A big, beardy electronics YouTuber visits!

[00:00:00]Hello, it's David at DES UK and exciting times in the cave. Exciting times because I have a visitor. I don't get many visitors. Nobody seems to like me anymore. I can imagine why. But a very exciting visitor. If I were to say to you, electrical YouTuber, uh, known for his beard, smooth Scottish brogue. Come on. Come on. Let's big it up for the big man himself. It is Stevie from Steviec and the place to be.

[00:00:35]Really disappointed. I not sure why. Hey Stev. Hey Stev. Hey Stev. Hey Stev. Hey Stev. Hey Stev.

[00:00:48][laughter] In the place to be.

[00:00:51]>> Nice to have you in the cable boy.

[00:00:52]Lovely to see you. We met at Alex 25.

[00:00:56]Yeah. Coventry. Yeah.

[00:00:57]>> Yes. Yes. Yes. And uh you're from Dundee, aren't you?

[00:01:03]>> Kind of. Sort of.

[00:01:05]>> Kind of. Sort of. Is it a shock coming down here? It's over 30 Celsius. Is Is it the first time you've seen the sun or uh >> um No, we had a heat wave a couple weeks ago by >> Wow. Okay.

[00:01:17]>> It's the second time I've seen the sun, so [laughter] you know.

[00:01:19]>> Fair enough. But but Stevie, for those who perhaps aren't familiar with Stevie's channel, Stevie does uh well, all sorts of things with uh disco lights and stuff. Yeah, you're one of these people that I don't like because you you have an electronics knowledge that I wish I had. I'm quite jealous of such things. Electronics is one of those things I I wish I'd got into more back in the 90s, back in the day, and uh to see uh you people on YouTube now doing it. so competently and it pisses me off. [snorts] [laughter] But but you very kindly provided some some very interesting little squit designs for us to play with in the cave today and play with. We will. It's baking hot in here, isn't it?

[00:02:03]Isn't it hot in here? So, we're not going to hang around too long because we're going to go down the pub.

[00:02:08]Yeah. Chin chin. Not going to stick to the fosters either. That's just just the coldest thing in the fridge at the moment.

[00:02:16]But what do you think to the cave boy?

[00:02:17]Is it does Are you impressed?

[00:02:20]>> Yes, I'm impressed. But this is the weird thing about I've been watching Dave's videos for I don't know how long.

[00:02:28]Years post decades probably. I don't know. And it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

[00:02:35]>> Everybody says it's smaller. It's got a funny smell. There is a kind of stale seam as well. Can you pass me that that waistbin that's behind you there? I'm really must stop wanking off onto this blue roll because I'll put this over here because it does smell quite bad.

[00:02:47]But I think that's probably what's causing this man. Oh, we've got a bit of a noise in the background as well because we do have some kind of fan solution on. Obviously, we don't have air conditioning in the UK. We don't have air conditioning in blighty because normally you only need it for 3 days in a year except for this particular heat wave which doesn't seem to want to quit.

[00:03:04]So, we do have one of these evaporative air conditioners which is just making things very humid. It it takes the the temperature down by a couple of points but makes things very humid.

[00:03:16]>> Humid. Moist.

[00:03:18]>> Moist. I'm hearing. But you have sent me some PCB designs for flashing lights and things. I have a chav for flashing lights and things. Got flashing lights all over. Here's a flashing light.

[00:03:31]It's not really a flashing light. It's a faux rotating mirror LED light. That's one of the things I don't like about LEDs. They've taken over all the other interesting lighting technologies like discharge, zenon, strobes, rotating mirrors. I do like a rotating mirror light. You were remarking on the rotating road lights on my van, weren't you?

[00:03:47]>> Yeah.

[00:03:48]>> The old breakdown lights questioning why a sparky would have such >> Well, you know, you work on some you driving to an emergency. You have the Well, not the boys and twos on, but you have the the lights on. Say, "Get out of my way. I'm fixing a problem."

