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I’m starting to investigate PyGame as an alternative to PIL and K for my QRSS VD spectrograph project. This sample code makes a box bounce around a window.
import pygame, sys
pygame.init() #load pygame modules
size = width, height = 320, 240 #size of window
speed = [2, 2] #speed and direction
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size) #make window
s=pygame.Surface((100,50)) #create surface 100px by 50px
s.fill((33,66,99)) #color the surface blue
r=s.get_rect() #get the rectangle bounds for the surface
clock=pygame.time.Clock() #make a clock
while 1: #infinite loop
clock.tick(30) #limit framerate to 30 FPS
for event in pygame.event.get(): #if something clicked
if event.type == pygame.QUIT: #if EXIT clicked
sys.exit() #close cleanly
r=r.move(speed) #move the box by the "speed" coordinates
#if we hit a wall, change direction
if r.left < 0 or r.right > width: speed[0] = -speed[0]
if r.top < 0 or r.bottom > height: speed[1] = -speed[1]
screen.fill((0,0,0)) #make redraw background black
screen.blit(s,r) #render the surface into the rectangle
pygame.display.flip() #update the screen
My oscilloscope decided to die on my right as I finally was able to view my 10 MHz waveform. I used a piece of coax with a load at the connector to the o-scope, and ran the coax to my test points. It was beautiful! … and lasted about 30 seconds. The culprit seems to be a failing “focus” knob. My images had been getting blurrier by the day, and now it’s completely black unless I twist pretty hard on the focus knob. I’d stick a small pot in there, but I have no idea how much voltage/current is being regulated. I’m sure the schematics are posted somewhere, but for now I’m going to try to clean out the potentiometer manually and see if the situation improves. Here are some photos of the circuitry inside this old scope. They don’t make stuff like this anymore!
Update: I never got this scope to work again!
⚠️ WARNING: This page is obsolete
Articles typically receive this designation when the technology they describe is no longer relevant, code
provided is later deemed to be of poor quality, or the topics discussed are better presented in future
articles. Articles like this are retained for the sake of preservation, but their content should be
critically assessed.
Now that my minimalist QRSS transmitter is mostly functional, I’m shifting gears toward building a minimalist receiver. These are some early tests, but I’m amazed I managed to hack something together that actually works! Once it’s finished I’ll post schematics. For now, here are some photos. This receiver is based upon an SA602 and although there *IS* an op-amp on the board, I actually bypassed it completely! The SA602 seems to put out enough juice to make my PC microphone jack happy, and those cheap op-amps are noisy anyway, so awesome! Go minimalism!
Here’s the output from 7.040 MHz. Conditions are pretty bad right now, and I’m at my apartment using my crazy indoor antenna