Oil, gas, or geothermal well blows out when there is an uncontrolled flow of mud and formation fluid from the well. Not all blowouts include well fires, but this one did. In 1980, at a well in the Lost Hills oil field, a production packer malfunctioned during changeover operations, leading to a high casing pressure. With any vacuum truck, removing drilling mud at the site pulled away too soon, breaking off the casing valve below the BOP equipment. For an hour and 45 minutes, the well flowed oil, gas, mud, and completion fluid through the hole in the casing before a rock from the well caused a spark in the cellar and the gas ignited. Early the next morning, workmen put out the fire with a dry chemical extinguisher. Three days later, the well was killed by pumping heavy mud into the well bore. In 1974, a well being drilled at the McDonald Island gas storage field blew out and burned for 19 days. The fire was extinguished and the well was brought under control by drilling a relief well nearby. The blowout was caused by swabbing action. When the drill pipe and bit were being pulled from the hole, mud began to blow out of the drill pipe and about a minute later the gas ignited. The crew stated that although they tried to actuate the BOP hydraulic controls, the controls did not work properly, though they were apparently in working order before the blowout. This geothermal well blew out at the geysers geothermal field in March 1975. The blowout occurred when the casing was sheared off about 125 feet below the ground. The break may have been caused by a landslide. The blowout was controlled by excavating around the well casing to a depth of 82 feet and installing two steam relief systems. New segments of the casing were welded on to replace those removed through excavation and the hole was backfilled. Finally, the well was squinched by pumping in large volumes of cold water. In the early days, oil and gas wells were drilled without mud or other precautions against blowouts. Blowouts were a frequent part of oil field life, signaling production strata had been reached. Today the recognition of the enormous waste of resources that a blowout causes, as well as the damage to the environment, loss of equipment, danger to human life and financial loss have stimulated the development of modern BOP equipment and blowout prevention practices. The blowouts you have just seen were exceptional events because today blowouts rarely occur in California. We feel that one of the primary reasons for this is the enforcement of division laws and regulations by engineers such as yourselves when you witness BOP tests and inspect BOP equipment. Learning to test and evaluate BOP equipment requires both knowledge and experience. Basic BOP data are in the division publication MO7, Oil and Gas Well Blowout Prevention in California. This manual is your guide to proper BOP equipment. Study it carefully. But just knowing what is in the manual is not enough. You also need hands-on experience and the more the better. Not only are well sites and equipment different, there are four BOP classifications to become familiar with. Class three, the one most commonly used in California, is the only one discussed in this film. Only a few more steps are involved for class four. Class one and class two installation procedures are less complex than those for a class three well. Most of you know Bill Stark. Bill is a division engineer, especially familiar with BOP tests and equipment. In this film, he will demonstrate how BOP equipment is tested and inspected. He will use diagrams as well as BOP equipment set up by H&H Tool Company in Santa Paula. Appropriate sections of the blowout prevention equipment memo will be shown throughout this demonstration. This form must be completed forever well that is inspected or tested. Also, Bill will look at and discuss BOP equipment at active rigs. His comments on what he sees are the result of years of work. I am especially pleased to bring to you, through this film, the experience and knowledge that Bill Stark has about the oil patch. And in particular about BOP equipment. One of our responsibilities, of course with the help of the drilling foreman and production foreman, is to test and inspect blowout prevention equipment. For this particular demonstration, I will be manipulating the various types of valves and so forth. But if this were an actual test, that responsibility would be with the well foreman or rig foreman. The class of BOP equipment used at a particular well depends on the proposed well operations and the MPSP, or the maximum predicted surface pressure. Record this information, which is available from the P report posted at the well site. Also, fill in the casing record of the well, the hole sizes and the cement details. The information is available from the tower sheets. As a division representative, you must ensure that each well meets division requirements for casing, cementing, whole fluid monitoring equipment, BOP equipment, including the actuating system, the control stations, the emergency backup system, and the auxiliary equipment. First, we want to determine what positions the valves are in. They should all be in the open position. Then we'll notice the pressure gauge, which is the accumulator pressure gauge. In this case, it reads 3,000. We have our manifold pressure at 1,500 and our high drill pressure at about 700. With all these in the open position and the pressure remaining static, we can determine that the blowout preventer equipment is not leaking in the open position and that there is no leaks in the manifold system in the open position. To test our pressure switch, we can bleed a little fluid through the bleeder valve here. Watch the gauge for the accumulator pressure and we can see that it kicks in The backup, until it kicks off, we can determine the amount of pressure on the accumulator. It kicks off at about 2,900 to 3,000 pounds, which is good. We can determine also that the accumulator, the remote switches are electrical. We can look through the system and determine if there is any leaks in any of the valves. All the valves in this system drain right back into the reservoir. Record the working pressure, the total rated pump output, and the distance of the unit from the well bore. Also note the manufacturer's name, the accumulator's capacity, and the pre-charge pressure. This particular accumulator is an H&H, very similar to a Akumi accumulator. If the accumulator unit seems to be inadequate, it can be tested by a method described in the BOP manual. To make sure all the accumulator pumps are functioning, we will use the following test. Record the results. We will disconnect the electrical from the pump. We will then close the blind realms. And we will watch the pressure drop, and the time that it took to close them was about 3 seconds. The pressure drop, we will read that from the accumulator pressure from 3000 to 2100. Now we will plug our accumulator back into the source and time how long it takes to pump the system back up to 3000 pounds. Rated output of the pump is within 80% of its capacity. Convenient sight to show the level of our fluid. If we did not have this, we could determine it should be 10 inches below, no more than 10 inches below the top of the accumulator. We want to make sure that the electrical outlet to the accumulator unit shall not be interrupted during normal well operations. We also want to make sure that it does not share a common outlet with any other electrical plug-in in the system. We want to make sure that all the valves in the system can be operated by hand without using any other mechanical means. Two 80 gallon hydril accumulators, the nitrogen system is the same as the H&H. This is the petcock to check the fluid level in this type accumulator. This vent in our manual states to look through this vent at the return line to see if we have any leaks. I'd like to mention that to really see this you must have a mirror and in most cases the flashlight to be able to see the fluid returning through the return line. The pumps on this accumulator are located here and this particular pump puts out approximately 1.7 gallons per minute. Also you want to make sure that the accumulator is well vented. In some cases where they might have to use the nitrogen, if it's not well vented there's a possibility of bursting the reservoir. Here we have the emergency backup system hooking into the pressure block. This pressure block contains a check valve to keep the nitrogen from returning back into the accumulator when it's empty. When you look at the emergency backup system, note the system type. First we want to check each of the fittings and hoses and make sure that they're not of a low pressure. It can be very dangerous to open one of these valves and one of these blow off. So we check this to make sure that it's safe. Then we will open the first bottle, make sure that this valve is closed before you start. Now that we've got one bottle open we will check our pressure gauge. This particular bottle is about 2,700 pounds. Now we will close this one and open the next bottle. Our pressure gauge still remains at 2,700 pounds. We've determined that both of these bottles are equally pressurized at 2,700. Had this bottle been less than 2,700 pounds the pressure would have equalized into the lower pressure bottle. We will check the third bottle now. Our pressure gauge still remains at 2,700 pounds. This shows us that all the bottles are fully charged. We can now close all these off. One other thing I would like to mention that this system should have a valve of either a gate valve or some sort of valve, check valve. This particular system has a check valve. In case we have to use the nitrogen system to close the preventers in emergency we won't lose all of our nitrogen in these bottles that would be depleted. If you feel the accumulator is inadequate, isolate the accumulator pump motor from its power supply. Hang the smallest OD pipe for which the pipe ramps have been installed through the preventers and perform the following test sequence within one minute time span. Close and open the pipe ramps. The pressure should remain, should not be no lower than 1,200 psi. In this case we have approximately 1,350 pounds which shows that the accumulator is very adequate. Determine if the control manifold is an electric or hydraulic model and record this information. The distance between the control manifold and the well bore must be 50 feet. Access to the control manifold must be unobstructed. The control handles must be properly labeled as to function. Hydreal, open, close, pipe ramps, open, close, blind ramps, open, close. We want to determine as nearly as possible if the regulators on the accumulator is working properly. We have one regulator that regulates the hydreal pressure. That would be this gauge. It is increased by turning this. We can decrease it with this valve. 