[00:04:01]>> Absolutely. Yeah. Run the red lights. As long as you've got your disco lights on the roof, it's all right. It helps keeps the traffic wardens away a little bit as well. So, you know, but I do like the sexiness of a rotating mirror light. But if it flashes or sequences in some kind of way. Well, I find that quite interesting. Don't you find that quite interesting? I know you find that quite interesting because you show yourself on your channel making you've got a there's a pub that you make the lights for, isn't there? Where is that?

[00:04:26]>> Uh the salty dog in Dundee. They house, show off, sometimes buy or trade for beer. Uh quite a lot of my designs.

[00:04:37]Yeah.

[00:04:37]>> See, I I'm jealous of that. If I could if I could design something for beer tokens at my local pub, I'll be all over it. And you have passed on to me here a a a prototype of the the the SEO 1000.

[00:04:50]Now our man Chuk Cheese over in the USA of course also made some PCBs for the Savo 1000. If you haven't seen that video, you'll know the [ __ ] I'm talking about. But the Saber 1000 was a stairwell lighting >> solution solution. Yes, I saluted it. So thank you for that. That's that's very interesting to have uh another variant.

[00:05:09]So I just need more stairwells to light now cuz I got PCBs. So I'm going to have to do something with them. But yeah, isn't that super? And we were talking earlier down the pub where it was a lot cooler than this. I'm still making stuff on barero board. But where do you get these sort of things made up?

[00:05:24]>> The JLC PCB.

[00:05:26]>> There you go. And minimum quantity >> five.

[00:05:29]>> Any size or any design or >> any size, shape, design? Uh, speaking of which, you also sent me this, which is a >> a rocket >> a rocket ship PCB, which is very interesting. Was that made by the same company, was it? Yes.

[00:05:44]>> What's that? A sort of A4 size? That's it's >> quite quite a large rocket.

[00:05:48]>> A4 5V powered USB whatever designed to fit into an A4 poster frame.

[00:05:54]>> Indeed. So, it's And I've seen your you've done a video about this where you mentioned that the the Legend is on the same size as the solder pads. Was that a mistake or is that something that they >> um just did?

[00:06:06]>> It wasn't a mistake as such. It was due to my software spitting out generic file extensions for all the different layers whereas JLCPCB had moved to a different naming convention i.e. the industry standard convention and so they just tried to make the best of what had sent them and it's just like it's close enough.

[00:06:26]>> What software do you use?

[00:06:27]>> Sprint oil out.

[00:06:28]>> Okay. I'm so behind the times on all this kind of stuff cuz the trouble with running this business is it just robbed me of all my hobbies and I used to enjoy electronics. I I enjoyed it from from being 10 years old. You know, you know, here's a boring thing.

[00:06:43]Take a deep deep sit for the boring thing.

[00:06:47]When I was 10 at Sal Valley Junior School in Coventry, we had a science lesson one Friday afternoon where the object of the exercise was to connect a little torch bulb, a little bulb holder to a 4 and 1/2 volt battery. And you know what? It lit up. Couple of crocodile clips. It lit up and it just blew my mind. I was like, "Wow, you can This is how easily you can make a a light work." And I always wanted a like a Book Rogers bedroom when I was that age. you know, you want you want your like all your flashing lights and want to pretend you're on a starship or something. We didn't have the internet back then, so come on. You have to use your imagination.

[00:07:24]So, uh, I dispatched my father to electronic services, City Arcade Commentary, to to get me a what I called a a square battery and some bell wire and a light bulb. And he he dutifully came out with the the correct components. And uh that started me on on what was an electronics hobby which went from being I don't know why I keep keep pointing at you went from being um making my bedroom looking like something out of Buck Rogers in the 80s to the '90s coming along and rave music and I'm like you know what flashing lights are actually pretty cool for rave and dance music. So uh let's let's take the Buck Rogers designs and make things flash and strobe and do cool things. You're looking at me like I'm scrubbed [ __ ] freak. [laughter] But you know, >> exact same backstory as me pretty much.

[00:08:14]>> There you go.

[00:08:15]>> Different time period, but same back story.

[00:08:17]>> It goes to show that at the school can actually be of because most things at school just just rob you of any passion.

[00:08:24]Like music, for example. I haven't got a musical bone in my body because at school you had your drum kits and your cool keyboards and stuff and they'd give you a [ __ ] recorder and anybody forgot their recorder was like, "Oh, don't worry. We've got a triangle or a tambourine you can use." It's like [ __ ] hell. We're going to play kumbaya everybody. And that that's it.

[00:08:40]That's like [ __ ] hell. Right. Okay.

[00:08:41]I'm not doing this anymore. Music. No interest. Same with arts. Any kind of art expression? No. They would stomp that down like some kind of [ __ ] gestapo at the the secondary school I was at.

[00:08:53]Individualism. No, we're not having any of that. So, we have a rocket. A rocket.

[00:08:58]I tell you what, we're going to Batman wipe to one I made earlier.

[00:09:06]Yeah. How about that for a Buck Rogers rocket ship?

[00:09:12]Hey, I quite like the A lot of the LEDs I would normally use are the sort of newer ones designed to be as garish and bright as all hell, but I quite like the the more subtler.

[00:09:22]>> Yeah, I wouldn't say there's anything terribly subtle about this, but I do have about 5,000 of these fcking red LEDs that a colleague of mine gave me back in year 2000 or something. So, it's nice to put some of them to use. And you have cleared me out 330 ohm resistors, by the way. I'm absolutely Some of these are running on 470 and some of them are even running on 1k because that's how we can see that one there is quite dim.

[00:09:44]That's obviously on a 1k. That That's what I was reduced to. I was like, "Fucking hell, I haven't got many of these resistors left." But an interesting rocket ship. Hey, how about that? Notice something missing.

[00:09:56]>> Yes.

[00:09:57]>> Which is >> the uh there's LED positions here. that there are three LED positions here. Yes.

[00:10:03]Which which kind of look like some kind of if you put them on it looks less like a rocket ship and more like a dripping [ __ ] And yeah, >> I was going to say vapor trail, but >> just think that's pure.

[00:10:14]>> Yeah, >> puree.

[00:10:16]I'm I'm not I'm not at home to Mr. Purle. Okay, we stick that up there in the background. Is that gonna stay?

[00:10:24]No. Worked off camera.

[00:10:28]But there you go. But that's the the you have a you have that on your channel, don't you? How to construct?

[00:10:35]>> Yes. It got banned from Facebook.

[00:10:37]>> Oh, yes. I heard about that. Yes. For being too sexualized, was it?

[00:10:43]>> Uh something like that, adult content.

[00:10:45]But the usual sort of story you go on Facebook, you can find actual adult content.

[00:10:51]>> That's perfectly fine.

[00:10:53]>> But we do have some um other interesting designs as well. What should we start with? Should we start with with this beast here? Now, I have to apologize to because you sent me this three years ago and I've only just got around to constructing it. But this Well, the nice thing about this is detachable. And you sell these still, do you?

[00:11:10]>> If someone asks for them, yes, >> you were selling them. You still got your website up, haven't you? I've seen.

[00:11:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. The website's still there.

[00:11:15]I'd sell them all to sort of pre-built, etc. >> Now, the interesting thing about these next projects are that they are using a pickaxe controller. Am I saying that correctly?

[00:11:26]>> Uh, no. Those ones are using a pick controller.

[00:11:29]>> So a pick is made by Arizona Microchip.

[00:11:33]The pickaxe is an Arizona microchip pick with Revolution Education's firmware on top. So you can program to it directly in basic.

[00:11:42]>> Yeah.

[00:11:42]>> But these are just the Arizona microchip pick with Big Clive's firmware on them.

[00:11:48]>> Who?

[00:11:49]>> Big Clive.

[00:11:49]>> Never heard of him. But it's very interesting because this is this is out of my my sphere of comfort because all this kind of programmable chip business. If if it had been a few years earlier, I'd have been all over that sort of stuff. It would have been my cup of tea. But because it happened when I was at a a more transitional period in my my time and less time for hobbyist hobbying around, then it meant that I kind of missed out.

[00:12:18]So, so this is interesting to me because we have few discrete components, don't we? We got two resistors, a switch, and the chip itself with a space for an optional chip if you want it to auto sequence, I believe. Is that right?

[00:12:30]>> Yeah, it was a bit of a sort of a cheat.

