Monochrome Screens and Photos Don’t Mix Well
Trying to take photos of this screen is tricky; I assure you it looks fine to the naked eye, but my camera/phone is not happy taking them.
There are ways I could take it by setting my camera to manual mode and adjusting settings, but that also would require a tripod. I’ll set it up when I have it finished.
Anyway, it’s now running on A/C power. These machines were designed to run from the vehicle battery, and that’s fine once you have it hooked up to and are working on a vehicle. But I wanted to explore functions with some bench tests while I learn its limitations, and it’s just not practical to pull my car in every time I want to do that.
The answer was an AC to DC plug-in of some sort. This sounds easy, and it is, but getting the right power unit wasn’t easy. Partially because I wanted to go to a shop and pick it up, I’m tired of ordering online then waiting days to get back to the project, it just feels counter-productive. But it turns out trying to find a power unit locally, or even within a distance because I was prepared to travel, was counter-productive.
There wasn’t one to be bought anywhere except online. And prices varied hugely. I ended up finding one on Amazon on Wednesday night and even with choosing free shipping it arrived today (Friday), which was 3 days early. Glad I didn’t pay the 10.99 they wanted to guarantee delivery today, there’s a lesson in there. It’s all set up now and running on wall plug power.
I opted for an SAE J563 connector (cigarette lighter or accessory charging port) to fit with the power unit. It keeps it somewhat standard and fits well with the same connector I have in my power probe kit, so I can still hook it to a 12v battery if needed.
More photos on page 2
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