electricity with Mekkor today: sorry, but we also need the transistor

Hello and welcome to another post about electricity *wohooooo*

i actually wanted to post that yesterday but then my internet connection broke down.
So i had to wait half a day to post something new. Damn storm.

Well, last time i said we would make something incredibly interesting. But i have to disappoint you. Sorry, we have to learn some things about another electrical component first.

But this component is really something usefull.
It is the:
Transistor *tadaaaa*

What is an transistor?
A transistor is like a switch where you can regulate how much current flows through it.
A transistor is also an amplifier.
To understand how a transistor as an amplifier works, we would need more info than i already gave you + there are so many different transistors that your head may explode if i explain them all to you.
So we just use the transistor as a switch.

I personally think that this picture explains it really well.

Look, the more water flows though the little red gate, the more it opens the big red gate.
That means:
The more voltage is onto the "Basis" the more opens the "Kollektor" to let more current though.
If there is no voltage onto the "Basis", the "Kollektor" is non-conductive.

Imagine that you have to controll when a current circuit is conductive and when not. You would always have to push a button.
With a transistor, you can controll that without any buttons. The transistor is only conductive if there is voltage onto the "Basis". Thats easier and faster than pushing a button.

But way dont we just use a normal switch instead of this thing? Let me explain it like this:
If we had a perfect switch, what properties should it have.

- endless resistance if non-conductive
- no resistance if conductive
- no wear
- react immediately


A normal switch has:
- endless resistance if non-conductive
- a little resistance if conductive
- wear
- reacts slowly because you have to push a button/flip a switch/whatever and that takes a few milliseconds

A transistor has:
- almost endless resistance if non-conductive
- a little resistance if conductive
- no wear
- reacts immediatly

Now you see, that a transistor is a faster switch than a normal switch, has no wear and can also be used as an amplifier. Clear victory for the transistor.

Now we know (a little) about transistors. Next time we are going to build something... hopefully ^^

Bye :D

electricity with Mekkor today: the all mighty capacitor

Hello to everyone who actually reads this ^^

*BOOM* there goes the 100-follower-wall down.  :D

SOOOO, today i'll teach you about capacitor and after that i'll give you a little preview on what we are going to build the next time :o

At first, capacitor have the unit farad. (wow, now everyone understood what capacitor are)
With that said, let me explain how a capacitor works.
There are 2 plates with a non-conductive material between them.

Now we put the + pole on one side and the - pole on the other on our power supply of a few volts.
(for the love of god, please dont put a condensator in your power socket. PLEASE DONT BE SO STUPID! The thing will explode before you even recorgnize it!!!)
 You may think "there is no way that current could flow there, capacitor are non-conductive." Right and wrong.
Because of the 2 plates, electrons from the plus pole push on the one plate while electrons from the - pole are pulled out of the plate. Through the capacitor flows no current but everywhere else.
Q:
"Does that mean, there is a permanent flow of current because of that capacitor ?"
A:
No! Remember what i wrote about voltage? Its the potential difference between 2 points and on the biggest resistance stands the biggest voltage.
=> The capacitor is non-conductive so it is the biggest resistance and so the condensator will charge up to the whole supply voltage.

Q:
"But how long does it take till the voltage stands on the capacitor or is this instantly?"
A:
You can imagine the capacitor as a battery. It charges upon the supply voltage. That is determinated by this formula:
t (time) = R (resistance) x F (farad)

For Example:

We have a capacitor with 1mF (MilliFarad) and a resistor with 1kOhm. Our supply voltage is 5V.



t = 1kOhm x 1mF
t = 1

After 5 times that time the capacitor is "fully charged". So you see, the bigger the resistance of the wire/resistor is and the higher the capacity is, the longer the capacitor charges.
And after the same formula the capacitor discharges itself if you connect the 2 poles of the condensator.



Some of you might think now: "2 plates with a non-conductive material between them... does that mean 2 simple cables are a capacitor, too?"
Yes, you are right. But the less the surface of one plate is and the higher the distance between those plates is, the less is the farad of our "capacitor".
There are areas of use where this is very important but not for our purposes.