700 pounds is a good operating pressure for hydreal. On this side we have another regulator. This regulator regulates the manifold pressure. It reduces the 3,000 pounds down to 1,500 pounds which is operating pressure for most BOP equipment. In the same manner as the hydreal, we decrease the pressure by opening this valve. And we increase it by opening this valve. This should remain at approximately 1,500 pounds at all times. A remote station must be within 10 feet of the driller or head well puller. Record the remote station type. Check over the whole fluid monitoring equipment. Indicate whether each component has an audio or visual alarm system. This system has an audio alarm. Here is a calibrated mud pit. This is a pump stroke counter. You will find this device on the side of each pump being used. This is the pit level recorder. This is the flow sensor. This device is mounted on the flow line. And well when the mud flow is either too high or too low. The system becomes a mud totalizer simply by adding floats to each mud pit in the system. The total mud volume is then recorded on this recorder. When pressure testing is required, the kill line, BOP stack, choke lines, internal preventer, Kelly Cox and stand pipe valve must be tested in the direction of the blowout flow. Before beginning this process, examine the system and record the appropriate information. Determine that all kill lines, choke lines and fittings conform to the division's requirements. Close the choke manifold valves farthest from the well bore. Making certain that all other valves in the choke system are fully open. Close the blind ram preventer using the remote station. Apply the predetermined test pressure to the well bore through the kill line. Observing the pressure gauges at the pump and at the choke manifold to see that they coincide within 10%. When the pressure is stabilized, close the kill line control valve next to the well bore. Bleed the pressure at the pump. The pressure at the choke manifold should remain at the stabilized value. When the kill line is required to have a check valve, class 3 and class 4 BOPs, open the kill line control valve and check that there is no decrease in the pressure at the choke manifold. Working with each line in the choke manifold separately, close the next upstream valve and open the downstream valve until all the valves in the manifold except the adjustable choke have been operated. There should be no change in the pressure as indicated by the choke manifold pressure gauge. All valves should be operable by one person without mechanical assistance other than a pipe wrench. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold and open the blind rams. All valves on the outboard side of the manifold must be in the closed position. This valve, this valve and these two valves. All other valves in the system must be open. In this particular case that we do not have a bleed line or a choke line, but in a natural test we would have these two lines hooked up to a tank or into the production system. Close the blind ram preventer at the remote station. We see that it's operating right here. Record the test data. I am applying the predetermined test pressure to the well bore through the kill line. The pressure is indicated on the gauges here at the pumps and at the choke manifold should coincide by 10%. I will now close the kill line valve next to the well head. Now I am bleeding the pressure at the pump. The pressure at the choke manifold should stay at the stabilized value. When the system has a check valve, we must open this valve and not lose any pressure at the choke manifold. The pressure at the choke manifold should be the same as before opening this valve. We will now close this valve. We now will bleed the pressure from the choke manifold through this valve, the outboard valve. Our gauge should remain at the predetermined pressure. All class 3 BOP equipment should have a choke. And we do not require a test of the choke, but we do require that the choke be operable by one person and by hand. We will now bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold. Open the blind rams. We have two T's here. In my left hand, this is a 3,000 pound steel T. It is rated for 3,000 pound. This is a 250 to 300 pound T. If this was put into the killer choke line, it would be the weakest point of the system and could cause injury and possibly cause uncontrolled blowout. Here we have a rising stem gate valve. This valve can be used in geothermal, but should never be used in oil and gas in the killer choke lines. This valve is a 5,000 pound ball valve and it is a full opening valve. This is a very good valve to be used in the system. This valve is a non-rising stem valve. It is also a gate valve. You can tell it is a non-rising stem. If you open this valve, this part, it remains stable at this point and the stem is never in sight. I would also like to point out the armor coated lines that are now acceptable by OSHA and the division at the BOP. Run enough pipe into the hole when possible to prevent jacking the string back out when the test pressure is applied. Attach the kelly to the pipe string and establish circulation through the kelly to the flow line.  There should be no pipe upsets opposite the pipe ramps or annular preventer. Close the annular preventer using the remote station. Close the stand pipe valve and apply the test pressure through the kill line. Observing the choke manifold pressure gauge, the stand pipe pressure gauge should not register any pressure. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold and open the annular preventer, the upper kelly cock and the stand pipe valve. We have now run enough pipe into the hole to prevent jacking the string back out when the test pressure is applied. We have attached the kelly to the pipe string and have established circulation through the kelly to the flow line. We have closed the upper kelly cock and raised the pipe string until the kelly bushing is out of the rotary table. There should be no pipe upsets opposite the pipe ramps or annular preventer. Close the annular preventer at the remote station. Make sure there's no leaks in the four-way valve or the annular preventer. We'll take a look inside and everything looks good. Close the stand pipe valve and apply the test pressure through the kill line. Observing the choke manifold pressure gauge, the stand pipe pressure gauge should not register any increase. We will now bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold.  Close the pipe ramps using the remote station. Apply the test pressure through the kelly. Observing the pressure gauges at the stand pipe and at the choke manifold, they should coincide within 10%. When the pressure is stabilized, close the choke line control valve adjacent to the well bore. Open the choke manifold to the atmosphere. Observing the pressure at the stand pipe. There should be no deviation as the choke manifold pressure goes to zero. Close the valves downstream from the choke manifold pressure gauge. Open the choke line control valve adjacent to the well bore. The pressure gauges at the stand pipe and at the choke manifold should again coincide but at a slightly reduced reading. Close the stand pipe valve and bleed the pressure at the pump. Observing the stand pipe pressure gauge. There should be no deviation as the pump pressure goes to zero. Close the lower kelly cock if one is installed and open the stand pipe valve. Observing the pressure at the choke manifold. There should be no deviation as the stand pipe pressure goes to zero. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold. Break off the kelly and install the safety valve and an internal preventer in the top of the pipe string with the internal preventer uppermost. Close the safety valve and leave the internal preventer open. Apply the test pressure through the kill line. Observing the pressure at the choke manifold gauge. When the pressure is stabilized close the internal preventer and slowly open the safety valve. There should be no backflow. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold. Remove the safety valve and the internal preventer and open the pipe ramps. Close the pipe ramps at the remote station. We will now observe inside the river bore to see if there's any leaks in the pipe ramp in the full way valve or the ramps themselves. Everything looks okay. Apply the test pressure through the kelly. Observing the pressure gauges at the stand pipe and the choke manifold. The pressures should coincide within 10%. Then close the choke line control valve adjacent to the well bore. Open the choke manifold to the atmosphere. Observe the pressure at the stand pipe. There should be no deviation in the pressure as the choke manifold pressure goes to zero. Close the valves downstream through the choke manifold pressure gauge. Open the choke line valve adjacent to the well head. Observe the choke manifold gauge and the stand pipe gauge. The pressures should coincide but at a slightly reduced reading. Close the stand pipe valve. Bleed the pressure at the pump observing the stand pipe pressure gauge. There should be no deviation as the pump goes to zero. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold. Break off the kelly. Install the safety valve and the internal preventer in the top of the pipe string with the internal preventer uppermost. Close the safety valve leaving the internal preventer open. Apply the test pressure through the kill line observing the pressure at the choke manifold gauge. Slowly open the safety valve. There should be no backflow from the internal preventer. Bleed the pressure from the well bore through the choke manifold. Remove the internal preventer. Remove the safety valve. Open the pipe ramps. We also want to note the type, model and pressure rating of the different types of BOP in the stack. Here we have a Hydro GK 5,000 pound pressure rating. Here we have a double shaft type B 5,000 pound pressure rating. We have this stack on a 5,000 by 3,000 crossover mud cross. The system, the pressure rating of the system would depend upon the weakest part of the system which is 3,000 in this case. As we carry out the division's inspection procedures we play an important part in assuring a continued wise and safe development of our petroleum and geothermal resources.


Hey, hello, and welcome to the show. It is time for Show and Tell. I'm John Park. I'm not Lamore and Phil. I am filling in tonight, and they'll be here right after this show for the next show, which is Ask an Engineer. They're busily preparing for that right now. So I'm guest hosting. And we have a few Adafruit people who have joined the show tonight to show and to tell some neat stuff. And if you would like to also show and tell, you can do that just by heading over to Adafruit.it slash Discord. That'll get you right to our Discord. Look for the live broadcast chat channel. There is a link there that will take you to the show and tell, which is in StreamYard. You just need to have your camera and microphone shared into your browser and you'll be able to hop on and show us some stuff. So without further ado, we'll bring on Scott and see what Scott is up to. Hey, John. Thanks for hosting. Thanks for having me. As folks who watch Deep Dive, which is usually Fridays at 2 p.m. Pacific, plug, plug, plug. We'll talk about this later on Friday as well. You know, I have a bugbear with embedded build systems. Yes, you do. Just super detailed, but I've been really thinking about what I want out of a build system. And so I'm starting to prototype it. And so here what I have is, I have a Python build script called build picolipsi, which is a version of libc. It doesn't actually build it yet, but what I'm working on is that I just want to just give it like the microcontroller name like samd21 or 51, and it should just figure out like, what are my compilation settings? I don't need to know that it's Cortex M0 plus blah, blah, blah. Instead, I could do like, oh, what about an STM32 G4? And it can find that it's a Cortex M4 and set it all up for me just automatically. And then once it does more, it would actually build the library for me in that specific mode for that specific microcontroller. Very cool. So I'm, yeah. And in the sense of circuit Python, we would know like the specific microcontroller name and then it would be automatically figuring out all of that stuff as well. I'm interested in that. So that's where I'm going. I think that's my ideal for how to build stuff on embedded or for embedded. That's excellent. The quest continues. Always. And next is fixing the compiler to work better for me, but we'll get there. Do you think you'll be showing some of this on your next deep dive? Will you be? That's my plan. Yep. That's my plan. I got a pull request out for the USB host feathering support as well. So we should probably talk about that too. Ooh. Yeah. Very cool. This is kind of my reward for getting that pull request out. Excellent. Good. Congratulations on that. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for making potentially life easier for compiling. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Take care. Bye. All right. Next up, we have Jeff Epler, aka Jepler. Hello. I'm not doing any compiling right now. I was doing a little 3D printing. So last week, I showed an adapter I'm creating for a USB keyboard to Xerox820 retro computer. And the wiring in here is kind of awful, but the 3D print is two pieces or two copies of the same piece. And they hold the shell connector here and then you can close it up and put in four screws. There are some dimensions I need to work on and I need to put some kind of nice cap on the end. But now I can just slot this right on the back of my Xerox plug-in a USB keyboard and type away instead of needing the specific old. So it's like a dongle. It's like a dongle. Yeah, it goes right on the back. Yeah, very cool. And then the other thing I'm excited about is a couple of weeks ago, I designed a circuit board and this adapts from this will be another dongle on the back effectively. This is the floppy drive connector of the Xerox820 and this is a more standard modern 34 pin connector. So again, I won't have to use the washing machine sized two 8 and a half inch or two 8 inch floppies hopefully anymore. I'll be able to adapt it to a modern floppy or to a go tech with this board. I just got this and soldered it up. I don't know if it works yet because revision A of a board is really kind of usually flipped in merits somehow. Yeah, it probably will be. I had a friend look, but you know, you need 12 friends to look before you can be confident about it. Excellent. Good. Cool. And I imagine you'll be 3D printing a designing and 3D printing a little case for that too. Yeah, I imagine so. I didn't really add any mounting holes. There's a couple that had to be here to mount this little D sub connector, which thankfully it's a weird number. It's like 37, but it's not so weird. They don't make it anymore. So just a couple bucks on Digi key with some of these old computers. There's like an Apple connector and an immediate connector that you just can't find it for any price in the world. Thanks, but this one, this one is easy. So yeah, and then in the middle here, I've got kind of a little two row area that I can use to fix any any traces that I decide need to be some other way. But oh, nice. Hopefully, hopefully I will be able to then, you know, then all I need is the main board, which I'm not going to try to lift up because there's stuff sitting on top of it. And that'll be like the only vintage part you need and you'll be able to add a modern keyboard, display it on a modern monitor and use a modern floppy emulator light go tech. And I feel like I'm two thirds of the way there. So that's really cool. That's great. Good. Thanks for keeping the vintage input device dreams alive with code and hard ground. All right. Anyway, that's what I got. Thanks for hosting. You bet. Thanks so much for stopping by Jeff. We'll see you next time. Ciao. Bye. Okay. Next up, we've got Erin and that's beautiful. I am here today to show off some of the photos I got of this incredible astronomical that we had this week. I was pretty lucky. I got to go out to. I don't know if I'm lucky, but I got to go on a trip out. I went to rural Ohio in the middle of cornfield all by myself with some family and friends and got to see this amazing eclipse happen. Wow. I don't know if you've ever seen a total solar eclipse, but a lot of people have seen a partial and honestly, like the difference is it's night and day really was something to wow. I want to just kind of show a couple photos. I got a few pictures with my iPhone. This is during totality and there was a beautiful basically a sunset 360 degrees all the way around the horizon. We were right by the wind or the woods. I got a few pictures. I just basically I tape my eclipse glasses to my iPhones that I could kind of get these photos and got a few different photos as the as the sun was disappearing. Amazing. But at that moment of totality, like it was just incredible. The sky went dark and we were right here by the woods and all these there were birds and bugs and all kinds of noises and skaters and the whole thing and it just went completely silent. Oh, wow. Ever been outside when it was so silent before. That's odd. Yep.  I saved three of these for peace out. Have kids seen the big one? That is something, man. Look at that red dot. What's a red dot? I can't see it. What red dot? This is the birds. Listen to that. The bugs aren't even making a sound. Can I come over here? It was just incredible and I said the silence was deafening. You can see the stars right in the middle of the day and that four and a half minutes of totality. It went by in a blink of an eye. Wow. I've seen the Aurora Borealis. This was up there. Here it is just at the very end as you can see the moon is starting to move off the sun there. Amazing. The whole place got quiet. Here's a picture. I actually tried with the Memento camera that we've gotten to shop to see if I can get some pictures of the eclipse with that. I put it up on a tripod and taped my eclipse glasses to it. But these are the photos I got from the Memento. They were just maybe not quite as good as the iPhone photos. I don't have a zoom. I didn't have any way to control it. That was the totality picture that I got. So a little disappointing there. But the iPhone did a pretty great job. Amazing. With the same technique. That is fantastic. Here in Southern California we got a little third of it across the bottom. It did not change the brightness level in the world at all. So you really experienced the real deal out there in Ohio. Yeah. It was pretty neat. Fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing those. Aaron, I appreciate it. Thanks. We'll see you. Very cool. Okay. Let's see. Next up we've got Liz. Hey, Liz. Hello. So I've been working on an Arduino project. And Scott was talking a bit about the USB host featherwing. I've got that here with an ESP32-S3 TFT. And what I'm doing is I'm basically have this keyboard plugged in to the USB host featherwing. And then I'm using Bluetooth on the ESP32-S3 to send the keyboard commands over Bluetooth. So basically it's like a USB to Bluetooth adapter. Okay. So if you want to share my screen, I've got a blank notepad document so I can just do a quick typing test. Hello world. And so basically any key press that I sent, yeah, it's pretty responsive. I took a lot of time tweaking it to make sure. And then it also does modifier keys. Excellent. Which is usually kind of tricky to do, I guess, from what I was looking at with the other library examples. So this will be a guide soon. So Pedro are going to do a nice enclosure for it. And the other thing I'm going to quickly stop sharing notepad and try to share my settings window is I'm able to send the battery level from the battery monitor over the Bluetooth so it shows up. Oh, that's great. Let me see if I'm able to share that window. It doesn't look like it's coming up, but I'll have a screenshot of that in the guide to show. And also why we're using the screen so folks can keep track of the battery monitor and also the last key press sent will show up there too. Oh, very nice. Yeah. So this has been some work on and hopefully maybe at some point be able to port it to CircuitPython too with Scott's hard work he's been doing. That is great. Yeah. So you are, you can probably massage data on the way in and through, right? Like if you wanted to make it a Windows keyboard or a Mac keyboard or kind of change UK to US like you've got. Absolutely. Yeah, man in the middle there to. Yeah. In the tiny USB library, there's a really great example where you can do basically certain key presses can be replaced by things. So tack has a great example where if you put in a key, it's automatically capitalized. So like you can do the same thing with that too. And basically I kind of took that example and smushed it in with this Bluetooth keyboard example I found for the USB 32. Really cool. User Jordy G over on YouTube says I can hardly wait for that tutorial. Nice. Cool. Me too. That's going to be really cool. Thanks Liz. No problem for hosting. You bet. All right. Let's see. Next up we have DJ Devin three. Hello. Howdy. You get any feedback or anything? Sounds great. Okay. I have made a. I don't know the thing. I don't know what you call it. It's it's it pulls from GitHub. It uses GitHub's API pulls the late last 25 closed circuit Python PRs and then displays them in a in a never ending loop. As you can see Dan Dan is right there. Yeah. Dan's busy today. Yeah. I still have to do close or not close merge PRs open issues and draft PRs. That is really neat. Yeah. You'll have like the whole gamut of like what is current in PR land for circuit Python. Really cool. Yep. I am very. Can you tell us a little bit about how you've created this? I'd API's. I'm better at doing it than explaining it. What is this running on? Is this like a PC Raspberry Pi? Oh no. This is this is a microcontroller. This is running on a unexpected maker Feather S3. You can do it on an out of roots Feather S3 or ESP 32 S3 Feather as well. It needs a lot of memory because this pulls down a ton of buffer data like the latest 25 end points is pretty substantial for GitHub. I mean there's a lot of data that goes with it that I'm filtering out. I'm not showing but there's a lot of data. I mean as you can see the descriptions alone for some PRs are they can get pretty long. Yeah. So I have I'm using word wrap text and truncating them. So it's just a little paragraph that's only like 10 lines long for the description and four lines long which took a while to figure out how to count the lines so that it also will fit in four lines or ten lines. So yeah it's a pretty nice project. That's really cool. Yeah I was not expecting you to say that this was running on a microcontroller actually. Oh yeah. That's really impressive. It's also pulling down the avatars of the authors. Yeah. And the avatars can be in GIF, BMP, PNG or JPEG. Wow. And then I had to figure out exactly which type of image their avatar was and then load that avatar correctly. The correct file type. Yeah. And then on the right is a little octa cat that it's hard to see because it's washed out. It's you know I'm not as good as photography is you but it's washed out. There's a little check mark on the octa cat that means closed which is a spreadsheet. So it'll go through closed or open PRs or draft PRs or whatever. So that is really cool. That's what I've been busy with. Fantastic. Are you maybe going to share that? It's a work in progress. I don't have it yet but yeah I will. Great. I think a lot of people might find this useful. I don't have a link for that one just yet. I just finished getting the images to work this afternoon. Oh that's great. We'll keep our eyes peeled for you to post something at some point. I'll come back next week just so that I can post like an update. Yeah. A link so that everybody can grab this. I imagine most people aren't going to really care about it but out of root folks will probably think that's pretty neat. Yeah for sure and I think there's probably a lot of interesting techniques in there that people will want to grab for different projects even the image dealing with different images, image types. That was not fun. The GitHub at the end of every image on GitHub and everyone's avatar is v equals four. There is no file extension. You have to go into the file header itself, grab the file type, extract that and then do your comparison for your different file types. So it'll say PNG or image slash gift, BMP and that's how you have to figure out which one to display. Yeah it was a good amount of work. Well that's cool because file extensions can lie but headers are less likely to. Headers can lie too. Yeah. Very cool. Well that is great. We'll look forward to your next appearance with more of this. Thanks so much for sharing it. Thank you for hosting. Everyone have a lovely week. You bet. Take care. All right. And last up we've got Todd Botte. Hey Todd. Hey. So you may remember from many years ago I made this little Pico based MIDI controller that just uses the CapTouch, the TouchIO and CircuitPython to do little keyboard detection. Well I've been playing around with more controllers and so upside up. So this I'm calling Pico Slider toy and it's got the buttons at the bottom like before but it's also got these rotary controls that are like analog things and these kind of like sliders, these faders and just like the last board it has got very little in terms of circuitry just the Pico and a display this time and then the pull down switches that you need for the CapTouch. And if I can switch my camera I'd like to kind of demonstrate this in action. This is sort of designed maybe as like a MIDI controller but you can do it but you use it for other things like maybe a macro pad or something. So let's see if this business works kind of reframe a bit. So I've got a synthesizer up here on my computer just it was like the most expedient thing and then this is running a very basic little MIDI hopper where you can see I'm moving the hopefully my fingers in the way that I'm that I'm moving little dot on the screen for this one I'm moving a little dot on the screen for this one moving the slider positions and so when you hear it hopefully you can hear that. Yep. Hi. Just lost that. But anyway this is a work in progress I just got it up in the Tindy store. And and I'm still working on getting some of the noise out of the sensor sensor readings also it's hard to do this backwards but but yeah this is each of these sliders only requires three cap touch inputs and you basically do like a ratio metric check of like this pad versus this other pad and do a subtraction kind of get an analog value from that and it mostly works and I'm working on getting some better noise filtering techniques to make it work even better but for now it's kind of usable you know and I hope somebody else could if other people would like to try this out please go to the Tindy store yeah we post a link over in our discord for your definitely yeah or people can search for Todd bot yeah Todd bot on Tindy that's really cool so the question I always had is with the not always very recently because I've only seen this in the last couple of years is these circular capacitive touch controls that act as a sort of rotary dial what is the technique there as far as what are your traces have to look like and what are you reading well hopefully this can this will focus on yeah there we go so this is it almost focuses there we go yeah so so you can kind of see it's basically just interleaved copper traces and you when you put your finger on a part of the part of the pad you're getting like maybe 80% of pad A and 20% of pad B and so you just do that math and you can figure out where your finger is using just those three positions and so and you have to have this interleave sort of feature so that you get like partial reading for both pads but this has been a technique that's been around in the cap touch sense world for like 20 years oh wow I've always wanted to play with it and I figured I'm sure I could make sort of python do this and it turns out I can yay oh really cool I love it do you have those standalone boards that you just showed available as well I've got a whole bunch of them if people want them I'll put them in the store yeah I think that would be neat because just to even experiment on a separate project and add one or two of those it's just it takes like a header looks into a breadboard I've been testing it and and yeah you can like play around with the whole cap touch circle thing I've made a linear one yet but it's the same sort of math and stuff yeah that's really right and is there a little like RC circuit I saw some components on the back of that I think is there a like no there's just the pull down resistor that touch IO needs to sort of put the pin in a defined state so the way the way that the pull down resistor is it pulls the pin high and then waits for how long the pin goes low and that how long depends on the RC of the sort of R of the world plus this pull down resistor and the capacitance of the world which includes you so as you get close you increase the capacitance and as you as you are farther away you decrease the capacitance also like as the pad gets bigger it increases the capacitance as you'd expect so if you have a really big pad it's really hard to read to charge up the pad with with energy I see but yeah but it all works for you know for pads around inch and diameter smaller works great really cool yeah thanks so much for sharing that I love it a very cool demo and the the pico touches or pico slider toy is looking really cool pico slider toy yeah I'm not very good at naming things just cram it together German style it's just here's all the words thanks Todd we'll see you soon thanks all right that is gonna do it for show and tell thank you everyone for coming by and bringing super cool stuff love seeing all these projects and if you want to come on and share some of your own please come back next week we do this every Wednesday evening at this time if you want to find out more about some of the projects that you saw a lot of people will post links over in our that is gonna do it and next up we have pt and lady Ada with ask an engineer so come on by in just a few minutes and check that out and I will be doing a jump hearts workshop show tomorrow at what time four o'clock Eastern time tomorrow's Thursday right yeah all right thanks everyone see you next time bye bye


Hi, in this video, I wanted to discuss troubleshooting some runtime errors that you may encounter, but hopefully you don't So normally you should see this green check mark indicating that you're Safely connected to Google's server and everything's running smoothly If you don't see that usually just running a code cell will connect you to that runtime server However, you may encounter the situation situation where either the execution of a code cell is taking a very long time longer than you would expect it to Maybe it's just chugging on indefinitely Or the whole thing freezes up and you may still have this green check mark or it may turn into some other symbol but if you do if things are still taking too long or it seems frozen something that you can try to do is go to runtime and and Restart runtime here Okay, I'll get this dialogue. You click yes, and it just says restart initializing goes through this process of reconnecting Yeah, basically just refreshing that connection to the services that Google provides Alternatively you can do Restart and run all if you do that then it will restart and run all the code cells in order from top down So again to pay attention to the order that you have code and how they integrate with one another Until it gets to the bottom and everything will be Refreshed in in your co-labs session. Okay? If that does not help Hopefully you've saved your work or hopefully you still can save your work Click save and you might just need to shut down your browser Reopen it and continue on with your work in a new In a new refresh browser If that still doesn't help another thing you can try is saving this restarting a browser and restarting your whole computer Basically to refresh your computer's connection to the internet yet another thing you can try is File and not just save but save a copy and drive This will create an alternate version of the work you're working on this co-lab notebook and you can always do file and Locate in Drive to see where this new version is and here we see copy of Eugene Morgan Python co-lab practice So that is this current document and I can continue on with my work here. I can finish my homework assignment Save it and then when I go to submit the assignment in canvas I just need to make sure to attach this code here and Sub that in there.  Okay


