Sam WN5C has been on the blog before. Last year we covered his heroic use of a Michigan Mighty Mite at Thunderbird State Park: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2023/06/sam-wn5c-builds-michigan-mighty-mite.html
This time, Sam writes about a good ham radio use for ChatGPT:
Hope you’re doing well. Just a quick note: ChatGPT is turning out to be a great homebrewing tool for me.
My elmer has been swamped with family issues, so my basic questions (“can you explain this circuit for me”) and hard questions (“why doesn’t this circuit I built work?!”) that he usually responds to right away has been a bit delayed. I’m in the process of designing a 5-band QRP CW transceiver with a superhet receiver and SSB receive so I’m learning a bunch of new circuits.
I’ve hated the idea of AI as someone who writes a lot (it cheapens what I’ve spent my career trying to perfect!), but man it is smart. I can ask it all kinds of questions. For example, it helped me design a little IF amp last night and ensured I got my impedance matching right (it’s great for mashing up lots of circuits and ensuring they work together). I can ask it for suggestions on part types and values. It helps with Arduino code if you’re into that. You can use plain language but it does well with heavy jargon. And, which I find really cool, it will step you through troubleshooting. It teaches the math, too.
Anyway, you or your readers might find this helpful. Especially when one is building at 3 AM and needs an answer immediately.
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Thanks Sam!
We have had mixed but interesting results with ChatGPT 4.0. A (non-ham) friend and I have been working on a large project with numerous components. We looked at this huge gEDA generated B.O.M. and decided to funnel it though ChatGPT and let it do the Procurement Manager task. It was tasked to find best price/availability, etc from distributors. It did very good from one distributor, but it did very poorly on another. So, manual patching (over a 3 day period) ensued. Would we try it again on our next project? Probably, but maybe it will be more refined and we should know better how to use it.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking of expanding the Ludite curmudgeon dictionary: Menus are for restaurants. Libraries are for books. And now BOMs are for, what, wars? ;-)
ReplyDelete73 Bill
Hello N2CQR! BOM stands for Bill Of Material, a.k.a. Parts List. Ha! The Ludite curmudgeon dictionary! I'll put in for a copy, myself.
ReplyDeleteWN2A -- Yea, I know the acronym. Some guys quickly ask for a complete schematic, an up-to-date BOM, and Gerber files for all of our rigs. They sometimes get upset when we don't have them. Oh well... BOMs away! 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteThe rare need for an answer at three AM notwithstanding, there's a tremendous amount to be learned from manually wrestling with a BOM without reliance on either an EWHB (Elmer with a heartbeat) or on an EWNS (Elmer with no soul--an AI chatbot).
DeleteThere are the *mechanical* factors such as lead spacing and arrangement, body size, and thermal capacity, and *electrical* factors such as tolerance, thermal stability, self-resonance, and Q. Part of what's learned by trying to juggle these factors is that a resistor is also an inductor and a capacitor, a capacitor is also an inductor and a resistor, and a transistor is also a resistor, a capacitor, and an inductor. The appearance of these components on a schematic obscures these parasitics, and usually makes no indication at all how ambient temperature can change both the nominal and the parasitic values of the component.
Having to consider all these factors directly while assembling a purchase order with specific catalog or stock numbers forces a degree of understanding that is absolutely not to be had if someone (or some *thing*) hands you a complete BOM. It's also a way of simulating (in an amateur setting) the detailed and very-practical considerations a professional engineer faces in the real world. As a practical expedient, an engineer might use chatGPT or other such tool to lighten his burden, but he does so treading a fine line between competence and dependence. Even an amateur should prefer the former over the latter.
I recently tried using Anthropic's Claude app for a low pass filter, it did a very respectable job with schematics, and the best thing... you can ask it questions. May not be bullet proof accurate, but sure is impressive. Paul VK3HN.
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