With that we can make frequenzys, we can let things blink, we can have our own little battery and we have a little buzzer.
In my apprentienceship, me and the others charged capacitors with around 20 volt. You put the 2 poles on someones arm/leg/neck/whatever and brizzl, the poor victim gets a little electrical shock ^^

aaaaaaaaand now, the thing that could be your thing after you build the thing next time.

Tadaaaaaaa.... wait, what is that? Only one way to find that out ;D

Bye :D

McSugar and the sickness of life

Hi there followers,
yesterday was a fine day. A rainy sunday. I love these days. My room is in the loft, so in the summer it can get really hot in there. My old computer died that way.  Also it was to rainy to get outside so my father couldnt work in the backyard and i didnt have to help. Spent the whole day playing video games.... i love these days...
As afternoon came, i got a phone call from one of my friends. An old friend had his 20th birthday and it would be so much fun if we celebrate it in McDonalds. Playing like little kids in the ball pool and chilling outside under the stars (remember: it was raining = no stars at the sky).
I couldnt refuse that offer.
I talked with the others and we decided that we would buy a cheese burger with a candle at midnight and sing "happy birthday" for him.
So at midnight i ordered a single cheese burger with a candle on top. But the Mc personal have had a better idea.
A Big Mäc cake!
rolls from a Big Mäc, with marmelade, covered in sugar, covered in smarties with a burning candle on top of it. It looked so COOL and it was for free. They said, its a present from McDonalds for my friend.
But after we ate that thing, another Mc employee came to us with a 1,5L cup filled with vanilla ice cream, chocolate souce, caramel and smarties.
I had the sugar flash of my life. After we tried to finish the ice cream but failed because of all that caramel at the bottom of the cup we left McDonalds and drove home.
I was lying for about 3 hours in my bed and couldnt sleep. The sugar kept me awake. Because of that, i only got 2 hours of sleep and had to stand up at 5 am to get to work. I still feel so sick. I ate only bread and water for lunch. Everything that has sugar is so disgusting at the moment.
And what did i learned?
Celebrate you damn birthday at Burger King, maybe they'll deep-fry a Whopper just for me ;D

Bye :D

Finally a new game

Hello and welcome to todays game review :D

At first i want to say.... WHAT? Over 60 followers already? Niiiiiiiice :D

Back to topic.

i wrote a lot that has to settle into your brain and after all that learning i think a new game will be the right thing

With that said, lets talk about:

Borderlands

Borderlands is an rpg-shooter-game.

The story:
On the planet "Pandora" exists an old tale. The tale says, that there is, somewhere on Pandora, a chamber which is filled with gold, high-end alien technology and glory for whoever finds the chamber. But no one ever found it and those who searched for it are now crazy after all that time searching the whole planet or dead.
But an angel will help the choosen one to find the chamber and watch over him while he has to make his way though all the dangers on Pandora.
End


After you listend to that old tale, you have to choose between 4 "heroes".
Pandora is not a safe, nice planet where you are welcomed with flowers and a free drink. On this planet only the strongest survives. 99% of the living on pandora tries to kill you.
When you arrive, a ghost or more like a vision of an angel appears and says that the chamber exists and you should find it.
There are some small villages and even a town but they are terrorized by a big group of bandits.
So you help the villages fighting the bandits, trying to stay alive since almost every animal that lives on pandora wants to kill you, and you make some friends.
Luckily an archaeologist found a lot of hints where the chamber could be.
While still dealing with the monsters and bandits you try to find crystals which are leading to the chamber. But the crystals are guarded by giant monsters or alien creatures.
After getting the last crystal, the imperial army takes over the planet, cuts down every communication, steals all your crystals and makes it way to the chamber.
But not while you are still alive.