Well, Mr. Prime Minister, Mrs. Hayi, honored guests, sons and daughters of Ireland, and all those of you who wish you were. Last year, I celebrated this important day lunching at the home of the Irish Ambassador. I'd only been at my current job for a short while, and your Ambassador, Mr. Prime Minister, presented me a scroll detailing my family tree. I imagine he thought that if I was assured of my Irish ancestry, I'd be more confident I could handle the job. Well, it's been a good year, although there have been problems. Mr. Prime Minister, you and I have something in common. We both have to deal with legislative bodies, which are led by an Irish speaker. Seriously, so many of our citizens have family trees with roots in the Emerald Isle. This was brought home to me during an unfortunate incident which took place shortly after St. Patrick's Day last year. Outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, some shots rang out, and four of us were hit. Thomas Delahante, a fine police officer who's with us today, and Timothy McCarthy, a member of the Secret Service Detail, who deliberately placed himself between me and the gunman, and Jim Brady, a friend and trusted advisor. Now, it doesn't take a genealogist to figure out the ethnic origin of all of us who were wounded. Irishmen and the descendants have always played a significant role in America's history. Some of our most fiery patriots, the ones who inspired the colonies around to independence were of Irish blood. Some historians might suggest they were trying to settle a score with England. I don't know why anyone should think such a thing. The truth is there are few people on this planet whose hearts burn more with the flame freedom than do the Irish, and maybe that's why so many were moved to come here and be part of our noble experiment. In a world awash with dictatorships and despotism, we can be proud that Ireland and the United States remain dedicated to the principles of liberty. I want to congratulate you, Mr. Prime Minister, on your recent election and pledge to you an amicable and trusting relationship between us. Now, just a moment ago, the minority leader of the House, Congressman Michael, just came up and presented me with a shalele, and the suggestion was made that I might use it to get legislation through the Congress. Now, that's one of the few things I hadn't thought of, Mr. Prime Minister, if you got any pointers on the use of this, I'd be most grateful. The Nancy and I are pleased to have you join us on this special day. It's grand to have you here in this house, which my dad was designed to buy another of Aaron's sons, as was the great seal of our nation. Now I would ask all of you to join with me in a toast to our honored guests, Prime Minister and Mrs. Howie. Mr. President, I would like to thank you for your kind words of welcome and for the warmth and splendor of your hospitality. My wife and I, and the members of our party, are overwhelmed by the friendliness and cordiality shown to us on this short visit to your great country. I could offer by way, perhaps, of recompense that if you have any great trouble, Mr. President, with the Irish speaker, I could offer you my assistance born from years of experience with dealing with difficult Irish speakers. For any Irishman is an exceptional honor to be received in this house, which, as you have said, Mr. President, was designed by an Irishman, and is in itself a symbol of the manner in which the history of our two countries is woven together. To be received in the White House by a president who bears an Irish name and cherishes his Irish heritage is a unique and special experience. The United States, Mr. President, was the first nation in the world's history to be founded on a dream. And it was a dream which, over the years, has commingled with the reality. Sometimes, as dreams will, outshining it, and at other times again fading away from it. But in those valleys which all nations experience, when the reality has seemed to fail the dream, there have not been wanting great statesmen and men of courage to reshape the destinies of this land and to recall their countrymen to the brightness of the original vision. And if the United States has been for its citizens ideal in fact, dream and reality, so it has been for millions of Irish men and women also. I need hardly remind a St. Patrick's Day gathering of that deep wish for a new life across the sea, which for so long sustained and so many of our countrymen. Or of the countless thousands who came to these shores in sorrow and bewilderment and found what they had scarcely dared to hope for, found that their own personal individual dream had at last come true. But though they made their own of this great new land, they rarely severed their ties with home, and the letter from America has entered deep as folklore and as fact into the Irish consciousness, into our literature, our tales of the past, our family memories. And because those who came here wrote home so faithfully, more than any other people in Europe, we dreamed the American dream and shared the American reality along with you. The ancient nation of Ireland, emerging in this century into a modern state, has been founded on those same ideals which you were the first to set forth. Wolf Tone, the first Irish political thinker, to conceive the dream of an Irish republic, where all whom God had created equal should be recognised as equal, all whom God had created free should really be free, was deeply influenced by the fact that there was already in existence beyond the sea a great new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality. From that day to this, as we dreamed our dream and fought to establish a republic dedicated to equality, we have always turned to you as a source of vision and help. The greater part of the island of Ireland today has become a modern state where all are free and equal before the law, where bigotry and discrimination have faded away, and sectarianism holds no place in our laws, our constitution or our daily lives. And then speaking of these things to Americans, I know the sympathy and understanding they will evoke. For no man can speak of freedom and equality to Americans without striking chords. Of the lamps burning in the belfries of New England, of those farmers that stood by the ruled bridge at Concord, or of the great document that the founding fathers composed at Philadelphia. But there's one thing we Irish have not yet achieved, and of which we are constantly reminded everywhere we go, in this great capital city where the memory of Abraham Lincoln and his struggle to save the American Union and to avoid the partition of his country are so beautifully and so spendedly commemorated. Whereas Lincoln sought to prevent the partition of his country, we are seeking to bring to an end the partition of ours. And the obstacles to that goal are in part the age-old ones which so nearly sundered the young United States, misunderstanding, ignorance, prejudice, suspicion and fear. We have pledged ourselves to overcoming these obstacles, to further the reconcilement of the two great traditions of our island, to give into that end any pledge that may be sought, any guarantee that may be thought necessary, and to making unassailable constitutional arrangements for those in the northern part of Ireland who may feel a special need for such provisions. Irish people everywhere yearn for that day when their country will finally find peace and justice in unity, and they in their turn, in their land, will create a shining city on a hill. With the goodwill of that worldwide Irish spiritual empire, which is stronger here in the United States of America than anywhere else, the Irish government will do all we can through the Anglo-Irish process or any other forum to achieve that historic purpose. In the noble words of Lincoln's second inaugural address, inscribed on the walls of his beautiful memorial in this city, the work we are engaged upon is to bind up the nation's wounds. Countless millions of ordinary Irish men and women have by their labor and their sacrifice contributed to the power and the stature of this great American republic, and in their name, I look confidently for support and encouragement for our endeavors in Ireland today. Ireland holds a special place in the affections of millions of Americans, and is my hope that that feeling will inform American policy and actions and ensure that the encouragement of Irish unity ranks high among her international objectives. There is much to be done, and the first thing is that Britain be encouraged to seek more positively and persuade more actively a change in attitudes and outlooks which would pave the way for unity and so enable her final withdrawn from Ireland to take place with honour and dignity. We in Ireland know, Mr President, that your regard for our country is no mere sentimental attachment to your Irish roots, whether you have a sympathetic and concerned interest in Ireland and in her problems. This is hardly surprising in one whose ancestors played their own part in Ireland's history. The Reagan's were, and I quote from their motto, the defenders of the hills, and for more than seven centuries against all comers, they held the only pass through their territory of E. Reagan in the Sleeveville Mountains. They held it against friend and foe, and the English at one stage, in their long and unsuccessful efforts to conquer our country, paid the Oragans a great compliment. Their commanders, methodical men, prepared and sent to London maps on which were marked the names of the most redoubtable Irish chieftains, those from whom the strongest resistance was to be expected. I have brought with me such a map, dating from the 16th century and showing the Sleeveville Mountains and the unconquered territory of the Oragans. I present it to you, Ronald Reagan, defender of the hills, president of the United States of America and friend of Ireland. Prime Minister, I thank you very much. I realize that I'm going to be threatened with investigation of my income tax if I don't at least share it with Don Reagan. Incidentally, and before, and we're going to have entertainment here, and I know you're going to love it because I have heard these two wonderful artists before, but also mention that while government is often very lacking in timing, not this time, yesterday we swore in to be effective as of today, our new ambassador to Ireland, be daily.


