great job and thanks for sharing!
Guys like you will be needed in the future for repairing the stuff of today. Imagine someone who wants to drive his Tesla in 20 years as an Oldtimer!
You're a genius.
as always, im baffled by the amount of effort you put in every single video. Makes for a stark contrast to most youtubers. I can't say i'll build one, but i certantly enjoyed watching
me too. its so sexy.
It's a balance, "effort for a single video" vs "upload frequency". I like both types of TH-camrs, but I'm so glad there's a place for both of them.
I do not think he is not doing any of these for a video, he does what he does and video is just the way he documents it.
Yeah, I agree with the OP. This is an awesome project, but I can't imaging that I would ever attempt it!
You have done the electric community a public service. One of Many! Thank You And a very cool project. Building a DSKY display is on my bucket list, you might have saved your fellow nerd a few hundred dollars before figuring out this crazy solution or just plain giving up. Thanks Again; A very cool design
Into the video 2.5 minutes and was laughing at the "spending 20 hours squashing bugs is enjoyable, in theory" . I think all true programmers, engineers and hackers feel this way, I have given up so many times working on a program only to walk away get half way across the room and go "what if we did this?" I would point out that anyone capable of doing this project would enjoy the "bug squashing" part much more than a puzzle labeled part 1, part 2, part 3.... just my humble opinion.
I love debugging but this drive to do it definitely depends on the tools available. A couple of months ago I was debugging some code for an old chip that I didn't have any manual for and no tools for. The feedback I got was "working", "half-working" and "not working". It's sometimes easier to start again rather than chase bugs :(
Finding a bug is certainly an exhilarating moment, but more in the way finally letting your dick out of the vice would be, to use an AvE reference. I do debugging when needed but definitely wouldn't do it "for pleasure"...
@@AttilaAsztalos ...as in, "it feels so good when I stop."
I hate it when I wake up at night and have an idea how to solve difficult problem. Good luck getting sleep before trying it out 4 am.
I'd have to agree with these replies. I enjoy fixing problems in things I've designed & built, but only AFTER I fixed them. I'd MUCH rather have things work right the very first time I powered them up! (Yeah, "it feels so good when I stop!" Ha!)
You don't upload videos too often, but when you do they're good. :-)
Thanks to Applied Science, I make liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen on demand in my basement! So far I have not attempted to replicate any of his other projects :)
We certanly do need more guys like Ben that can show other people the way to go and how to act mature and intelligent, people like Ben certanly does not grow on trees on TH-cam i agree with that.
It's a pity that there is no Nobel Prize category for applied science....
wow, just wow. WOW.
I ... *hats off to you*
Just take a step back for a minute - you did *YOURSELF* what NASA did with an entire team - from a pane of glass to a final and troubleshot workable product
The amount of steps and time taken to do what you have accomplished is astounding
Thanks for spreading your knowledge, very much appreciated!!
Honestly i don't understand 99,9% of the content on this channel, but still I get so fascinated!
Right with you
If anything to be learnt from this video it will be the fact that science is all about patience! I love how patient and determined you were in doing this. Big thump up!
By chance, are you involved with CuriousMarc's project to restore an Apollo Guidance Computer, including the DSKY? If not, I have a feeling he and the team he's working with might be interested in your notes.
Interesting
FranLab was working on the same thing a while back and had completed silk screen work as I recall.
This is the same thought that came to my mind when I watched this video. Both channels are pretty interesting.
Ahem. My only contribution to the project was pestering Ben if he could do it, just the display maybe, without the driver. And forwarding the original NASA DSKY files we (we as in Mike) had unearthed at NARA. Then like the rest of you I got the occasional updates, but knowing what he was trying to eventually do... I did not expect this to get engineered all the way to this level! Just, wow!
@@CuriousMarc yeah this is next level impressive...
I really love how you show us your mistakes so that we can learn too, instead of just the final product.