Dont want to tell you to much (which i already did). Its all very post-apocalyptic and the graphic might not be everyones taste.
But the game is great.
- its an ego-shooter where you have to kill everything that stands in your way
(every mother with an overprotecting complex should have already stoped reading)
- over thousand! of weapons
- a story which is acutally more or less interessting
- you can play it with up to 3 friends
- each class is different and has a unique skill
- a ton of sidequests
- add-ons (extra costs) that inculde a zombie island, a arena to fight via internet with friends/strangers and a new area where you fight the imperial army

Watch this video and if you still think "damn, that is just what i need" buy it. On steam it costs 20$ or so.
I bought it right after it came on the market and played for 2 weeks or so. Did almost every sidequest that was possible. After that, i started the game again with a different class. I forgot almost everything of the first half and had to guess again what i have to do to get this or that item. ^^

Thats it for now.
Bye :D

new post, new infos

Hi there,

so today i dont have that much time to write a post where you have to scroll 5mins to reach the bottom.
So im going to make that quick and finish the electronic basics.

Frequenzy:
The amount of how many times something happens in 1 second.
For Example:
Your heart beats, if you are relaxed, around 1 - 1.2 times per second.
To know the frequenzy you have to divide 1 through the seconds.
Example:
In my country (i dont know if this is everywhere in the world) the sinus wave of the voltage of my power socket has 50 Hertz.
Now we know that the sinus wave repeats itself 50 times each second.
To know how long 1 sinus wave takes, we have to calculate like this:
t (time in seconds) =  1 /  F (frequenzy in Hertz)
t = 1 / 50
t = 0.02 seconds (20milliseconds)

If you put your finger into the power socket, the current is not the worst that will happen to you. You may have some burnings but the frequenzy is way more dangerous.
Because the current is higher than your body signals, it will force your heart to beat 50 times each second!
Believe me when i say: You wont survive that for to long.

Now i maybe scared some of you guys off from current, voltage and resistance but thats just what i wanted. I think its better to first scare you before i will tell you what you can do with the knowledge you now have. (its not much but enough to do some things).
If i told you from the beginning "oh, its so great you should try that too. so easy, so fun." Some of you may have had hurt themselfs because they were to thoughtless.

Next time... dont know, you have to wait and hope it will be something interessting ^^
bye :D

efficiency of everything!

Hi followers,

today im going to write something totally different, so be pepared to read some crazy stuff ^^

Okay, yesterday i had a conversation with a friend of mine (yeah, i have friends.... weird). It was about the efficiency of different motor types because he is a auto mechanic.
Then whe have seen a piece of bun on the floor and i asked "ever wondered what the efficiency of a bun is?"
After that question we had a huge discussion what you have to research to find that out.
I couldnt resist so i have done some research:
effeciency = energy you can use from it / energy you put into something
Example:
A 60W light bulb has a efficiency of 5%. You put 60W of power in it and only 5% are formed into light. the rest is warmth.
I thought buns would be better but read this:

So a normal bun has around 1053 kJoule of energy for your body.
not much because a normal adult man needs 7100 kJ each day. That doesnt mean you should just eat 7 buns each day. But theoretically it would be enough.
Check.

Lets say we already have all incredience at home and wont calculate what energy there would be needed to make the incrediences. That would be to much.
Your body needs for 10min of making the pastry around 55kjoule.
While you just watch 20min of backing the buns your body needs around 58,8kjoule.
A normal oven uses 1500 - 2000 Watt each hour. We bake our bun for 20min so lets say we need 300W just for the oven.
Remember:
Until now, we just have the energy we need for our oven and our own energy.
We dont have the energy which is needed to create all the incrediences. But after 15min of googling i gave up.
300Watt/20min are 1,8MJ (this was also googled) ^^

efficiency = energy output / energy put
efficiency of a bun =  energy we get from the bun / energy you put in to create it
efficiency of a bun =  1053 kJ / (55KJ + 58,8KJ + 1,8MJ)
efficiency of a bun =  1053 KJ / 1.9138 MJ
efficiency of a bun =  0,0055%


Talking about diesel motors would be bad with an efficiency of 30%....
Buns are killing this world!

Bye ;D


Edit:
Made a mistake but corrected it with a mistake. 7000 buns a day? Nonsense! just 7. But i calculated wrong in the first place with the numbers but in the end the result was the same. Fighting mistakes with mistakes. Yeah!

Current and the crazy world of electronics

Hi again my dear followers ^^

Sorry that i didnt wrote something in the last few days. My 300 € Mainboard just gave up. Looks like a little SMD-Resistor burned through. Just a few weeks after my garantee canceled. Accident?
I once heard a rumor that things like a vacuum cleaner are build to break a few weeks/month after the garantee canceled so you have to buy a new one. It would be easy to take some components that have a reduced lifespan.
So now i have a laptop till next month when i get my salary to buy myself a new mainboard and if the worst case comes my CPU may have died to.

But enough of my problems with computer hardware. Im here to tell you about current after i told you last time about voltage.
We remember:
Voltage is not real. It's just a unit. But current is real. Real enough to kill you if you get to much. Current has the unit Ampere and describes the flow of electrons through a medium.
Physic-basics 1:
- Electrons are negative loaded
- unequal loaded poles attract each other

So, now we understand why the current flows from the - pole to the + pole. To make each pole equal. Thats also the reason why batteries can be unloaded.
Technically the current flows from the - pole to the + pole but on all blueprints its from the + pole to the - pole. Thats because as the current was discorvered the "electricans" fucked some things up and made some rules which were false. After they had discovered their mistake it was to late and they said "wayne, lets keep it like this."

So if you lick at a 12V battery, your tonuge conects the + pole and the -pole. Theoreticaly your body has a resistance between your hand and your feet of 1000 Ohm. In the reality its way more (most times around 2.000.000 Ohm and more) but the people who had to work out safety-rules had to assume a worst case senario like you are standing in the rain, barefoot on wet earth and your skin is soggy that your body resistance is lowered.
So your tonuge is connecting the 2 poles and current can flow.
Lets calculate:
We want to know how much current flows. So we take the formula:
I (Ampere) = U (Voltage) / R (Resistance)
I = 12 V / 1000 Ohm
I = 12mA
So,  if you have no skin and would touch a 12 V battery, then you may already have problems to let the battery go.
Good to know:
The human body signals work with 0,000000000004 - 0,008 Ampere (wide range, i know but its good to not feel every signal your brain gives to your bodyparts) and your body withstands around 0,05 Ampere ( 50mA) before you are risking serious inner burnings.

Now you know about the risks with electronics. Next time:
resistance, frequenzy and some new formulas.
Bye :D

Have to teach you something

ARGH, why did nobody told me i made a mistake in my earlier post about that burglar alarm thing??
Not a big mistake but the blinking one does the same as the one without the blinking. And with "the same" i mean it wont blink.
Stupid me.
But that told me i have to teach you now and then some electonic basics so you can find my mistakes ^^


Ok, first of all we will learn the differences between voltage, current and resistance.
 To prefend you from to much info i'll have to leave some info out that will be told later. but for now you just have to understand the basics
Voltage:

Voltage is the electric potencial difference between 2 points. For example:
if you look at a battery on which is written "1,2V". That means, that there is an electric potencial difference between the + pole and the - pole of 1,2V.
Rembember:
Voltage NEVER flows. Voltage is not a real thing that you could grab, feel or see. Its just a unit to describe the potencial difference between 2 points. I could punsh someone in the face when i hear him say something like "...and there are flowing 5V". Its like saying "Im swimming my car ".

On the biggest resistance stands the biggest voltage. That means if you put a fork into your power socket at home you will get an electric shock because you are the biggest resitor in the current circuit

Also there is alternate voltage which switches between 2 points of voltage and forms a signal like a sinus wave.
And there is direct voltage. It has the same voltage all the time. No changes.

 Without current, voltage and resistors we still would have to use smoke signals for communication but still so many people dont know where or why there is coming current out of the power socket or why their lamp goes on when they press on the "on"-button.

Well, next time you will read about current. See ya.

Old and epic

Hi there guys,

yesterday, as i browsed through my games folder i came across portal.
I couldnt restist to play it again. And then i remembered why this game was so awesome.
I went total nostalgic like "these good old days".... it was great.
But i never realized how short portal one was oO

Just after a few hours of playing and after a short break because i felt sick all of a sudden it was over.
But luckily i got portal 2 :D

All hail to the portal cannon ^^

Edit:
As someone in the comments told me, he didnt know about portal i was... shocked! Man, you missed some serious great piece of gaminghistory there.
So the concept of portal to all who dont know it (still cant believe that there are existing living humans that dont know about portal):
You wake up in a futuristic bed and a mechanic voice tells you that you are a test subject that will have to go through some testrooms for science.
As you make your way through the rooms you get your hands on the portal gun. The portal gun can shoot 2 portals. 1 blue one and 1 orange one. If you go through the blue portal you get out of the orange one and the other way around.
With this knowledge and your brain you have to get through different rooms till the robotic voice trys to kill you with fire.
You escape, find a way behind the rooms and make your way through the labratory to find the person or whoever that wanted to kill you and to get to know why you where here.

Not much story in it but the way you have to get through each area changed the gaming scene and portal is one of those games every gamer should have played. Even if he doesnt like it

P.S.: sorry this was such a short post but i got work to do. An assload full of work :S

New Game and... well, whatever

Hiho again,

so i finally finished playing Okami and shed manly tears at the end. Damn, and i thought i would be tough. Epic ending and started to play it again right away because there are so damn many sidequests to finish.

But thats not really what i wanted to write about. So let me introduce you to.....
SUPER SMASH BROS. BRAWL

Everyone who knows this. FUCK YEAH!
Everyone who doesnt knows this and likes fighting games with well known nintendo characters. get it or spend the rest of your life wondering how it would be if you have bought it. ^^

So the story mode (yes, there is a story mode oO ) is rather.... stupid. At first you are fighting in an arena with kirby or mario against mario or kirby and then, out of nowhere comes a flying ship and drops dozens of bad minions that try to kill you. So you kill them, fight for your life, save some asses and while you are playing through the story mode you unlock new nintendo characters that are willing to fight.
But a game like this doesnt need a good story because it all is about this.
*Zack**peng**punch**kick**sword-slash**bomb throw* victory!
Singleplayer is fun for about 1-2 hours then its getting lame. But when you got friends, the real fun starts. With or against them you can fight computer enemys, try to unlock new archievements, unlock music which was played in other nintendo games, statues of any possible nintendo figure, stickers,... and so on.

Whats also new in brawl is the "brawl-symbol". Now and then a flying brawl symbol appears and flys through the map. When you get it you can do a "smash-attack" which gets you some kills almost every time you use them.

So, thats for today. Comment if you like it or not and see you again soon ^^

electricity with Mekkor

Hi people who actually read this,

since i've got a little knowledge about electricity i'll give you here and there some instructions to build some cool things by your self :D

If you dont have any clue about electricity then PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND FOR YOUR OWN SECURITY try to learn and understand voltage, current and resistance before you try to work with them. In this little guide you cant really hurt yourself but its always better to know what you are doing instead of following the instructions of a random stranger from the internet.

Today we are going to build a burglar alarm for your door/window. I know you could buy a finished one but to build it is more fun.

So, what you need:

1x magnetic contactor (a contactor which closes the circuit when the magnetic contactor is interrupted)
1x relay (take a 5v relais) (1-2$)
a few LEDs (red ones and if you want to build a sign out of them then get enough) (1-2$ if you dont want to buy a few hundred)
1x capacitor (1 millifarad) (this is only if you want to let your sing blink) (maybe 20 cent)
1x resistor 100Ohm (only if you want to let your signal blink) (a few cents)
1x singal sound ( i took a 5V 80dB buzzer which is really noisy and will wake you up for sure)(1-2$)
1x power supply (we take a 5V power supply for our buzzer. Take an old mobile phone charger. i had one at home so i bought everything else just after this phone charger)

so, this blueprint is the one without the blinking

and now guess what blueprint this one is.... right, its the one with the blinking

