pawb.fun is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
This instance aimed at any and all within the furry fandom, though anyone is welcome! We're friendly towards members of the LGBTQ+ community and aiming to offer a safe space for our users.

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ok, pretty happy with this now. Added a lot more filtering caps to try to reduce the noise and flicker, improved grounding (at least as best as you can on a breadboard) and tweaked the magnetic and electric focus a bunch more. I'm very happy with the result now!

For those wondering about the setup:
DIY HV supply is supplying 700V which is divided down for all the different electrodes in the vidicon tube, 600V on G5, 300V on G4 and G2, 65V on G3 for focus, -35V on G1 for beam current. 15V on the target. Raster is generated by two 555 timers set up as ramp generators and amplified/centered by two opamps. Output from the tube is amplified by a transimpedance amplifier, amplified again and then output straight to the Z input of the oscilloscope. There is no blanking during either vertical or horizontal retrace, neither on the vidicon nor output, which is less than ideal but works. Vertical frequency is around 40hz, horizontal around 10khz.

Kris\Slyka
Public

shork!

F4GRX Sébastien
Quiet public

@slyka vidishork! (this is a fantastic picture)

Kris\Slyka
Quiet public

@f4grx vidishork on the vidicon vidicam!

F4GRX Sébastien
Quiet public

@slyka it is extremely cool that you managed to hack a video signal scanner using a bread board and a scope as display.

Kris\Slyka
Quiet public

@f4grx getting to the point where I could suddenly make out blurry outlines and the edge of the sensor was super exciting!

alphabetter
Public

@slyka Super impressive (but slightly spooky images on the green screen).

Kris\Slyka
Public

@alphabetter thanks! Next step is gonna be replacing most of the analogue ramp generation with a microcontroller and digitally sampling the image to turn it into a USB webcam :D

Lasse Beyer
Quiet public

@slyka @alphabetter ...and add a nice boost converter to power everything from USB 👍

KalleMP
Public

@slyka Well engineered. Vidicons and vacuum tubes are fun. I have a NOS 2 inch oscilloscope tube I want to use for something, a curve tracer or system RAM/CPU monitor or something.