River Bank is the stackable battery for everything you power, everywhere you go | Lrd12 Overload Relay

A mains isolation transformer. wdwd [GFDL], via Wikimedia CommonsAn isolation transformer isolates the mains supply from the earthing system. This does not change any of the risks inherent to the mains voltage or other high voltages in your device, but it does provide you with some level of protection should you accidentally provide a path to earth from a live component.

Please nobody get one of these boards. It is not a safe design for working with mains voltages. This guy has not followed guidelines for minimum creepage and clearances between the low voltage and mains side. You think it’s optoisolated and it may work fine for the majority of the time, but as soon as a mains voltage spike comes along it could bridge the gap and zap your circuit and you if you’re touching it (and your computer if you’re doing doing dev work at the time).

User interface. Sony has retained a similar menu system in the Sony A33 to that previously featured in the Alpha series DSLRs, but incorporating the new database-driven Playback mode from the NEX-series SLD models. The user interface of the Sony A33 is generally clean and easy to understand, with the one major exception being the rather arbitrary segregation of still images and videos in playback mode. Switching between viewing stills and videos requires the user to either enter the menu system, or zoom out to the thumbnail view and select the appropriate tab. Neither option is immediately obvious without reading the manual, and photographers unfamiliar with the interface might believe they’d accidentally deleted the unavailable media, not realizing they were simply in the wrong viewing mode.

Waterjet, who seemingly has no concept of how a basic opto-isolated diac-driven triac circuit works, chimes in with useless blabber about insufficient current ratings of the *optoisolator* — seriously? If you’re going to throw stones at someone, perhaps you could verify that you have somewhat of a clue of what you’re talking about?

The control buttons are for the most part intelligently arranged and readily accessible, but the small space available for them on the right side of the body does mean that you need to hold the camera in your left hand to be able to access them properly: They’re really too close to the right side of the camera to keep your fingers wrapped around the grip and operate the buttons with any degree of comfort. On the angled top/back panel, the EV adjust button is perfectly located, right under your thumb, with the AE lock and movie recording buttons on either side of it. The movie button does require a deliberate reach to get to, but is nonetheless easy to identify by feel when you’re looking through the viewfinder; just slide your thumb over until it hits the viewfinder housing, and you’ll be right on top of the movie button.

Given my long-term dislike of EVFs, I was surprised to find myself as comfortable as I was with the one on the Sony A55 and A33. It by no means corrects all the ills of the genre, but does go a long way in the right direction. It still loses highlight detail in scenes with both deep shadows and strong highlights, but I found it workable most of the time. I could generally make out clouds against the sky, important for framing landscape shots. It also seemed to do pretty well under low light conditions, although as of this writing, I haven’t done a lot of night photography with the camera. Still, the large pixels of the Sony A33′s APS-C size sensor mean that its EVF is much more able to form a usable viewfinder image under dim lighting than is that of a typical digicam. Under really dark conditions, I’d still like to see it gain-up a bit more, though, even at the cost of slower refresh rates.

Heat is a result of the friction of electron flow. Half the current at double the voltage should result in roughly half the heat if using the same size wire. It’s why our grid transmits at 100k volt over long distances.

When I was a about 12, my mother decided to fault find a 35mm slide viewer. 240vac in, 6vac out of the transformer to a plug which fitted a socket under the viewer. Slide closed two metal contacts.

When building my printer, I also didn’t like the then state-of-the-art heated PCBs. Thus, I ordered a bespoke silicone heater mat from China, mains voltage, 400 Watts of heater power. Add an aluminium plate to the top and ground it, and safety will be sufficient. I use an SSR embedded into a wall-wart form factor project case with plenty of snubber circuits. Cons: More expensive than a PCB Pros: Heats up incredibly quickly, reasonably priced, won’t get damaged by prolonged high temperature, easy to make non-life-threatening.

Handheld Twilight mode captures a batch of high-ISO images, reducing blur from camera shake, and then averages the aligned exposures so as to reduce image noise. A new Multi-Frame NR mode acts similarly, but allows the ISO sensitivity to be selected manually, allowing use even at lower sensitivities. Of course, these effects could all be achieved in a PC with some work and know-how, but what’s impressive is that they’re now available with a minimum of fuss, in-camera. To ensure that even inexperienced photographers can derive benefit from these features, Sony has also created a new Auto+ exposure mode that can identify when these functions might be of use, and then enable them automatically.

Evil picture, don’t coil your cord tightly around the EVSE, it should hang loosely to dissipate heat

I’m a bit disappointed, I thought this was a safe place for dangerous ideas. If you want to diy an ELV heat bed go ahead, but that isn’t going to suit everyone.