Understanding eBay selling limits. eBay seller limits are one of the most important factors on our dropshipping business because the more limits that we have, the more products we can sell and the more profit we can make at the end of the month. A lot of service providers are charging people to increase their eBay seller limits which is another reason why I wanted to make this video for you guys so you can do it for yourself but most importantly understand how they work and what you need to do to increase them. All of that in this video so stay tuned, watch this quick intro and let's begin. Hello everyone, hope you're all having a wonderful day today. My name is Iran from AutoDS, I'm the content manager and I've also been dropshipping for the last few years and in this video I'm going to talk to you guys about eBay selling limits so you will understand exactly how it works, what you need to do to get around it, increase it and continue making your sales and profits. And one second before we do that, if you are new to our YouTube channel, this is the part where you need to subscribe to always stay updated on all of the latest and all of the hottest topics that we have coming out in the dropshipping world so hit that subscribe button and let's begin. eBay selling limits, what are they to begin with? Let's start with a little explanation given on our blog page which I'll leave a link to right below this video but in this video I'm going to show you guys some live examples and some extra bonus explanations from the blog article. So what are eBay selling limits? Selling limits are eBay's way of limiting new sellers on their platform from simply growing too fast. Why would they want to do that you ask? Think about it, if there weren't any selling limits anyone can open a seller account, list expensive products, sell them, get the money from the buyer, not ship anything out, keep the money and simply close your eBay account or don't close your eBay account, just don't send out the product, keep the money and do whatever you want with it. So this is one thing that eBay wants to avoid, they want to get to know you first seller, see that you know how to take care of your customers, ship out your products on time and slowly and carefully they will start upgrading your limits. That is a brief explanation of what selling limits are but let's see exactly how they work. To understand how eBay selling limits work, first we need to familiarize ourselves with how the item quantity and dollar amount limits work and also the monthly listing renewals that we're getting from eBay. It's going to be a little bit confusing at first but stay with me and you'll see that everything will be understandable. Let's demonstrate how eBay selling limits work. On a simple limit of 10 items and $500 which is the limit that you will get when you are creating a new seller account, anyone who has ever created a seller account on eBay has most likely started with a limit of 10 items and $500. So let's say that that's what we began with. Now let's say we listed one item for $100. So from 10 items and $500, we're going to now have 9 items and $490 on our limits because one item got subtracted from the 10 and $100 subtracted from $500 is $490. So once you list an item, the item quantity amount and the dollar amount will be reduced from your limits. But there's another thing that will affect the limits. So let's say an item sold a couple of days after listing it. Now our limits will update to 8 items instead of our 9 and $480 instead of our 490. So what happened there? When you sell an item that will also affect your seller limits. So it's also listing items and it's also selling items. Each one of them will affect your selling limits and reduce them accordingly. Therefore it's best to start with cheap items. Don't let one expensive item hug up all of your limits. So for example if you know that you got 10 items and $500, there is no point in listing one product for $490 or $500 and then you won't be able to list the rest of your 9 items because your dollar limit has already been filled up. So start with cheap items, that's the best way to start. Now what is the monthly listing renewals? This is only relevant for the good till canceled listings which is the listings that we are listing on eBay, so it is very relevant for us dropshippers. All of the eBay selling limits renew at the beginning of each month, meaning we begin every month with zero items and zero dollar amount listed and sold. Even if we have 1000 products on our store, when we start a new month, our selling limits will see that we have zero items and zero dollar amount listed and sold. So what does that mean and what happens next? Every calendar month, eBay also renews the listings on our stores. That's because our fixed price listings automatically come with the good till canceled option which I just talked about. So here's a good example to explain how that works. If we listed an item on January 5th, then after one calendar month on February 5th, that item is going to take up our selling limit again. So when you listed the item on January 5th, that item took a place in your eBay selling limits. Then on February 1st, when your item limits renew themselves and right now you're on zero and zero, coming February 5th, it's going to take up that space again. So before it takes up a space again after one month, it is very wise to go over your listings one day before they refresh themselves and make sure that you still want them on your stores or delete them if they are a poor performer. So I hope I made that clear. Every calendar month, your listing will refresh and take up a space on your limit again, not at the beginning of the month, but 31 days after you listed it. So on eBay, what you want to do at this point is see which items are about to end and this can be done pretty easily on AutoDS. Simply open up your product screen to see all of the products that you have in your store and you will have a column that will show you how many days this listing has left before it renews itself. So check out all of your items that have zero days left, which means today they are going to refresh and take up space on our selling limits again. Go over them and see if you still want them on your store. The bad performers need to be deleted and those products that sold, this is a good time to go to your suppliers, open up their pages and look for similar products to those that are selling. But that is about product research, we're not talking about that now. That is how the selling limits work. So where can you find your eBay seller limits? You can easily find that on your selling dashboard. Let me show you exactly where that is if you haven't done it before. So first things first, login to ebay.com. Then on the top right, hover over my eBay and then click on selling. Now here is the seller dashboard. You can customize this dashboard to see any screen that you want. But what I want to show you guys is the selling limits, which is right over here, the monthly limits. So this is one of my eBay stores. It has only about a thousand products. It's selling pretty well. It has sales every day. The profit margin is pretty high 30, 40 to 50 percent. And as you can see on my monthly limits, it says that I have 1,934 products listed and sold on a limit of 4,000 items. Then I also have my fixed dollar amount limit. As you can see here, $106,000 listed and sold out of my $130,000 limit. So from the looks of it, it looks like I'm going to reach my dollar amount limits soon. And then I will have to upgrade my limits, which we will get to really, really soon. But I just wanted to show you guys where you can see your seller limits, how much limits you have left. And this is much different than your eBay store subscription. It doesn't matter even if you have an anchor subscription with thousands and thousands of listings that you can list. It won't mean anything if you don't have the right limits first. So this is where you can see your eBay seller limits. And if you don't see it on your seller dashboard, on the top right, click on customize. And here is where you can choose which screens you want to see on your seller dashboard. So that's how that is done. And that's where you can see where your seller limits reside. Before we talk about how to increase your eBay seller limits, I want you guys to know what you need to know before increasing your eBay seller limits. The more knowledge that you'll have, the more prepared you will be when the time comes to increase your seller limits. So let's talk about the things that you need to know first. Before even trying to increase your seller limits, make sure that your limits are near full. Now this is a screenshot on the old layout of eBay, but you can still use this layout if you want. As you can see here, you can sell up to 10 items or $500 per month, whichever comes first. This is usually how seller accounts begin, as I've mentioned in the beginning of this video. So as you can see here, you have sold zero dollars, zero amounts. You have listed 10 products. So out of the 10 items that you can list, you already listed them. And now you can list zero items and zero dollars because you have already listed 10 items worth $500. So this is a perfect time to increase your eBay seller limits when they are full or near full. Now, if you have a new eBay account, it does need to be full or very close to full. If you have five items or eight items, make sure you have 10 and anywhere near $500 listed. So once your limits are near full, you can move on to the next condition, which is don't have any open returns, cases or unresolved buyer requests. And this is really, really important. If you have any open cases, any open returns, open cancellations that are not closed yet, do not try to ask for a limit increase because eBay's representatives will simply tell you to make sure that you have no cases open or they might not even give you that information. They'll just tell you that this is not a good time. Please try again in about one month after you get more sales or whatever. Here's a screenshot from the seller dashboard where you can see how many open returns and cases you have. So you want to make sure that these are clean. Let me show you an example from my eBay store. So here I am still at the seller dashboard and if I scroll down over here to orders, as you can see, I have one open cancellation and three open returns and replacements, which means at this point, I cannot ask for a seller limit increase. So again, no open returns replacement, no open cancellations. That's another condition to be eligible for a limit increase. The next condition you want to make sure that you have is that your seller level is in good standing. So you want to have anywhere in above standard or top rated, but a seller account in below standard will not be eligible for a seller limit increase. And again, this is something that you can see on the eBay seller dashboard. Okay, so here is my seller dashboard again. Just going to scroll down a little bit. And here we go, seller level, region US. Current seller level is above standard. If we evaluated you today, you would be top rated. And then you have the percentages that make up your current seller level. Now I can click on this to get a more in depth review of how we got to this and what things I need to fix in order to get a better seller level. But as I've mentioned above standard, top rated is all that you need to be able to be eligible for a seller limit increase. Again, this information can be found on your eBay seller dashboard. And if it isn't, go up, click the customize button and customize the screens that you will see here so that you will be able to see all of the relevant information on your seller dashboard. Next, you want to make sure that all of your products are in stock. So before you try to ask for a seller limit increase, you want to make sure that your products are in stock. You can check it on eBay. You can check it on AutoDS. This is a very simple procedure. And this is more relevant if you have a new store. If you have thousands of products, it's okay if some of them are out of stock. But if it is a new store and you only have your limit of 10 products, you want to make sure that they are all in stock. Otherwise, eBay will tell you while your products aren't in stock, make sure that they're in stock before reaching out to us again. Or once again, they will not give you the information that you need to know. They'll just tell you that you're not eligible. But this is another very important lesson that we learned along the way throughout our years of dropshipping on eBay. So I'm going to click on products to see what products I have in my store. And here I have the variations that are available. So I know that these products are in stock. And I can also add a filter to see all of the products that are not in stock. So I clicked on the filter here on top. And I'm going to click on inventory status. And I want to see everything that is out of stock. I'm going to click on done. And these are the products that have variations that are out of stock. And I want to take care of them before asking for a limit increase. Once you verify that all of your items are in stock, the fifth condition to be eligible for a limit increase is to make sure that your PayPal account is verified. So this is another thing that can be done through eBay. If you haven't started selling, this is a really important thing that you have to take care of. Otherwise, your account will be suspended. And you'll have to go through a verification process with eBay, which is fine. As long as you have nothing to hide, you're telling them exactly who you are and what you want to do. But at the end of the day, you want to make sure that this is complete. So you can check on eBay. Let me show you guys exactly how that's done. This time it's not going to be on the seller dashboard. Head back to the main page. Hover over your name on the top left and click on account settings. Here's my account settings.  And here on the left side, I'm going to click on PayPal account. Now here you see it says verify your PayPal account, but there is no link here to verify. That's because this account is verified. But if you do have a link here, which will take you to your PayPal account to pass the verification process, make sure that this part is complete before trying to get a seller limit increase on eBay. The fifth condition is the final one that you want to make sure that is complete before even trying to attempt a seller limit increase. Now let's get to the main event. How to increase your eBay selling limits. Once we went through all of the conditions to make sure that we are eligible for a limit increase, now we can go ahead and begin with the steps to see what needs to be done to be able to increase our selling limits. Now I want to remind you guys that a lot of service providers are taking money for these things that you are about to learn. So learn, implement and enjoy. The first method to increase your eBay selling limits is the automatic method, which means you're selling well on eBay, you're close to your limits. eBay has algorithms to see these things and they will simply give you an automatic limit increase. This is the most recommended method to go about when it comes to increasing your eBay seller limits. This is the most ideal place that you'll want to be because once you'll start getting the automatic limit increases you know that you are doing a good job selling on eBay, you're shipping out your products on time, you're taking care of your customer's requests and everything is working well. So how will you know if you got an automatic limit increase? Well, you will simply get an email from eBay that will look like this. The topic will be now you can list even more and the email will look like this. Why wait, list more now. Highly run or whatever your name is. Congratulations. You've been doing a great job selling on eBay and we've noticed how would you like to list even more? Well, now you can. Here's how much you can list every month. Then you'll get a before and after on your items or on your fixed dollar amount and it can be either or and it can also be both of them at the same time. So this is an example of one of the automatic limit increases that I got on one of my stores. In this case, they increased my amount from $35,000 to $67,000 which is almost eight times two and they can do the same thing for your items too. Only when I got this email I probably didn't take advantage of all of my items in their limits but I was close with my dollar amount so they automatically increased that and I got more than enough automatic item increases too. So don't worry about that but this is the best way to go about it. Be a good seller. Don't list items just to list them. Make sure that each item is optimized well. You will make those sales and you will get the automatic limit increase as long as you also take care of your customers do not forget about that. Now let's say you did not get an automatic limit increase and you still want to increase your limits. So the next method if you don't get it the automatic way is to request to list more. You have a link to that and once you click on it your seller account will send eBay a request to get a seller limit increase and eBay will use automatic algorithms to give you an answer on the spot. You'll get an answer either a positive one and what your limit increase is or they'll tell you sorry you are not eligible for a limit increase at this time. Please try again in one month. Now where can you find that exactly on the seller dashboard where I showed you guys where it shows you your current seller limits. So let me show you once again eBay on the top right my eBay click on selling this will take you to your seller dashboard then scroll down to your seller limits and here there is a link request to list more. So if I click on it it's going to send eBay the request and then I'll get an answer right away if I will get the limit increase or not. The advantage here is you don't have to call eBay you don't have to try to open up any chats and you will get an answer right away right at the spot. The disadvantage is if they tell you no you won't be able to ask why not or to know what's wrong or to get any other type of information the only thing that you'll be able to do is wait another month to be able to click that button again. You can click it 10 times a day but it won't matter. Once you click on it once you won't be able to send another request for the next 30 days but that is another way to do it another quick way to do it without having to talk to them on the phone and so forth. So request to list more you can find that on your seller dashboard try that but before you try make sure that you followed all of the conditions that we just talked about before to make sure that you are eligible for a seller limit increase. The next way to do it is to contact eBay by phone. I would mostly recommend this method and there's a good reason for that. So let's go over the pros and cons of talking to them on the phone and then seeing where you can actually get their phone number. So when you contact them by phone the advantage here is they usually don't record calls and even if eBay does record them it's very rare that they will ever even listen to them and that is different from sending them emails or clicking that request to list more button because they will always have that history and they will see it right away when you try to increase your seller limits again. They can tell you okay we see that we see that you tried a couple days ago or a couple weeks ago and you have to do it every month but if you get to them on phone most chances are they won't record or listen to that call or have it anywhere in their history logs that you called and tried to get a limit increase. So if you follow upon an eBay representative that's not helping you too much you can't simply hang up the phone and try again. So this is the biggest advantage of talking to them on the phone do not exploit this method because you know once you start exploiting methods too much then they find out about it and they make that harder for us. But this is the most recommended method if you try the request to list more and it didn't work and you didn't get any automatic limit increase. Now the way to contact them by phone and the next methods which is contact them by email or open up a chat with them as you can see here you can also get an email option or you can even chat with eBay. There is an advantage and disadvantage to each one and I will go over them but what you do need to know is the way to get there the process is the same and you can get either the email option or the phone option or the chat option and you'll be able to see exactly which option eBay is giving you depending on the subject and also depending on your location and the time zone. So let me show you an example of what I mean but first before that I want to talk about the pros and cons. So you know about the pros and cons of contacting them by phone we talked about that. Now the thing with the chat and the phone I also talked about that a couple minutes ago is that these are going to be logged. These attempts. So if you will send eBay an email or if you open up a live chat with them and you try to request a seller limit increase and for some reason they deny your limit increase you will not be able to try again for a month which is different from the phone which I just explained. But again the process to get there is the same. So let's see those options. Let's head back to eBay. Okay now what I want to do on the main screen is on the top bar I'm going to click on help and contact then I'm going to scroll down a little bit browse help articles I'm going to click on selling and here get to the exact problem that you're having in our case it's selling limits so I'm going to click on that. Now the first thing that they're going to do is try to teach you a little bit about seller limits and how it works and you'll have the request a limit increase button here too just as we've had the link on our seller dashboard that I just showed you guys. So we already tried that option and let's say it didn't work so we're going to scroll down some more again request a limit increase same link that will take you to the same direction then we're just going to scroll down all the way and here we have a need more help section so here is where eBay is going to give you a chance to either chat with them or they're going to give you their phone number with a one-time passcode to be able to get to an agent quickly or you can just use a regular eBay number if you google eBay contact by phone you'll get their phone number and then you'll simply have to wait a little bit longer to get an agent on the line so that is another option to get them on the phone or we have the request a limit increase link as we've seen over and over again which in this case let's say it didn't help us and then we also have the email us option which in this case eBay decided to give me that option so if I click on email us it's going to open up a form and here you can write that you want a seller limit increase you took good care of your store and so forth of your customers and all that and your limits are almost full and that you have a lot more products to sell and as they can go ahead and check your history you've been selling really well and you've been taking care of your customers and then it won't really be a problem so I got the email us option in this case but if we choose different help subjects we will get different buttons to contact them different forms of contact so let's say for example let's go with setting up your return policy I'm going to scroll down all the way here I got only an email us let's just try one more example just to show you guys that it really does work and that if you play around with it enough you will find different options again it also depends on your time zone and your location so all of these things affect what help options you're going to see at the bottom and as you see here I did get a chat with us option with only a one minute wait time so that's actually pretty great and as I've explained it depends which problem you are choosing so I think this time it was selling fees right so it was selling fees and this time I got the chat with us option so play with the different help options you will get also the phone you'll get the chat and you'll also be able to talk to them by sending them an email but I do not recommend chat and email I do recommend doing it by phone if you did not get the automatic method as I've explained before and those are the ways to increase your ebay seller limits but that is not all what are you gonna do if you are not eligible for a seller limit increase you did what you can but the answer was no why what am I gonna do about that now let's go over that right this minute first thing that you want to make sure is to make sure that you're eligible for a limit upgrade so go over the things that I talked about or read the blog article about the seller limit increase on the subject what to know before increasing ebay selling limits and make sure that you meet all of these conditions your limits are full you have no open returns in cases your seller level is in good standing which means top rated or above standard all of your items are in stock and that your paypal account is verified for new seller accounts so again read what to know before increasing my ebay selling limits and make sure that you checked in all of the conditions there the second option is to get more sales this one should go without saying but your ebay store needs to sell if you don't have any sales ebay will not give you a limit increase so make sure you're getting sales make sure that they're consistent and you will be eligible for a limit increase regarding the sales part okay so here's my seller hub again and as you can see I'm having constant sales every single day the first line here is $500 so I'm almost clearing that every single day and there are constant daily sales now if you have a new ebay account you probably won't get sales every day you will need to have more listings for that but do try your best to get sales when your account is still fresh and new most chances are you'll get automatic selling limit increases but if you don't it will give the ebay representative that you're talking to a justified enough reason to give you a limit increase so if your question is how do I get more sales well that is product research that is customer service that is which products you're adding to your store and how many you have we have more than enough videos and topics and articles on that that's not what we're talking about here but that is another condition that you need to have next try instantly again by phone or after one month by chat or mail which I've talked about before in this video the biggest advantage that you will have talking on the phone is that they will not record the calls and they won't listen to them they will not keep a transaction history of your phone attempts to increase your seller limits but they will keep a transaction history of your chat and your mail again do not exploit this too much keep this information to yourself if you're going to exploit the phone method too much ebay is simply going to put a stop to that and make our lives a little bit more challenging so try again after one month or instantly by phone and that is all when it comes to increasing your ebay seller limits again guys a lot of service providers are taking a lot of money for the information that I'm giving you guys in this video I want you guys to have your own experience and to have the right knowledge for really being able to scale your stores remember that ebay is a numbers game the more listings that you'll have the more you'll sell of course product research and the products that you are selling will make a big difference on what you will sell and what you won't but there will always be a significant difference between stores that have a hundred or a thousand listings to those that have 10 to 20 thousand listings it's a whole different ballgame so ebay selling limits is something that you need to know how to increase and the bigger your limits the more you'll be able to sell in profit scale with auto-DS it'll help automate your business and again guys I hope you really enjoyed this video and the value that we're bringing to you guys if you are new to our channel this is the kind of content that we love passing forward to you so subscribe now and always stay updated on the latest and the hottest topics that are coming out in the dropshipping industry that is always made from dropshippers for dropshippers such as yourselves and if you want to see new content on auto-DS head over to feedback.auto-ds.com let us know what features you want to see and we will listen and implement thanks for watching guys good luck with your dropshipping stores and your seller limits


Snestrunk! Hello everyone, the Snestrunk here, and the objective of this video is to highlight some games on the Super Famicom for games that were only released in Japan, for the most part. I'm talking about games that are still playable for people who do not speak or understand Japanese or read kanji. Now there are a ton of games that fit this criteria, but I'm gonna set the limit at somewhere around 25 or 30 for this video. I might do another video later at some point, but uh... Also, I've put a link in the description that leads to a video that shows how you can adjust your Super Nintendo to play Super Famicom games. It's really not complicated at all, you just move two plastic tabs as appliers, and you're ready to go. There's also a picture there that depicts the part that you need to remove. Unfortunately, this does not work on a PAL console, it only works on the NTSC, just so you know. Now, most of these games are gonna be platformers, obviously, because of the most straight ahead style of games where what you see is what you get. Also, I will try my best to pronounce everything right. Uh, I wanna thank my friend the Jesus for helping me with the pronunciation, but please bear in mind, I'm a white guy from the Midwestern United States, and uh, that's not an excuse, it's just an explanation why I'm going to butcher most of these titles, but I'll do the best that I can. I also wanna thank the people at the Super Nintendo subreddit, as well as the Racketboy forums, for suggesting games for this video. First, I'm gonna start out with the games that actually do exist elsewhere, but their English translations are just obscenely expensive. So the Japanese release is a cheaper alternative. First and foremost, I'm referring to Higane, so it's pretty hard to find, so its prices are just frickin' ridiculous. However, you're not missing out on a whole lot if you just get the Super Famicom version. It's still a bit pricey, but it's well worth playing. It's a massively entertaining action platformer, where literally every button on your controller doesn't attack of some kind. Once you get used to the control, it is really fun to play. However, be forewarned, because this game is extremely difficult. In fact, it's probably the hardest game to beat on either the SNES or the Super Famicom. I'm not kidding. Other cheaper games that are worth considering on the Super Famicom, rather than Super Nintendo, are the Mega Man X series, which of course is known as the Rockman series in Japan. Speaking of Rockman, there's also Rockman and Forte, or Rockman and Bass, or Bass or something. This game came out of nowhere in 1998, which is really late in the Super Famicom lifespan. But if you love Mega Man, you simply have to get this game. It's done in the same style as Mega Man 7, and it's the kind of quality that you would expect. And by that, I mean it's really hard, but in a good way. It did get ported to the Game Boy Advance, but personally, I'd rather play it on the Super Nintendo. Next, there's Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventures. Those bastards in Europe got this one, but the US missed out. Seriously, it's one of the smoothest platformers I've ever played. The freedom you have to run or fly around in any direction is very cool. The graphics and the animation for the special attacks are fantastic. This game is majorly addicting. If you like stuff like Sonic the Hedgehog or Plock, you would love this one. Next, there's Hamelin No Violin Tamaki, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I love the artwork and the animation going on here, and the stuff between the two characters cracks me up. There's a lot of anime-style slapstick going on here. You do have to skip through quite a bit of text, but that's okay. This game is a lot of fun, and it will make you laugh regardless. Daiai Tono-sama Apare Ishiban is another game with a lot of personality. This one takes quite a bit to get used to, but I really like it. It reminds me a bit of Legend of the Mystical Ninja. It gives me that same kind of vibe. There's also Doremi Fantasy, Milono Doki Doki Daibouken. I like a lot of variety in my platforming games, and this one delivers pretty nicely. There's a story here, but you can skip everything and just get to the action. There's Gogo Akemen. Hey, a game I can actually pronounce, kinda. There are actually three of these games, and they all feature character design and artwork from Akira Toriyama, who you'd recognize, of course, from Dragon Ball Z. Again, a really solid series of platformers with tight controls. For a change of pace, there's Maju Uo, a much darker looking game with smaller sprites, but brilliant backgrounds and artwork.  Okay. Hyper Iria is more of an exploration kind of game. You have pretty large maps to explore, and you gotta find your way around. The hints are all in Japanese, of course, but this game is still a quality piece of work. Last but not least, there's Super Back to the Future 2, which the anger video game nerd has obviously already covered, but it's a pretty good game on its own. It's worth mentioning. For fighting games, there's Gundam Wing Endless Duel. And seriously, just look at this game. Do I even need to say anything? It's ginormous Mekrobots fighting Street Fighter style.  This is freaking awesome! The beat-em-up genre is straightforward by nature. It's hard to go wrong here. My preference is Shonen Ninja Sasuke. I just love the speed of this game. It plays like a Genesis game, almost. What other 16-bit beat-em-up is there where you fly across the screen that quickly? I love it. And also, there's Ghost Chaser Densai, which is solid button-mashing fun. Perodius, if you couldn't guess, is a light-hearted spin-off of Gradius. It's really bizarre in that Japanese kind of way.  Europe got this game, and the US did. Those bastards. The same goes for Pop and Twinbee, another creative take on the shooter genre. And it balances airborne and land-based enemies really well. And then of course, there is Rendering Ranger R2. But this game, I'm still pissed to this day that it never got proper release anywhere else. Look at the chaos going on.  The downside is that it's pretty expensive. It's very much in demand, and so it's one of the more expensive games on the Super Famicom. But man, you can talk yourself into spending the money pretty quickly. It's that fun. For racing, Battle Racers is really the only game I've been able to find so far that's really worthwhile. It reminds me of F-Zero, but with some combat elements and a few cool power-ups. Again, if you know any other Japanese racing games, drop me a line in the comments. For Puzzle Games, of course, there's the Bomberman series. The US only got the first two games, and there's three more from Japan that are perfectly playable. And they're excellent multiplayer games. That should go without saying. There's also Super Tetris 3, which is yet another variant on the Tetris formula, but this one is actually pretty good. There's eyeball-shaped pieces and different types of blocks that you have to contend with. Then last, but certainly not least, we get to the RPGs. Now, of course, it's gonna be awfully tough to play a role-playing game. It's presented entirely in Japanese. However, some hardworking folks in various corners of the Internet have made reproduction cartridges and English patches for some of these games. Just Google, Super Nintendo Reproduction Card, and see for yourself. As for the games themselves, I can't go too far into detail without doing them justice. So just to list a few? I'd have to list Treasure Hunter G, Bahamut Lagoon, the Dragon Quest series, Final Fantasy V, Live a Live, the Shin Megami Tensai series, and of course, Psychendensetsu 3 or Secret of Mana 2. Seriously, if you liked Link to the Past or Secret of Mana, or any kind of game in that style, you have to play Psychendensetsu 3. It is absolutely outstanding and one of the best games on either the Super Nintendo or the Super Famicom. So yeah, anyway, that's just a brief overview of some of the games that can translate over, even if you don't understand any Japanese or can read kanji or anything like that. Thanks for watching, and I hope to do another one of these videos again sometime.