Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[paulca]

3.5mm jacks and the fact you can't avoid cross connecting all the various sets of pins.  Except may the last.

Still struggling with mains leakage on audio grounds I wince and make a face every time I plug the jack lead in, invariably the tip (signal) touches ground and with the two systems floating at AC and DC offsets I get a massive BRRRRRRRRRRRR 50Hz at way, way, way more than full tilt.  I think I measure the mains leakage into 10K at around 14VPP.

Really I should turn the volume down when I do that, but I'm lazy.  My brother a sound engineer would probably slap me, really, really hard right now.  (anyone who has felt the eyes of a sound engineer with a multi K rig and someone on stages touches signal to ground and produces a massive 50Hz blast... will understand).

[james_s]

3.5mm jacks and the fact you can't avoid cross connecting all the various sets of pins.  Except may the last.

Still struggling with mains leakage on audio grounds I wince and make a face every time I plug the jack lead in, invariably the tip (signal) touches ground and with the two systems floating at AC and DC offsets I get a massive BRRRRRRRRRRRR 50Hz at way, way, way more than full tilt.  I think I measure the mains leakage into 10K at around 14VPP.

Really I should turn the volume down when I do that, but I'm lazy.  My brother a sound engineer would probably slap me, really, really hard right now.  (anyone who has felt the eyes of a sound engineer with a multi K rig and someone on stages touches signal to ground and produces a massive 50Hz blast... will understand).

They work fine for headphones and earphones which is what they're for. Unfortunately they get used for a lot of applications for which they are poorly suited.

[SilverSolder]

3.5mm jacks and the fact you can't avoid cross connecting all the various sets of pins.  Except may the last.

Still struggling with mains leakage on audio grounds I wince and make a face every time I plug the jack lead in, invariably the tip (signal) touches ground and with the two systems floating at AC and DC offsets I get a massive BRRRRRRRRRRRR 50Hz at way, way, way more than full tilt.  I think I measure the mains leakage into 10K at around 14VPP.

Really I should turn the volume down when I do that, but I'm lazy.  My brother a sound engineer would probably slap me, really, really hard right now.  (anyone who has felt the eyes of a sound engineer with a multi K rig and someone on stages touches signal to ground and produces a massive 50Hz blast... will understand).

They work fine for headphones and earphones which is what they're for. Unfortunately they get used for a lot of applications for which they are poorly suited.

3.5mm jacks/plugs are actually very durable and reliable in real world use.  I have several that are all bent out of shape from years of abuse, that still work great.  Not many other connectors take that kind of abuse...

[vk6zgo]

My latest pet peeve is sellers on eBay & elsewhere who present as "Australian", but if you buy from them, source things from China, the USA, UK, or whatever, with a month or more delivery time.
Previous to now the only things I have bought on the Bay of Evil were a nanoVNA & an AD584 DC voltage reference board.
I was in no rush for them, so the delay wasn't a problem.

This time I wanted a car part, -----a small bushing for the auto trans linkage on my 1999 Toyota, to be precise.

Many of the usual car parts places just didn't seem to have heard of such a thing, & the rest had no stock, so I went on a Googling marathon.
Just about everything that popped up was either one of the suppliers I had already checked, eBay, or Amazon.

Both of the latter had the "Yes, we have them for an exorbitant price, & two months delivery from China" syndrome.

After much digging, I finally found a company in Queensland who not only stocked the things, but they also made them "in house".

For a lower price than everywhere else, I will have the gadget in a couple of days, instead of a couple of months!

A lesser peeve is at Toyota for using a plastic bushing, which when it fails, renders the car unusable, though I can hardly whinge, as it has given reliable service longer than the original lifetime envisaged for the vehicle.

[Zeyneb]

This time I wanted a car part, -----a small bushing for the auto trans linkage on my 1999 Toyota, to be precise.

...

After much digging, I finally found a company in Queensland who not only stocked the things, but they also made them "in house".

Good to know you eventually found that company in Queensland. Can you consult the Electronic Parts Catalog from Toyota? I always like to look at that to see which parts are involved, obtain the official Toyota part number and see what my options are for aftermarket or from the dealer. With some digging on the EPC you might even figure out that some part is used on different models. In Europe we have a big aftermarket online store called autodoc. Even though you might not intent to buy from them, their website can be used as a catalog for aftermarket options: You know all the common brands like Valeo, Bosch, TRW, Aisin, Denso etceteta.

[IDEngineer]

The problem with tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) plugs is they virtually guarantee shorting of the contacts during insertion and removal. That's one reason you see XLR's for better quality audio connections, they don't short. This is also why DC power connectors are barrel type (some even use XLR for power) - no shorting.

[SilverSolder]

What I like about 3.5mm TRS jacks/plugs: 
1) they are universal and almost always work as expected on every device.
2) little or no fiddling with controls or pairing etc. to use - just plug and play
3) generally durable and reliable

the connector sticks out too far from the housing of the device

\
Sometimes sticking out is a good thing -  how many times have you seen cables break near the connector? - that's what happens when the connector does not stick out far enough, and does not have a sufficiently strong elastic strain relief.  This is often how phone charging cables die for me...   3.5mm plugs rarely die this way, the old timers knew that the cable is the weak point.

