Radiograph of my Galaxy S7. 80 kVp, 2.8 mAs, Canon Aero DR detector.
Galaxy S7 x-ray
The large rectangular gray block is the battery. Superimposed on the battery, the NFC and wireless charging coils are easily seen. Volume buttons are on the upper left side, and the power button is on the right side. The rear camera is the square object in the upper middle. The selfie camera is the white donut shaped object just above and to the right of the rear camera. There’s the micro-USB port at the bottom middle, and the headphone jack to the left of the USB port.
At the AAPM 2018 annual meeting, attendees received a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon that was used to track attendance at sessions for continuing education and SAM (Self Assessment Module) credits.
Little blue beacon
Little blue beacon
The website stamped on the beacon redirects to a company called Gimbal where you can purchase the beacons for $5 each or get a whole case of 1650 for the same unit price. They also provide web based software for managing the beacons. The manual for the beacon contains some specs, instructions for using the beacon with the Gimbal software, and links to API docs for creating apps to use with the beacon.
The beacon opens pretty easily using a quarter. Most of the beacon’s innards are taken up by a CR2032 coin cell that powers a tiny little circuit board underneath a plastic cover.
Beacon innards
A bit of careful prying to release the cover (also held down by a couple dabs of adhesive) reveals the circuit board. Three contact pads presumably for testing/programming are easily visible.
Beacon innards
Beacon innards
Beacon PCB
Not much identifying info on the little IC at the heart of the beacon. 4348695 2500D0A 2AJ P36V G4
Guessing the first number would be a product identifier with the next line (2500D0A) maybe being a date code. Google led me to a reasonably informative post about the beacons.
Seems to be a fairly simple device and beacons in general might be something fun and interesting to get into.
Used an AdafruitPerma-Proto board to make this reference guide for the breadboard jumper wires I’ve acquired recently.
Jumper wire reference
The bottom one has wires from sets that I bought before my local Radio Shack stores closed, and the top ones are from the 700 piece kit from Sparkfun. Since they each used different colours for the various lengths, I thought it would be useful to have a reference guide for what length each colour was.
A Sparkfunbench top power board kit let me take a 300 W power supply salvaged from a dead computer and use it as a bench power supply.
It’s a handy little kit that takes the power supply motherboard connection and breaks out the +12V, -12V, 5V and 3.3V DC to fused 5 way binding posts.
Sparkfun bench power supply kit
Computer power supply
According to the label on the power supply, it can source 17A at +12V, 0.2A at -12V, 19A at 3.3V, and 15A at 5V. That should be more than enough for any projects I’ll run off it.
I also picked up a few of these simple little 3-digit voltmeters that I’ll connect across the outputs to show the voltages.
Next will be to figure out an enclosure to contain everything.
No idea what caused it to become so badly corroded, but I finally got around to finding a new switch for it. The new switch fit perfectly into the opening, and getting it reconnected was a pretty simple job.
Now I’ve got a couple of power supplies to work with. Plenty of projects out on the web describing how to turn computer power supplies into useful bench power supplies, and I could definitely use a couple of those on the workbench.