[00:12:32]So, while the main chip is a pick that drives the main effect, you could also install a pickaxe or indeed another pick that would just effectively all do is wait 30 seconds, 2 minutes, whatever, and shunt the pin that the switch is connected to. And so the main pick would think that the users pressed the switch.

[00:12:51]In fact, it would just automatically cycle through the patterns. I used this when I s them to a small shop owner that I knew and he would have them on permanent display. The deal is, you know, would split the profits and all the rest of it. So, >> well, speaking of patterns, we better see this thing in action. So, let's smash cut to some sex.

[00:13:12]Hey.

[00:13:13]And not only does it do its do, but one can press the button in the center and it'll do a different dose.

[00:13:24]In fact, there are lots of dos. Now, you've actually made it for the LEDs to be on end, haven't you? But I've pointed them toward the camera. So, so you good folk get to see Shiz in action. What are we saying to the Shiz old boy?

[00:13:42]So this is Big Clive's software.

[00:13:44]>> Yeah. Uh he originally uh designed the project to work with uh free form enamelled wire. I bought a drum of it from Rapid Electronics and I was thinking I was thinking sorry this is far too fed away as I was like no I want a neater twiner solution. Could I design a PCB for it? And the answer is yes I could. So it's a PCB of designed to complement Big Clive's firmware.

[00:14:09]Well, I'm sure he's made up by that old boy. I did see his original video where he kind of sort of daisy chain the LEDs together, only without a PCB. Wasn't very elegant, Clyde. Wasn't very elegant. Elegance is presented here.

[00:14:23]Yeah, think about it. But yeah, it's it's jolly effective, isn't it? Or chat.

[00:14:28]Now, I've got different multiolor LEDs there. It's amazing uh what you can get online these days in terms of LEDs. I remember again going back to my boring story of buying things from electronic services in commentary. It was 20p for an LED and you had a choice of red, yellow or green and that was it.

[00:14:45]That's your lot, mate. 20p a shot. And if you accidentally spiked 9 volts through it, it wasn't an LED anymore.

[00:14:53]On the flip side, those LEDs would probably still be working to this day.

[00:14:57]>> Yes. And I have many of them in my component drawer still that have been there for 40 odd years. And uh these are a new ones. It's good to say I'm on there last, but well, I'm liking the patternage and the the the sequence selection.

[00:15:16]>> Yeah, I'm quite enjoying the your choice of colors there, actually, I must say.

[00:15:20]>> Yeah. Well, it it wasn't my choice so much as what what can you get from Amazon for five quid?

[00:15:26]But, you know, it kind of works, doesn't it? I did originally have some orange ones at the end that I had to desolder because they were just shite. I bought these orange ones back in 2013.

[00:15:36]I remember buying them and well they may as well not be on. They're just so [ __ ] dim. What's the point? But um yeah, that that's a an interesting thing. And that is called the test icicle. Test icicle.

[00:15:55]We're going to have to get get some some decent tunage to that later on, aren't we? That's quite the quite quite the effect there. Perhaps we should put it on something less migraine inducing for those who suffer from such.

[00:16:09]And it's interesting because again going back to the olden days, I know it's very boring. He's old man talking about his his youth, but we used to get things like Velman kits. Remember them that Maplin used to do? They were good kits for training on.

[00:16:25]>> There's an episode of Tagert.

[00:16:27]>> Tagert.

[00:16:28]>> Yes. I think it's like episode 68 or 70 somewhere around there. Um there's a gas explosion triggered by uh a bomb and you look at the bomb sequencer. It just has vellum. [laughter] You freeze frame it.

[00:16:43]Velman light sequencer. It's just like >> they made a lot of useful timers. Are they still going? I don't know if this I've got a Velman kit here. But there you go. There's a a Christmas tree.

[00:16:55]And back in the day you would buy these.

[00:16:58]Sometimes I'd give them away on electronics magazines from covers, wouldn't they? I don't think you can get such things these days. There's always discrete components. So, this is just um a couple of [sighs and gasps] astable multi vibrators. Am I saying the right thing? I forget now. I forget.

[00:17:14]It's just uh you got two transistors.

[00:17:16]>> Yeah.