Maybe you are using higher quality ones.

For the first time ever, I bought some nicer quality ones when I replaced a headphone cable that was falling apart at the cups.  I was looking for long and thin ones that could actually reach my phone's jack through a quite thick carrying case (another case where "sticking out" is a good thing!) and found a nice all-metal design for that.  Since I used some very heavy microphone cable, I added heat shrink tubing on the outside of the plug up and 5cm up the cable, to act as extra strain relief.  If the plugs and jacks were not mechanically strong, they would soon break from the load of the robust cable.

The problem with tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) plugs is they virtually guarantee shorting of the contacts during insertion and removal

That is true, but in many applications that is not important.  Where it is important...  it is not the right solution!

DC power connectors are barrel type

I like the DC barrel connectors even more.  The plugs and jacks are generally very strong, but the cables themselves tend to break where they exit the plug after some years of use.  I use large diameter heat shrink tubing to strengthen this area (overlap the plug and the cable, and shrink away), which makes it reliable for many more years of abuse.

[themadhippy]

because the connector sticks out too far from the housing of the device

so cut em off and retro fit a right angled jack

[paulca]

because the connector sticks out too far from the housing of the device

so cut em off and retro fit a right angled jack

Or, when your DIY jack plug failed, again, because nobody told you not to solder AND crimp, you just twist the wires together or in extreme cases you open the device and shove the wires into the plug socket springs. 

You can tell I worked on a non-existant budget when I was in my 20s.  New stuff wasn't an option, botched up old stuff !   

[paulca]

PC Monitor on screen displays and menus.

Straight to room 101.

I have to routinely change sources on my monitors and it always amazes me how many different ways the menu can make me wait on it and then do the wrong thing, or just power off because it didn't see a signal... because it didn't give you time to switch to the second... and umpteen other bugs.

It's almost as embarressing for the embedded folks as "ATMs" are for enterprise folks like me.

... and why does, in many instances my PC boot faster that the monitor!  Holy moly, how can that be!

[tooki]

I had this problem when my dad died. I had to break into all of his accounts the old fashioned way, thankfully I knew enough about him that I could answer the security questions to reset his email password, then once I had access to his email account it was a lot easier to crack everything else. It would have been far easier if he'd had a list of passwords stashed somewhere though.

I hear you. We went through all that a year ago when my stepdad died. Luckily my mom knew his iPhone passcode, so I could use that as the security token to unlock his iMac and MacBook, which had his email set up.

Frankly, all of us, regardless of age, need to put our master passwords into escrow or something in case we get hit by a car or something.

I mean, when I die, it will be categorically impossible for anyone to guess my myriad account passwords, since they’re randomly generated by my password manager. I don’t know the passwords myself!

[paulca]

  sorry for your losses.  I'm 48.  People my age, childhood friends have started exiting stage already half a dozen are gone.  My grandpa (RIP@96) used to say, "The problem with living a long time, is you out live a lot of friends."

[james_s]

The problem with tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) plugs is they virtually guarantee shorting of the contacts during insertion and removal. That's one reason you see XLR's for better quality audio connections, they don't short. This is also why DC power connectors are barrel type (some even use XLR for power) - no shorting.

Sure but an XLR jack on a walkman, iPod, mobile phone, etc wouldn't be very practical. There are applications where the shorting is not an issue.

[tooki]

One of my pet peeves is when I see posts along the lines of:

"I'm a complete noob, but I've soldered before and I want to design [some extremely challenging project that would likely be difficult for someone with advanced degrees and decades of experience]"

That said, I have absolutely no problem with people who have ambition, goals and a desire to learn, but going from barely being able to crawl to warp speed in one jump is unrealistic at best.

I’ve been dealing with exactly this in real life. Internal customer who we’ve assembled boards for, of his design. They’re pulse amplifier boards which, due to the tiny pulse widths in question, have around 4GHz bandwidth. Despite our microwave expert advising him what to do and not do, he just continues trying ambitious stuff out, without really understanding it. (I mean, I don’t know much about high frequency design, but I don’t claim to, and would defer to the advice of experts!)

Problem is, neither he nor us have the 6-digit-price-tag software that would be needed to accurately simulate it, so more conservative designs with lower risk would be much more achievable, but no…

[james_s]

sorry for your losses.  I'm 48.  People my age, childhood friends have started exiting stage already half a dozen are gone.  My grandpa (RIP@96) used to say, "The problem with living a long time, is you out live a lot of friends."

My grandmother lived to a few weeks before what would have been her 99th birthday. She outlived her husband by 35 years and literally all of her friends, the last passing a few years before her.

[tooki]

The problem with tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) plugs is they virtually guarantee shorting of the contacts during insertion and removal. That's one reason you see XLR's for better quality audio connections, they don't short. This is also why DC power connectors are barrel type (some even use XLR for power) - no shorting.