Wow! I'm sure after you blew out 10 or so HV507s at $14 each, you got really determined to win and you did! Congrats, thanks for the detailed debugging discussion. I hope your getting a little Microchip kickback because I suspect they'll be selling a bunch of HV507s in the coming months.
Or not, now that we all know they don't have working protection diodes.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT It's not that they don't have working protection diodes, it is that the scenario exceeded their specifications. Protection diodes are really only meant to clamp/dissipate short relatively low energy impulse bursts like static shocks, not to be able to take the brunt of a large overvoltage. It is like complaining that the body diode of a fet cant sustain the full forward current for a significant amount of time ... because it was never meant to.
Teach me master! I cannot possibly imagine how much work went into this project. From screen printing the displays to whipping up a custom driver board! This was insanely epic! That's also what makes me love vintage electronics.
This is some beautiful work you've done: I've seen one of the originals in person and was always fascinated by them. Glad I'm not the only one!
Excellent work Sir. Your main Bug reminds me of about 28 years I spent working with Ion Implant equipment in the Semiconductor bus. I realized that "any time you have a complex piece of equip. that includes a HVPS eventually you're going to have HV corona, arcs that produce voltage or current surges and even powerful RFI that can find its' way across the room to be received by antennas comprised of PCB traces on unrelated electronics. In these systems you will find that approximately 15% of all the circuitry is for various types of surge protection. Roughly 99% of the time these components do nothing but add a few picoFarads of capacitance to digital or analog signal paths but, when they're turned on, they save costly devices. It's very important to bear in mind that the protection components are often sacrificial. That hold for PS Rail, Clamp Diodes. Their PN junctions suffer a small amount of HV Punch through damage with every protection event and with that their leakage current will grow unti the point they cause DC operating conditions to degrade to the point that the main circuitry becomes unstable or stops entirely. Then, you simply replace as many of the Clamp Diodes as practical and the system will work like new again. Next time you build anything that uses higher voltages, just plan on these things from the start. I've seen NE2 neon bulbs used on 10VDC analog PS control lines. Two 47 ohm resistors in series with 1N914 clamp diodes to supply rails at the center and the side that is tied to any wire leaving the PCB. Slow baud rates rather than fast even make serial communications far more reliable in an electrically noisy environment. The slightest glitch on a comm line will upset a high baud rate port but goes completely un noticed at a low baud rate.
I'm guessing you're talking with CuriousMarc. By the way, it was folks like you who got is to the Moon. Decades ago I got introduced to a J--K flip flop and very few younger guys even know what it is. Its great to see someone who is stretching my understanding of analog circuits. Thanks.
I was amazed just at the sheer enginerding needed for the glass panel and then the electronics issue. Having chased my tail for 2 months with the wire EDM controller board and various noise issues has taught me a few things and the puzzle of 'why did it work before but not now' is tickling all the right places for me to continue :)
That was some hardcore fault finding, I imagine you were rather pleased with yourself at cracking that one 😎
"Squishing a bug that's consumed 20 hours of your life is pretty enjoyable, in theory", while in practice you create an even worse one fixing the old one and then that takes a week to resolve and after getting it done the customer would like the feature removed.
Thank you for open sourcing it, people like you help us move forward so much. See 3d printers. From 200.000 dollars to 2.000 in some ten years.
Can't wait to see how much brighter it can get.
Keep up the good work.
26:49 unforseen consequences
I understand maybe 25% of each video (being generous I think). But damn it's all so fascinating. That there are people out there that create and invent and I'm in constant awe.
Its 2:22 AM should get some sleep, nah, Applied Science uploaded another almost 1/2 hour long vid! Really love those long ones. Especially the in-depth ones!
I don't always get through long videos, but for this one... I was GLUED TO MY SCREEN 😉
You’re a one man R&D department.
Most of them are!
In My MANY years watching Science and Engineering material on TH-cam, this was by far the most impressive combination of ideas and innovations by way of defeat and victory yet; I am in awe !!!
Thank You Professor Ben !!!
