Samsung’s 2018 TVs now support FreeSync for smoother gaming | 19mm Momentary Push Button

You can burn your house down in many different ways. Knocking over a poorly placed candle, or dropping a napkin on the electric stove are much more likely than a fault in the wiring, and the insurance company will pay out just the same. They would have to show that you were grossly negligent.

Second was with an old (illegal) CB amp that I was converting to HF, and I touched an unshielded feed inductor of some sort, the aftermath from the RF burn was worse than that time I grabbed the wrong end of an iron with my fingers.

It will only trip the breaker if you have a bonded ground. Soil resistivity has everything to do with it, and is the reason most homes have bonded grounds (the soil resistivity is too high to provide adequate current flow to trip a standard breaker). Unless you have a GFI on that circuit you can still get shocked. Earth ground won’t help you until the voltage gets high enough to cause enough current to flow to trip a standard breaker, and NEC requirements set the limit on earth ground resistivity, the limit they set ends up equaling a voltage of 600 volts required to trip a standard breaker, and that is why most (single family) homes have bonded grounds. Earth ground is only for high voltage transients.

There’s one more multi-shot feature on the Sony A33 that’s worth mentioning; namely Auto HDR (High Dynamic Range). HDR photography increases the range of brightness values represented in a scene by combining two or more shots taken at different exposures, combining highlight detail from some and shadow detail from others. In the past, this has involved locking the camera down on a tripod, shooting several images at different exposures, and then working on a computer to combine them. Lately, though, the capability to do this directly in-camera has been appearing from a number of manufacturers, with varying levels of success. The auto HDR feature on the Sony A33 works pretty well, since the camera does the same micro-alignment trick it uses for its other multi-shot features. Options for HDR include an Auto setting, where the camera determines how much of the effect to apply, and manual settings ranging from 1 to 6(!) EV of exposure range.

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.

A few people made some useful design suggestions. I like the Power Integrations LNK switch suggestion for power. I’d also recommend looking at the SR086, which does the same thing — but it’s inductorless! That’s the chip I’m using for my ESP8266-based WiFi dimmer.

I think that’s technically just thin graphite. Graphene is 1 molecule thick sheets. People were gobsmacked when they discovered you could make it with sellotape.

We, uh, we don’t have sauna heaters down here. We have air conditioners In semi-related news, it was forecast to be 40C today…

Window AC units blast for hours at time and use massive amounts of energy. An extension cord—and usually even sharing the circuit powering your AC with something else—overloads the wires. If they get too hot, the wires could short out and start a fire. Make sure the unit gets its own circuit, meaning a switch on your electrical panel dedicated to your AC and nothing else. Here are 11 more home safety risks and how to avoid them.

A good quality EVSE can cost between $300 and around $1,200. If you’re choosing a wall-mounted unit, expect to pay another several hundred dollars for installation, depending on local labor rates and permit costs.

The morals of the story: buy quality components and test them if possible; when in doubt, derate; and make sure a flaming component can’t light anything else on fire. And you’ll want to review the basics of fire protection while you’re at it.

Handheld Twilight is a scene mode on the Sony A33 and A55, so it doesn’t offer you much control: The camera picks the ISO setting, shutter speed, etc, that it thinks is best, and takes the picture. About all you can control is whether to enable face detection AF or not. For those wanting the multi-shot advantages but with more creative control, Sony offers Multi-Frame Noise Reduction mode. This mode lets you select the ISO you want to use, but the camera micro-aligns and averages together six shots, significantly reducing ISO noise. You get the same basic capability as in Handheld Twilight mode, but retain full control over other exposure parameters.