Sure but an XLR jack on a walkman, iPod, mobile phone, etc wouldn't be very practical. There are applications where the shorting is not an issue.

FWIW, I really like the mini-XLR connector. The plugs are much larger than a 3.5mm plug, but the jacks are not that much bigger than a good quality panel mount 3.5mm jack. Some high-end headphones use mini-XLR for their cables.

It is, however, much too large for mobile phones and the like.

[tooki]

sorry for your losses.  I'm 48.  People my age, childhood friends have started exiting stage already half a dozen are gone.  My grandpa (RIP@96) used to say, "The problem with living a long time, is you out live a lot of friends."

<PG-13 version>While I appreciate the sentiment, in my case it was no loss whatsoever. My stepdad was a horse’s hindquarters narcissist and his departure was a relief. He took from us the opportunity to spend quality time with my mother before her health started to decline, and I’ll never forgive him for that. I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but by making our life hell, he made his bed, now he can lie in it.

[tooki]

Eventually we will get good performing LED headlights in factory cars but it will take a VERY long time and it will NEVER be compatible with other cars on the road which still use Halogen because whenever you have a HID/LED fitted car behind you even just the spill light from it reflecting from trees and road obstacles and street signs can cause your night vision to be ruined and then you are stuck in a very dangerous position where the light in front of you on the road is dimmer because you are using Halogen but your night vision is destroyed because of all of the excess light coming from behind you.

High end cars in Europe already use extremely advanced LED headlamps that use combinations of special optics and LED matrices with very granular control in order to place light exactly where it’s needed and actively black out the beam for oncoming vehicles, pedestrians, etc.

[tooki]

I still don't understand why fluorescent lighting was quickly banned and LED lighting was put in its place which requires you to throw out the entire lighting assembly and replace it with a new one whenever a LED light board or its electronics die. They could have just made Fluorescent lighting more reliable, eg electrodeless inducting lighting works perfectly fine.

Oh boy…

“Quickly banned”? Fluorescent lighting has been on the market in volume since the 1940s. Europe is banning fluorescent later this year because it contains mercury. That’s entirely sensible. But you’re in Australia, where no such ban is in place or planned.

Moreover, LED exceeds fluorescent in both energy efficiency and light quality. It affords light fixture designers much more flexibility in lamp design. Fluorescent doesn’t like being turned on and off frequently. (Even so, it’s a very reliable technology.) And the market has spoken: people HATED compact fluorescent bulbs (thanks to slower turn-on speeds and often terrible light quality), but have embraced LED bulbs.

So in practice, the EU fluorescent ban is more symbolic than anything else, since people largely stopped buying fluorescent years ago anyway.

[james_s]

I strongly dislike bans. The market is, as you say, already shifting. There is no need to ban them, just allow them to fade away. That enables any applications that actually need them to still get them. Germicidal and blacklight lamps are still something fluorescent is superior for.

[tooki]

I strongly dislike bans. The market is, as you say, already shifting. There is no need to ban them, just allow them to fade away. That enables any applications that actually need them to still get them. Germicidal and blacklight lamps are still something fluorescent is superior for.

Specialty fluorescent lamps like UV are exempted for the moment.

[rsjsouza]

I guess I found another pet peeve (more a nuisance, really), which was probably already discussed here: subject reacts to a relatively long old thread based on the impressions of the first post only. Then, subject deletes/scratches the entire post after reading the rest of the thread and realizing the comments are almost all invalid/non-applicable.

By now, the updated posts list is already out to everyone else involved in the past.    

Latest case in point:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/jobs/how-do-you-get-an-electronics-job-when-your-not-popular/msg4650154/#msg4650154

It doesn't happen too frequently, but I found this today.

[paulca]

It's when you search long and hard for a very specific issue and after dozens of searches and hours passing you find one reference that exactly matches your problem, you read the problem/question nodding going, yep, yep, uhha, yes, me too....

And there is one answer and its from the OP and reads.

"It's okay, I fixed it."

[Bud]

I only use a mix of 2700K and 3000K LED bulbs inside the house, and all of them are ceiling mounted. Using desk or under shelf lights gives me problems, as anything above 3000K does too.

[TimFox]

From my experience with film color photography:
Traditional household incandescent bulbs' radiation is close to a thermal black-body spectrum at 2800 K.
Real daylight (from sunshine on a clear day) is close to a black body at 5500 K.
Skylight (in the shadows on a clear day, illuminated by the blue sky) is maybe 7500 K, with more blue light.
Photographic tungsten light (now hard to find) is about 3200 K.
The common photographic terms "cool" = high temperature (bluish) and "warm" = low temperature (reddish) are obviously misnomers, due to associating blue with cold ice and red with hot fire.

LED-phosphor and fluorescent-phosphor lights give only approximately black-body spectra.
Is your problem actually with the brightness (intensity) or the higher blue content in hotter-temperature sources?