Electronics, Tech, Software, Hardware… and anything else that ends up here.
Posts tagged ‘Electronics’
I have been working at this for months. A couple of years ago, I found out about the RepRap project. The idea behind the reprap (if you haven’t talked to me recently) is to create 3-dimensional objects on a computer, and produce them in reality by “printing” them. Today, I printed my first object.
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.
So you just finished your first PCB in Eagle. Good job. Me too actually, and after a few days I came across something very cool. Eagle3D. Eagle3D takes your Eagle .brd file and renders it as a 3D image, so you get to see the board in a photorealstic way. (I think I’ve been saving up photorealistic to use in a post-1995 context. I really don’t think I’ve seen it used to describe anything since the box of Myst). So you download Eagle3D, you download POVray, you copy your include files over there, generate your .pov file, and you launch POVray in anticipation… and then it crashes.
Continue reading ‘Eagle3D on a Mac when POVray won’t work…’ »
Well, I tried, and everybody I know tried. None of us made it. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t think any of us are going to die. If you haven’t heard about SparkFun Electronics’ Free Day, it may be that you just don’t care. If you didn’t care, it seemed to me for a moment that you were the only one.
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…
A few years back I started to get more nerdy than I had ever been. By more nerdy, I mean that I began to take an interest in a wide variety of things that leaned on the technical and electronic side. I became interested in making, modeling, and very much the “DIY” (Do-It-Yourself) mentality about things. If you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, it’s more of less born out of the desire to be creative and productive. The availability of materials and the lowering of costs has enabled individuals to create things that weren’t practically possible ever before. It’s gained the name “Making”.
Continue reading ‘The garage you’ve always wanted: TechShop Portland’ »
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.