BG ElectroMech

While I have been waiting for some of the necessary watch/vacuum components to arrive, I have been putting effort into cleaning up some of my spaces. As someone who tends to explode into my work spaces, its a never ending battle, but improving on organization always helps.

For the untrained eye in the land of the tinkerer’s garage, this may still seem messy, however, as the type of person to leave walls of boxes full of dumb stuff on the floor, I can assure you this is beautiful and tidy.

I also added a nice little drawings and “things I don’t want dirty” bench to my space. If anyone has played Minecraft with me, they will know that my version of organization is more of a vibe than strict rules of categorization. “Skinny poky things”, “Clampy things”, and “Spinny things you plug into the wall” are all completely functional and valid forms of organization.

Outside of the garage, I tend to do my electronics in my room. I try my best to keep that gear to the confines of 2 cabinets and a shelf desk thingy from IKEA. The shelf desk is called IVAR and I honestly love it. Recently I have added some important gear to my electronics bench to allow me to assemble and test all circuits required for the watch project.

For those unaware of what these pieces of equipment are, but are still interested in what they do, I’ll do a little explanation for each.

Voltage Supply (top left) – This supplies precise DC voltages (steady flat voltages like a battery), and allows me to control how much current will actually be supplied. This is so if a circuit board is shorted, only a limited current will course through my board and it won’t blow it up. Very useful for if I don’t want to blow things up in my face.

Function Generator (top right) – This is almost like a DC Voltage supply, but it doesn’t have current limiting, and it supplies wavy signals instead of flat signals. It can supply sinusoidal waves, square waves, triangle waves, and do a bunch of other signal related stuff. For me, this device is really important for creating audio signals and allowing me to quickly create clock signals.

Heat Gun (middle left) – This bad boy is a precise heat gun with air speed control. Its mostly used for soldering tiny parts that I don’t want to solder with a soldering Iron. Its also good for heating anything up, as you’d expect.

Multimeter (bottom left) – This is used to accurately measure voltage of all shapes and sizes. Most handy households have one of these to measure batteries and wall outlets. This is that but just old and cool.

Oscilloscope (bottom right) – This is the heart of most sci-fi lab benches. Its a device that allows you to see insanely fast signals in real time. Its like a multimeter on acid. In most cases its easier and faster to use a multimeter, but oscilloscopes are very powerful at getting to the bottom of signal information since it measures frequency and voltage at the same time. (The vertical axis is voltage, and the horizonal axis is time)

Here’s a few examples of oscilloscopes in Sci-Fi:

A quiet place

Contact

Mortal Engines

(this one is a stretch, but I just love the old scrapped tech in this scene. I also think that scope might be an Iwatsu similar to mine)

I really like the work bench in A Quiet Place. John Krasinski’s character is keeping an eye on the property and keeping in contact with surrounding bases using HAM radio while trying to get scrap cochlear hearing implants working all at one station. It looks silly and haphazard at first, but I feel like there was some good thought put to that bench setup.

I am going to keep my bench to a minimum due to the limited space I have in my apartment. It would be fun to go full doomsday prepper one day, but honestly I spend pretty little time grinding out electronics complicated enough to warrant half the gear I have there already.

I have a few potential small projects coming up, and for now I might have to put the watch and high-vacuum system on temporary hiatus. I need to fix a fuel issue on one of my cars, and a fuel issue on my boat, so I can hit the open seas this summer without worry. Hopefully, the fresh look to the workspaces will inspire me to actually get started on those fuel issues so I can get into watch mode without worry.