[00:17:17]>> Flip flopping. And then those transistors flip-flopping and they're not in time with each other. So, you get a a kind of randomized effect. And you can have any kind of LED you like as long as it's red, green, or yellow at the time. That's actually on a cigarette lighter. Every Christmas I'll plug that in on the van. And we feel the season.

[00:17:37]It isn't the season at the moment cuz it's [ __ ] hot in here. We need to get out of here. So, so let's crack on. We got another kit. Another kit that Stevie has very kindly provided.

[00:17:47]And this is the big cliv.

[00:17:50]Okay. Well, let's fire these up. I need to get my fat head out of the way of this one because well, we we've got these as well here. This is another a Big Clive program downloadable from bigclive.com. The programs, aren't they?

[00:18:01]You just need your programmer.

[00:18:03]>> Yeah. Pet kit. You plug it into your computer, flash the software or firmware. Yeah.

[00:18:08]>> Uh and again, these are sequence alterable. Do they remember their sequences after a power off?

[00:18:13]>> Uh yeah. So, what happens is the next time they boot up, they'll go into a power on self test routine. It lets you check each LED works and then it goes into the last program written into memory.

[00:18:24]>> They're very effective, aren't they? And these ones I have bent the LEDs around so that they are sort of pointing down which means that the the red ones here are perhaps not not coming up too quite so much on camera. It's very effective.

[00:18:36]It's very effective. And what do you reckon to the quality of the LEDs?

[00:18:42]>> These are old school. These are 25 years old plus.

[00:18:45]>> Yeah, >> these I got this week off Amazon. Uh what's what's going to be working still in 20 years time, do you think?

[00:18:52]>> Well, the old school ones definitely.

[00:18:54]Can I just say though, the camera is actually doing them justice. Um obviously they're much brighter on the at least on the preview I can see here.

[00:19:01]>> Yeah.

[00:19:01]>> Uh but odds are cheap LEDs, especially the ones I buy from AliExpress, if they work in a year, brilliant. If they work in 5 years, woohoo. They ain't going to be working in 10 years, probably. old steel ones. Yeah, they'll be dim as ever, but those are going to work in 10, 20 years time.

[00:19:18]>> That's a frustrating thing, isn't it?

[00:19:19]I've got equipment that has LEDs from the 80s when things were made properly and they still work and they've still got quite a good brightness to them.

[00:19:26]Things like power indicators and stuff which are on they're sitting there 24/7 sort of thing and you know they they go on for years and years. is. But we get obviously we get a lot of frustration in lighting these days because you get things like your flood lights, not how you use these LED cog chips, whatever.

[00:19:45]Overdriven, not made to last, and connected in series. So, one blows, goes pop.

[00:19:52]>> Black spot of death.

[00:19:54]>> Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. Um, now again, hardly any components. You've got a switch, a resistor, and a chipet.

[00:20:02]Uh, and that kind of blows my mind as a because my electronics knowledge which has all seeped out of my head now. It's it's all gone now. I find it even with my eyesight now. I find even soldering these things to be quite the pain in the ass. Quite difficult to compare to how it used to be. But um I've got here I've shown this on camera before. This is from from my man Chuck in America. Now this this I understand because it uses physical components. We've got a 555 timer. You've done a video about the 555 timer. Didn't that just turn 50?

[00:20:32]something like that. Anyway, >> yeah, it was the I was a bit late to the party. Procrastination usual. Um, but yeah, I was celebrating its birthday.

[00:20:40]>> Yeah. Isn't it just the the most useful ubiquitous kind of chip? I've used it many a time before. Chuck's paired it here with a 4017 decade counter. Again, cutting my teeth in my youth. I used to use the 4017 all the time. 10 outputs, 10 LEDs, and well, one that pushes the button. I'll tell you what we could use this for. We can use for who's buying the pints when I get out of this bloody hot room and down the pub very shortly.

[00:21:04]So, uh, that was a practice go. If it lands on your half, you're buying the drinks tonight. If it lands on my half, I'm in the chair. Let's see what happens. Oh, excitement. Excitement.

[00:21:15]What's it going to be?

