Ask STEAM Science/Engineering

Engineer by profession/education, but semiconductor fundamentals is a huge gap in my education (long story). I bought a textbook and have been following a lecture series on youtube... but don't have anyone to ask my questions to.

Thanks! :)

from my twitter:

"So I'd like two radios that I can put on a portable module. One that's high range low rate. Other is low range high rate.

For a commodity mesh/peer to peer internet networking module.

I'm no RF expert myself but I'm trying to find these to order and put on a PCB in a 3D printed enclosure with battery that could maybe be carried around in the size of a pocket.

I think free internet is a right not something those sick lizards can gate keep.

And if this is not something I can find easily available then I would like to know how to skillfully manufacture them."

^ stocking my electronics lab so I can get back to designing products.

But there is so much to choose from. I open all the categories I'm interested in on LCSC.com (I'm interested in most of the categories). I give some basic reqs if any and sort by cheapest.

So much endless options and so much information to wade through on every single chip. It's overwhelming and ends up being very time consuming.

I try to take pictures of circuit boards with my phone in high res... Since the light is angled when it enters my camera the edges of the board are distorted so that the small texts are blocked and/or distorted.

And I don't know if getting a camera with a bigger lense (flattening) and sensor (lighting) would fix it. Regardless I don't want to do that right now. Or do I need to rely on optical zoom?

So is there an app that can use the phones' instruments and with giving me guidance would give me a flat image result?

Or I need some solution?

For my workstation water cooling project I plan on ordering some of these 18W fans to mount to the radiator. I plan to test with PWM what output is optimal for the whole system.

I would like to see if it's really worth it to pay more for these heavy duty guys.

I figure since the bottle neck in any fan dependent cooling system is the air thermal conductivity then it should be advantageous to pass more airflow but I don't know at what point there is another limiting factor.

I want to get better metrics on this.

No markation and IC is shaved. Want to use for radiator fans on my workstation water loop.

I've ordered a 360mm radiator for my budget Xeon workstation project.

What fans should I buy and how should I wire it to my motherboard which has two 4 pin fan connectors?