Also thanks to CuriousMarc and his restoration of the Apollo Guidance system !!
'Squashing a bug that's consumed 10 or 20 hours of your life is pretty enjoyable in theory.' Best line ever.
programming is a harsh mistress.
@@cmdraftbrn I see what you did there.
simply beautiful, vfd displays all but disappeared seemingly overnight, never thought you could use the electro luminescent paint to emulate them
"...so we're actually with in specs, which is nice." Nuff said
5:03 I just happened to be at this point when I saw your comment ;-)
And it still blows up!
Amazing amount of effort to conquer these extremely subtle and difficult bugs, I thought for sure you’d have a hardware solution to the segment drive exploding issue, so producing a clean and clever software fix is very impressive.
Power electronics is quite painful. A couple of comments:
- The drivers protection diodes are most probably there (they are an inevitable byproduct of the transistor construction), though they probably die after you yank them to -40V. The problem is that they can only conduct so much current (it should be specified in the datasheet). The current is given by Ic = C * dv/dt (capacitor current). If all the other drivers try to force a large dv/dt the current will be just to large for a single driver to handle even if the output transistor is still ON and the protection diode is there in parallel to give a hand.
- If all segments are lighted up except one, you might still have problems on just that one driver, no? If I were you I would put limiting current resistors in all drivers outputs (yep, it's a pain in the ass).
With that done you might not even need anymore to shift the control signal with respect to the common signal.
justpaulo- ohmygosh you're so smart, you know so much (repeating things others have posted), BUT do you know the difference between "to," "too," and "two?"????!
The quality of workmanship exceeds even that which would be expected of a well-managed production floor. Impressive!
"you learn something and feel good about it". SCIENCE ❗️
These specifics are above my level of experience and prior understanding, though I studied & worked for years in the electronics industry. But it is explained so clearly here - design, connection methods, plus failures and all - that I really feel educated upward a level -Thanks!
And the electroluminescent glass display is a super-cool look!
I'm not qualified to view your content. It's so cool though.
My thoughts exactly! Yet, here we are...
this is nuts. probably one of a handful of these that's been properly recreated in the last 60 years
Looks great, and very interesting breakdown!
I find it great that you also tell about the mistakes you made, so that we don't have to. Not saying that I am going to make one of these any time soon...
Did Fran put you up to this?
th-cam.com/channels/fIJOyTKtSbfdXu9762CdIg.html watch this first, you may want change your comment
@@DH-vh8el it's a joke
He is stealing her project. What a shame. And he does it with modern components too.
Fantastic project. Your engineering of this is first class. Wish these were commercially available. Superb!
Superb pulling together of a load of different skills. Congratulations.
Saw this video highlighted in my Adafruit RSS today. Amazing project! Congrats on fighting through hundreds of dollars of blown components only to find out you needed a delay on a shift register. This video helped me feel like I'm not alone in how I approach complicated projects. Trial and error. You deserve an award for the first practical use of EL paint. 300V though? You sir have my respect for putting up with that. Not a fan of it being water based. Would be awesome if it was epoxy but then the EL stack error learning curve of your build would have been the more expensive trial and error part of your project. You're going to fail before you fly. You made a thing of beauty. Awesome video, awesome build.
Did you contact the chip manufacturer to find out why the internal diodes weren't doing their job?
I'm sure it's working exactly as intended.
I wonder how it'll be resolved - it's not like the manufacturers can release an update lol
@@magneticflux- Errata, haha.
@@garrett2449 Not like Microchip has ever written errata for any of their products ever. Oh wait...
@@garrett2449 lol @ Errata :-)
Clamping Voltage for HV507 is -30V or Vpp (60-300V) +1.5V @ +/-1mA according to the data sheet, so a -50V ringing will kill it. I mean it is a self printed, one-off display, it is not as if you would calculate or expect these effects beforehand, the capacitance per segment is quite low, too low to make anyone care about single channel protection. Phase shifting the outputs is a good solution to this kind of voltage doubling effect, nice that it could be solved in software. It came out very nice and i learned a lot from the video.
