MEP EP#249: How Soft Are Your Diodes?

Parker

• Signed up for the EXTRA LIFE charity this year to raise money for the Texas Children's Hospital
  • This Saturday (Nov 7th) Parker will be broadcasting a 24 hour video game stream
  • Will be playing the Half-Life 2 video game all the way through
    • This includes the two episode expansions to the base campaign
    • Difficulty level will be set to 'Hard' and I will be attempting to unlock all the achievements at the same time.
  • Donations are tax-deductible and 100% of it goes to the hospital
  • Learning some javascript to build plugins for the stream
• PinoTaur REV3 has gone gold
  • Added more current sensing
    • Low Current Allegro ACS70331EESATR-005B3
    • High Current Allegro ACS711KEXLT-15AB-T
  • Changed Relay to a socketed relay type
    • ISO micro relays type
  • On PCB flyback diodes for coils
    • MRA4004
  • Relay is driven by both the MCU and the Fault pin on the high current sensing IC
• Walmart fires store robots
  • Saw improvements in inventory control with the robots, but not enough of an improvement in revenues and other measures.
  • One premise is that stores will sell more goods if the shelves are stocked and wanted items are made available

Stephen

• How soft are your diodes?
  • Softness factor - a definition of the reverse current characteristic
  • Ta = time when charge from depletion region is removed
  • Tb = time when charge from semiconductor region is removed
  • S-factor = tb/ta
    • S-factor = unity = soft recovery
    • S-factor unity = fast or snappy-recovery
  • General purpose/fast recovery (FRED diodes)
• The SSPS?
  • @zane is going back and listening to episode 1
  • What was the SSPS?
    • What were the specifications????
    • Where did we leave off