AaronEiche.com

(This tutorial has gotten really popular recently, and I’m very pleased that so many people are interested. I learned all of this stuff while working on my first PCB. If you’re interested, I’ve started to sell the most recent version of my Arduino ProtoShield. If you’re making a shield, have fun and good luck!. If not, I hope you find something useful here  -Aaron)

So you’re pretty fond of your Arduino. You make blinking lights, and beeping noises. You’ve made a robot that was pretty cool. Or maybe you didn’t. Who cares, You’re ready for the next step. You want to extend it. Although you can just plug in wires, there’s something very appealing about making a shield. Instead of a rats-nest of wires piled about and plugged into your prototyping breadboard, you can have a nice clean shield with labeled connections and a smaller footprint. So here I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to make a schematic and PCB layout, and get a beautiful shield that will plug into the top of your Arduino.

Continue reading ‘A Beginner’s guide to making an Arduino Shield PCB’ »

That is to say, my first PCB that I actually designed. I recently began attending a bi-weekly electronics hobbiest group call Dorkbot PDX. It’s basically an opportunity for nerds to show off their random electronics projects to people who might actually be interested.

Continue reading ‘My very first PCB’ »

I should start out by warning you that this is not a build-log. My friend Isaac reminded me that before we started this project, this was blogging gold, and he didn’t have a blog. He was implying that I should be the one to write this all down. I didn’t, but this should be interesting anyway.

Continue reading ‘Building a 3D printer’ »

Christmas is upon us, and we have gotten ourselves a Christmas tree. My wife and I are dedicated Tree-Killers Live-Christmas-Tree-Advocates. We just like the feeling of a live tree. We moved into a house this year and have been enjoying a vaulted-ceiling. While at the tree-farm, we decided to pick a taller-than-usual tree and ended up with this Behemoth. It didn’t seem this tall at the farm, but getting it in, we realized how big and beautiful of a tree it was.

Continue reading ‘Weekend Project: Tree-Waterer’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Arduino Starter Rundown – Part 2’ »

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)

Continue reading ‘Fun with IR’ »

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…

Continue reading ‘Arduino Starter Rundown’ »

“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.

Continue reading ‘My Macbook Mini’ »

A month from tomorrow is my Birthday. Whenever it comes to a holiday or event that involves some gift receiving on my part, the question inevitably comes “What do you want for _________ ?” And my answer is inevitably “I don’t know…”.

The reality is that I do know, but the things that I want are so far outside of the normal range of affordability that I generally don’t want to bring it up. I don’t want to ask people for an electric car (if such a thing exists in the US – c’mon automakers, get with the program), or a $3000 projector, or a 42″ flat LCD TV, or whatever. Up until 9 months ago, one of the answers was “A new computer”, but having struck a deal with Hykel, my wife I bought a new iMac back in July, and it’s been great. So thankfully I don’t need a new computer. I’m very happy with it.

Continue reading ‘(My) 2009 Birthday Wishlist’ »