The EL display looks kind of cute and old-fashioned.
I do certain electronic projects purely for the fun and challenge part. But if I had encountered the kind of challenges you faced during the design as well as the trouble-shooting phase, not to speak of the cost, I would have easily abandoned the project assuming I started it.
I really admire your perseverance and the determination to succeed which you finally did.
Well, it IS 60 year old technology.
Hmm...I always thought the DSKY was a VFD. You learn something new every day!
I thought for sure it used early dim green LEDs. What a surprise!
This is such a neat project. Great job working through all the technical problems to arrive at a gorgeous working display! I could imagine a neat clock being built with one of these displays.
Man, the more I see of your impressive work the more I'm convinced you could build a carbon (or carbohydrate) fuel cell which is a technology in its infancy but I'd REALLY like to see it.
In a high voltage application such as this, I'd recommend using optoisolators in between the low and high voltage parts of the circuit. It's going to require a lot of those, but it will provide galvanic isolation so the high voltage side can't interact with the control circuitry directly.
So I can finally have the 1980s style bar graph/percent bar display for my EVs power consumption (volts, amps, battery % etc) and regen that I’ve always wanted? 🤤🤤🤤
Ohh yessss!!
Oh man and a Honda S2000-style dash, but for amperage instead of revs?
My boner cannot be contained.
26:11 I was thinking at this exact moment "what if you didn't shoot for the full 300V, and ran it at a lower voltage, if the chances of a random failure could be minimized."
Great video, very well formatted, you cover all the details I could ask for.
Its 3:30 in Kiev, but it doesnt matter, THE GREAT ONE HAS RETURNED
For electrical contact from PCB to conductive ink, you can consider spring loaded EMC contacts. They are typically used for shorting PCB ground to metal chassis. They can accommodate irregular contact surfaces, being spring loaded. Great video!
I can't get enough of your content, awesome video, i pay a lot of respect for your knowledge
Wow! This project is so cool on many levels, from the Apollo aspect to elaborate electroluminescent control. Thank you for sharing this with us and thinking we could do something at this level!
TH-camr curiousmarc has an ongoing series resurrecting the Apollo guidance computer but it's pretty popular so I'm sure you already know about it. I don't know if he has or had access to the display module, though, don't see it in the relevant videos.
Love the work!
Great to see the tools you developed seperately come together .Like building a pyramid. Always a pleasure. A 1K between the 5V and 3V3 comms will use the esd diodes in the 3V3 system to clamp and wont overload the diodes . Great work. Like a mystery novel. When you showed the actual problem I thought slew the edges which you did later and gave me a warm glow. But that was the easy bit.
Can you try to make a transparent EL display?
I love your videos! Keep up the great work!
The problem that one would have to overcome with this idea is that the electroluminescent paint is opaque. I don't know if you'd ever get it truly transparent because of this limitation.
@@davidk8893 Transparent EL displays are made by Beneq / Lumineq (ex Planar). This technology is far more advanced and requires complicated equipment for epitaxial process.
Thank you for doing these experiments so that I can learn without the time and resources and errr... skills that you have access to. From chemistry to electronics, you tinker like I do, but bring it to a new level. Your videos save me a lifetime of work. Cheers!
Would you do a video about creating graphene via chemical vapour deposition?
I really appreciated the idea to give your display to Curiousmark restoration project... It has been *AWESOME* from you, since you applied *REAL SCIENCE* to make it! congratulations!!! Hope they can include your diplay in the final project phase|! Thanks alot for your *REAL HI TECH* projects!!!
Great project! You are a very interesting person - I wish you are my neighbor! Thanks for sharing your projects!
Wow, you really pushed though a lot of obstacles on this one. The resulting DSKY is mind blowing. Great work!
Amazing work! And still days away from the Apollo 10 launch!