[00:21:21]Cheers, Chuck. Nice one, mate. But, um, yeah, I presume that, you know, you got a couple of capacitors there cuz there's no capacitors in any of these, are there? But I presume that one of the capacitors is controlling the speed or something like that. Neither one. I presume that actually the slowing down.

[00:21:37]Would that be a capacitor delay? Do you think a capacitor discharge? That's >> Yeah, slow down.

[00:21:42]>> It must be. Yeah.

[00:21:44]>> But that's the kind of thing that that that I like to think I I I once understood. Perhaps not so much anymore, but that's an exciting little thing.

[00:21:52]It's an exciting thing. I've got another thing to show you here.

[00:21:55]This is This is my 555 projects book.

[00:22:00]First printed in 1978, reprinted in 1990, which is when I would have bought it. And back before the internet, kids.

[00:22:05]Look how brown these pages are. This is what you would read a Star Trek red alert. The red alert sound on Star Trek is a sawtooth modulated tone. It starts low, rises slowly to a high value, and then drops suddenly and starts again.

[00:22:18]And there's a circuit here for making a audible oscillator using a couple of 555s that will make a Star Trek tone. I kind of want to make that now. I kind of want to make that. That sounds like it ought to be, you know, ought to be good fun. A sawtooth generator. But, you know, that's that's Isn't that a fascinating little book? Haven't looked at it for years, but uh that's the kind of thing that I would would be reading as a back in my youth. Have you got something here about some kind of model railway controller and that kind of shiz?

[00:22:52]>> Yeah, I would love something like that.

[00:22:54]Honestly, if somebody's waiting for a birthday present for me, you know, something like that because you could do it in software with a PE pickaxe and there's things to be said for Arduino, Raspi.

[00:23:07]I'm not a fan of Raspi, Arduino, etc. because you're effectively using someone else's code to get what you want done done. There's picker pickax. you're writing your own code at least. But here you could at least do it with just analog electronics. There just seems something a lot more special about, you know.

[00:23:25]>> Yes.

[00:23:25]>> I would and because Yeah, that would have been Yeah. See, when I was growing up, it was all, you know, microprocessors were here and they were becoming sort of more popular. It's just like I didn't really get brought onto that. I had to draw the wiring the bits I wanted or needed to, but I didn't have the >> I don't know that. By all means, I I suppose there's a a question, isn't there, of if you're doing it in software, is is that cheating to a certain extent as opposed to I like the idea of the the physical logic of each component having its its own duty to perform. Of course, you could argue that there's more points of failure, I suppose, if you've got >> there's more serviceability. A component fails, you can go in with a meter and check, yep, that's replace it. if it's done in software or the chip dies, you know, or or the person who built it isn't around anymore.

[00:24:14]>> Yes. And a schematic is obviously quite easy to follow. Well, I say quite easy to follow. If you have a schematic, you have a chance of being able to fix what's gone wrong. Whereas, if it's down to a chip with a program in it, you need to know the specifics of that that program. Although, I guess if you can replace the chip with something that's got the same program on it, if you can still get it, then fine. If Big Clive ever takes his website down and I need to replace one of these chips, then well, I might be in trouble. I might be in trouble, but I'm I'm sure he'll keep it going. Uh, I wonder if EA Par is still going. If he wrote this in 1978, uh, who dedicates it to his wife who did all the typing against Great Odds. Don't you just love something like that?

[00:24:54]That's a wonderful little book, though.

[00:24:57]But, uh, yeah, there you go. You you you have a play with that if you want. You you make you make a um a Star Trek Whoop whooper. [laughter] I'd like to hear that.

[00:25:10]But that but there we didn't have the internet back then. So one had to go to the library and source one's own reference material. Is there porn in there or something?

[00:25:19]>> Electronic porn.

[00:25:21][sighs] >> Look at the diodes on that. [laughter] H I would uh I think we should probably if there's nothing else to to discuss put these things through their paces put them to the test and uh see if they can do some disco beats.

[00:25:43]>> [music] [music] >> kids. What time is it?

[00:26:02]I'm the one and only [music] dominator.

[00:26:04]I'm the one and only dominator.

[00:26:07]Say [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:26:18][music] Heat.

[00:26:27][music] Heat.