I came across a group called “PDXElectroHax” on meetup.com. They meet only once a month, however the upcoming meeting was the next day, so I decided to attend. It’s a relatively new group – only started about three months ago. The meet up was at an very interesting place: a “maker space” called ADX where […]
Finally got the servo shield from Adafruit. The shield comes with the typical non-stackable male headers to interface with the Arduino board, as well as four 3×4 male headers for connecting up to 16 servos, and a two pin terminal block to provide power for those servos. I wanted to be able to stack other […]
Two recent events: 1) Managed to burn out a potentiometer while trying to check the current draw on a DC motor. Got a plume of smoke. 2) Managed to leave the soldering iron on for 24 hours. Doh! The tip was toast. Thankfully I have a spare. Need to buy more I guess. Hopefully there […]
Was at the airport magazine stand today looking for something to read on the flight, hoping against hope that there might be something electronics related….and there was! You could have blown me over with a feather. Score! This is the first Make magazine I’ve purchased. It had a great history and comparison of all the […]
While waiting for my servo shield to arrive I decided to learn how to use a 555 timer chip to control a servo.
Many years ago I bought a simple robot construction kit from Robix called “Rascal”, though when I bought it it was called “RCS-6”. I never got around to using it to any significant degree and that always irked me. The kit was not cheap. This Holidays I was looking for some kind of fun project to […]
As I am starting again from scratch, I’ve been shopping around on the internet for equipment and components. I had a book I impulse bought, called “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt, that helped me compile a list of things I need. A surprisingly long list it turns out. A lot of the items I could […]
For my first excursion into things Arduino I had purchased the “Make: Ultimate Microcontroller Pack” kit from RadioShack. It contains an assortment of components, i.e. LEDs, capacitor, resistors, various sensors, LCD display …etc, as well as the Arduino Uno Rev 3 and the MakerShield prototyping “shield”. I had also purchased a passive infrared sensor and […]
I’ve decided to get back into electronics again as a hobby… Unfortunately there’s not a lot of free time… and what little there is will be sporadic at best. Still, I’d like to make good head-way with the endeavour. I’d hope that by keeping this journal it will help focus my mind, as well as […]
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