Those silver dots on the display got me wondering. I was guessing that the actual DSKY had independent common electrodes for each display register; hence the many visible electrodes. Thankfully, some of the original schematics are now publicly archived. Have you seen these? This is full of great info on the AGC in the LM Module. archive.org/details/acelectroniclmma00acel_0
Looking briefly at the original AGC display schematics (Figure 4-229) from the LM, they seem to have completely isolated the signal circuits by using a matrix of specialized miniature relays! This is cleverly done by the using double coiled relays and a few diodes to creating a basic AND gate to drive each segment.
I'm sure there's a lot more goodness here that I miss too.
Glad your big documented project didn't crash like diy perks channel. Really interesting stuff
How about applying the z-tape to the circuit board, instead of the glass? Then when you pulled off the tape, you'd be pulling on a robust copper-clad board, instead of a coated piece of glass.
I assume it's equally sticky on both sides of the tape?
It's double sided, but you could use one that's only one sided and just holds firm against the glass.
These are really cool! Is your education in applied physics?
I have a mechanical engineering degree, but have spent most of my career doing more electronics, sensors, and electromechanical systems. I somewhat enjoyed my time at university, but didn't think that it prepared me well to be a useful engineer.
@@AppliedScience your 15-30 minute videos teach me more than months of school ever could have.
Engineering is just applied physics...
@@BrightBlueJim Physics is just applied mathematics.
@@L0j1k maths is just applied logic, and logic is applied thinking.
Your channel is easily among the best on YT.
I fully agree with the fact that if one always take the easiest shortcut one will newer realy learn the root of the contruction and You will newer bee that guy who know how to build a radio from a brooken pencil and a mashed sodacan instead of panic if something goes wrong for example. The actual function is sometime irelevant, it's the learning and understanding wich is the important part. The same reason why i dismantled things when i was a little kid and also trid to put it all back then, or construct something new from scrapped parts instead of just walkig ount and buyng that bloody cellhpone to fake the result, that would indeed work perfect for a movie prop, but people who do so are missing the entire point as You mentoned here.
For Curious mark?
Awesome work Ben. Thanks for sharing and in particular taking the time to explain as to why you did this. There is always at least one person who misses the point and says, "why didn't you just …". They're probably the same ones who vote videos like this down rather than up.
*talking about bugs*
".. pretty enjoyable.. in theory"
squashing a bug, pretty enjoyable "in theory". There's a brief moment of joy, but then followed by that realization of the time spent. Not always so joyful. :)
this video's title has a typo; change "a" to "an".
The electronics troubleshoot part is amazing, very interesting. The amount of effort you put into this, wow.
Every step of this project seems like it was an emotional rollercoaster. Great show as always, I'm sorry it fought you the entire journey!
Your videos are amazing. Well done sir (an engineer here able to appreciate the difficulty of what you do)
Outstanding. I'm amazed you worked out what it was that was going wrong, with so little to go on. Just enough life in the chips to get an occasional scope trace I guess - save it immediately, don't lose it! I see the stupid diode thing was the gnarliest problem, but I'm still blown away that you can create the glass stack with relatively common materials, essentially in your kitchen. For me the glass stack would come under the heading 'magic material unfathomably made somewhere else by pixies with special powers'.
You're effin' adorable. Wondered why I enjoy listening to you explain anything, it's your humility. If squashing bugs for 10 to 20 hours of your life is enjoyable, to you, in theory... it's good enough for me. Thanks.
This is so fascinating, thank you for sharing the pitfalls and solutions.
It's sometimes the case that people don't share the "gotchas" which would be good to know about in advance.
Some nice solutions - and the display looks awesome!
Your channel is a real treasure on TH-cam, please keep the work , wish you good luck , your video is very informative to me.
How does he not have over 1 million subs yet. This material is real world science. When a lot of youtube is pop culture superficial dribble.
Excellent description of the techniques you developed/used, and gotchas. Sweet!
Very impressive... I'm not going to pretend I understood everything but it's obvious I need to educate myself on my electronics before beginning my physics degree. Gret video!