The ware for April 2023 is an X-rite DTP22 spectrophotometer. This one almost made it through the month without being guessed, but congrats to cpresser for figuring it out in the last week! email me for your prize.
Here’s some more context images of the ware. The colored filter disk is quite pretty, but if I had included it in the original photoset the function of the ware would have been a bit too … transparent.
Thanks again to artemb for contributing such an interesting ware!
The Ware for April 2023 is shown below.
Another PCB with a funny shape, this time from a different era…but what does it do?
Thanks to artemb for contributing this ware!
Still no correct answers, so here’s another hint. See that connector in the lower right hand corner of the bottom side of the board? Something stacks on it, and it looks like this:
The Ware for March 2023 is the controller board from a Hövding 3 “Airbag for Urban Cyclists”. Congrats to jackw01 for arriving at the correct answer! congrats, email me for your prize. This one was surprisingly difficult to guess from just the PCB alone, but once the associated actuators and sensors were revealed, it was quickly resolved. Here’s some more images of the gas generator itself:
Still mind boggling to me that anyone would rely on something so complicated as a primary form of protection, but I suppose I am just old fashioned and that’s where we are headed in general.
The Ware for March 2023 is shown below:
Thank again to spida for submitting this ware. I was certainly stumped when I first saw it! Again, some very big “clues” are not shown, which I will add to the post later if it turns out to be too difficult to guess.
April 9, 2023: Here’s an additional image, courtesy of spida, that enhances the contrast on some key parts.
I’ll also drop a meta-hint. As is the case for most modern, highly integrated MCU-based wares, any context photo revealing what plugs into the connectors basically gives away the entire function of the ware. If the enhanced image of the circuit board does not converge guesses toward a correct functional class, I’ll add a context photo in roughly one week that should do the trick.
This part of the reason why I personally like looking at vintage wares and test equipment…you can learn a lot just by looking at the circuit board!
April 16, 2023: Here’s a “context” image hint. This is a picture of the circuit board, installed in its case with all of its peripheral devices plugged in. My assumption is this image should rapidly lead to the ware being guessed, but…this one has been surprisingly difficult so far!
The Ware for February 2023 is just a tiny portion of a Pioneer DDJ-400. Still enough for wrm to guess it exactly! Congrats, email me for your prize. It is the case that Pioneer gear has a very distinctive design style to it. I wonder if their PCB design software isn’t some in-house tool, or at least a tool with a niche client list.
Just for completeness, here’s the larger context image I would have added to the post if just the tightly cropped image with the bearing turned out to be a stumper:
