Electronics, Tech, Software, Hardware… and anything else that ends up here.
Archive for the ‘Electronics’ Category.
If you would have asked me about e-readers a year ago, I would have told you that I knew Sony made one, the Kindle was pretty awesome, and there were a bunch more that were too expensive and far out to deal with. If you asked me three months ago, I would have told you that I had Kindle 2 Fever, and the Sony reader didn’t hold a candle to it.
Continue reading ‘Waiting for the E-Reader war to heat up…’ »
When I wrote the first part of this series, I didn’t plan for it to be a series. I was just thinking about a couple of Electronics companies that I like that sold a product that I like. It turns out though, that there’s a deeper need for this kind of article. A mostly-comprehensive look at Arduino sets that will spell out what has what, and how they compare. I got one concern that I’d only looked at American companies. So I’ve dove in and I’m giving you no fewer than 5 more Arduino starter kits. Two more from North American providers, and Three from European providers. All different, and all cool. We’ll see if we can get a good list to help folks out.
I’ve got a project coming up that deals with IR data transmission, so I thought I’d take some time and make a simple IR circuit to prove that I could. This is a very very simple IR Circuit. Basically, it goes as follows. (I’ll get a schematic up here eventually. I haven’t had success actuallly being able to make one… Linux: Still not ready for the Desktop IMO)
If you don’t know already, I am a huge fan of the Arduino. Arduino is the name of Microcontroller kit. It’s open source, easy to learn, and a great way to get into electronics/physical computing. This week, one of my favorite Electronics companies, SparkFun Electronics released an “Arduino Starter Kit”. Another one of my favorite Electronics companies, Adafruit Industries, released their own “Arduino Starter Pack” quite a while back. I thought I’d take a look a little more closely at what you get…
“MacBook Mini” is a name that has been attached to making a hackintosh out of a Dell Mini 9 (or a Vostro A90… same machine really). When Hykel decided to fly out to Utah to help with some family stuff, and she needed a method of scanning, we decided to splurge (at $300 it wasn’t too much) and pick up this sucker. Ironically, Hykel didn’t need it after all, because she didn’t end up taking the scanner. Never-the-less, the best laid plans of Aaron are coming to fruition. If you’re wondering, I’d put the total cost around $400 and 2 hours of time to get the thing up and running.
After I got married, I wanted my wife to have a better computer. She was using a 2nd-hand windows computer that was pretty under-powered. She barely used it, so it wasn’t really an issue at the time. An opportunity arose and she ended up with a Power Mac that was several years old. It was free, and that was really nice. It was nice for a little while anyway. As her needs became greater, she became more and more frustrated with the unresponsiveness of her machine, I kept searching for a solution.
Enter the Hackint0sh…