I have done similar searches before. They do exist, but most dedicated ICs are targeted towards tightly-integrated cells or battery packs. The variety available is much smaller than for Li-ion batteries, and the ICs are more expensive.
It seems like commercial multi-cell battery chargers mostly use custom microcontrollers to achieve this, instead of multiple charging ASICs.
That's not entirely true - the Tesla has a few hundred watts of overhead when charging - so a 240 W charger would probably not get over that hill. You could maybe keep the screen on and watch a movie while connected via USB-C.
This would be an interesting idea if you were able to solve the problem of inner layers. Currently to reverse engineer a board with more than 2 layers an x-ray machine is required to glean information about internal routing. Otherwise you're making inferences based on surface copper only.
Maybe not. I scanned a bluetooth aux transceiver yesterday as a test of how well a flatbed can pick up details. There's a bunch of these on the market and the cheap ones, they are more or less equivalent. It's a CSR 8365 based device, which you can read from the scan. The industry is generally convergent on the major design decisions for some hardware purpose for some given time period.
And the devices, in this case, bluetooth aux transceivers, they all do the same things. They've even more or less converged on all being 3 buttons. When optimizing for cost reduction with the commodity chips that everyone is using to do the same things, the manufacturer variation isn't that vast.
In the same way you can get 3d models from 2d photos because you can identify the object based on a database of samples and then guess the 3d contours, the hypothesis to test is whether with enough scans and schematics, a sufficiently large statistical model will be good enough to make decent guesses.
If you've got say 40 devices with 80% of the same chips doing the same things for the same purpose, a 41st device might have lots of guessable things that you can't necessarily capture on a cheap flatbed
This will probably work but it's a couple million away from becoming a reality. There's shortcuts that might make this a couple $100,000s project (essentially data contracts with bespoke chip printers) but I'd have to make those connections. And even then, it's just a hobbyist product. The chances of recouping that investment is probably zero although the tech would certainly be cool and useful. Just not "I'll pay you money" level useful.
I think good RE houses have long since likely repurposed rapid PCB testing machines to determine common nets using flying CNC probes. The good ones probably don't need to depopulate to do it.
I've previously been advised by my doctor that PFAS tests are of limited utility due to the lack of process controls which could introduce contamination. Given how novel this area of testing is and the prevalence of PFAS in all types of materials, you can't know whether any detection of PFAS in your blood sample is due to presence in your body or presence in the lab + testing equipment. How does your solution through Quest address this issue?
I would say it could be an issue, but is controlled for. The Quest Interface has a special cautionary statement for phlebotomists collecting samples for this test that says; "Note: Sample collection devices coated with PTFE/Teflon® and PVDF should be avoided because of potential specimen contamination."
This guidance may help for sample collection, but wouldn't fully address the whole chain of custody. If the test equipment or handling tools/processes in the lab expose the samples to PFAS, then the test is botched. And this is challenging because PFAS are so prevalent and ubiquitous.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a test available for PFAS levels. However I've previously been denied a test from the medical provider due to the issues I've outlined above. So I think it would be helpful to know if/how they have addressed this problem.
Eagle is far from an industry standard. In fact I don't remember hearing about a single company who uses it. Perhaps some small companies preferred Eagle. In industry it is far more common to see hardware companies use Altium, OrCad, Cadence, or even Mentor Graphics. I've also heard of one company who uses KiCad.
One of the big drivers for which EDA tool suite hardware companies choose is integration/compatibility with their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools. My understanding is the bigger tools have better solutions for this than Eagle.
I worked for a company about 10 years ago that used eagle. As far as I know they haven't switched away from it. But it was a very small shop (<20 people) and I would definitely say it is rather the exception than the norm. Before KiCad took of the last few years, it was pretty popular with hobbyists though.
This is not a new concern, hardware designers almost always have tradeoffs like this. Just because the interface is standardized doesn't mean the interchangeable modules are identical or without trade-offs.
Sure you can swap in a new NVMe module or SO-DIMM into a given device, and while it may still function, you may now have worse performance and/or worse battery life.
Despite having the same physical interface, each NVMe module has different electrical specifications.
In the eyes of the decision makers, the loss of functionality you describe is a feature, not a bug. Making it harder for you to procure food "reduces waste".
It is the same line of thinking in which companies slash their call center staffing, add a recorded message about "unprecedented call volume", and then happily exclaim that since users have to sit on hold for hours, phone contacts have significantly decreased, thus "reducing waste" from an operational perspective.
Globulation 2
https://globulation2.org/wiki/Main_Page
It's an RTS focused on macro instead of micro. It is cross platform and supports multiplayer! It's really simple in the sense that there are only three unit types, but the strategy is much more nuanced. One interesting dynamic I appreciate is that your unit limit is caused by the fact you have to be able to feed everyone, as opposed to some arbitrary max number the game picks for you or how many pylons you've built. (What do pylons do anyway?) The AI is challenging at harder levels and I still haven't mastered beating them regularly. I really enjoy this game
I suspect the battery arrived in "cut-off" mode. This is a mode which reduces battery drain specifically during the period between manufacture and customer use. In this mode the battery pack control circuit (inside the battery pack) keeps the battery terminals disconnected (no voltage on the output) until it receives a signal from a control unit (or microcontroller) in the device. Once the charging cable is connected to the phone it powers on control unit which essentially turns the battery on, and it's normal operation from there.
Using battery cutoff mode reduces the discharge rate especially during shipping/logistics periods, where the battery may be in transit for mouths or sitting on a shelf for a long time.
If the battery Apple shipped was the same OEM part, they probably just ship all of them from the battery factory in cut off mode--no special process for the batteries allocated for these repair kits.
I never did, i don't think any of us did. One of us ended up in close proximity however to someone who'd tested positive for covid, just prior to getting the results of their tests. This person did not get sick.
That may or may not mean something or nothing, it's impossible to say. It's just an observation and nothing should be made of it unless that person were to ever be tested properly for anti-bodies and even then, you still can't draw any conclusions from it.
Myself at least, I never got sick through the rest of 2020, just followed the rules and such and didn't worry much, not because I thought I already had it, but mostly because there's no point in worrying about something I can't change. If I ended up with it after still doing the best I could to avoid situations that bring me into contact with it, then there's not much I can do except deal with it if it happened.
I figured being tested when not showing symptoms and having been following the rules fairly stringently would unnecessarily put myself in a situation and environment where I could be exposed for no real reason.
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