Edit: this is the right blueprint for a blinking burglar alarm

I think i should tell you some tips for your LED sign:
working with LEDs is like working with a hammer. Its easy if you use it the right way. LEDs are poled which means you have to look how you put them in your circuit. Red LEDs need around 0,7 Volt to work. So lets say you got 10 red LEDs. That means we need 10x0.7Volt. But our voltage supply only got 5V. So we cant put them straight in a line. This image may help you because i dont really know how i should put that in words without writting a book about it.

the "trick" is to put some parallel to others.
You got an amount of LEDs that doenst get exactly 5V no matter in what combination with parallel and straight you group them? Use a resistor! "Which resistor" you ask? Add for every LED you use 2mA and then look what voltage is left. Use this formula to find it out. R (resistance) = U (Voltage) / I (current)
Example:
2V are left. You got 7 LEDs.
R = 2V / (7 x 2mA)
R= 2V / 0,014A ( | Note: (for all stupid people: 0,014A = 7 x 2mA)
R = 142 OHM

how the whole thing i just build works, you ask? Well its really easy.
If someone opens the door, window, whereever you put your magnetic contactor on, the contact in the mangetic contactor will no longer interrupt the circuit so the current can flow. Then the relay will get enough voltage and the contacts will contact so your choosen LED sign will light up and your buzzer will wake you up. Then you grab whatever you have for your selfdefense and fight for your live ^^

And now an explanation how the blinking thing works:

You see the condensator? Good. When the magnetic contact is closed the condensator has almost no resistance for the current. Then it charges itself after this formula:
t (time till it is theoretically fully charged (in the praxis a condensator is never 100% charged but after t it is 99,6% charged so that doesnt matter much)) = 5 x R (resitance) x C (capacity of the condensator)
So you can decide how fast or slow your burglar alarm should blink.
In my case it looks like that.
I've got my condensator (1mF) and the resistor in that case is the buzzer (ca. 150 Ohm).
That means t = 5 x 0,001F x 150 Ohm = 0,75 sec
That means your condensator is charged after 0,75sec and will break the circuit so no current can flow because when the condensator is charged its resistance is almost infinite and no current can glow. after that the condensator will discharge itself over the diode till  its resistance is low enough so the relaise gets enough voltage to work and everything starts again.
It will actually blink in shorter intervals because of the relay the condensator wont discharge completely.                                                                                                                         


I dont think that i should mention any self-security-tips when working with voltage and current. We are working with 5v so in the worst case you will hang onto 5mA and you can take 10 times more till it gets really dangerous.


I was to lazy and played a lot of LoL (there will be a article about that game) to build my burglar alarm but i'll do it in the next days and upload a pic.

Games, fun & wasting time

Hi there,

So im basically going to write about any good game im playing.

Today i got captured by Okami (for Wii) and it is so goddamn adictive.
First of all the story:

100 years ago, a hero and a wolf-god saved the world from evilness and banished it within a sword. Now some idiot pulled the sword and released the evilness all over the world again. Reborn by a Tree Spirit, you have to save the world as a wolf named Amaterasu, goddess of the sun. But to your disadvantage you lost almost all your powers. So you have to save the world, regain your powers, banish those bad guys and find out where the evilness 100 years ago came from.

Thats a very short description but i dont want to tell you to much.

After playing it the whole day from morning till nighttime the story seemed to be endless. Maybe because i did a lot of sidequests. But the graphic is beautifull and to my suprise the controlling works really well. The only thing that gets on my nervs is the voices of the characters. Step on a puppy, record it and finish. Everyone in the game speaks like that. >.<

But that doesnt stopped me from playing it.

Everyone that ownes a Wii should buy this game if he/she enjoys beautifull art, a lot of quests, a interresting story and some good old fighting against bad, bad monsters.