ladyada’s toolbox
Nov 18, 2008 Hobby
Over at ladyada’s ranting, lady ada has a list of her suggested tools to get you started in electronics. Here are a few of her suggestions:
- Panavise Jr - PCB holder and general purpose 360 degree mini-vise. I use mine every day, they are the best thing for holding your circuit board steady, and the soft jaws are not conductive so you can do power tests at the same time.
- Diagonal cutters (model Xcelite 170M) - the best diagonal cutters, these are comfortable to use and have strong nippers for perfect trimming of wires and leads. I’ve used my pair every day for years. (I need to get myself one of these)
- 30W adjustable temperature soldering iron (Model XY258) - with a temperature control on the side and indicator LED so you can go from standard to lead-free to silver solder. Comes with a 1/16? tip which is good for through hole and some larger surface mount assembly. (Don’t underestimate the usefulness of a good soldering iron)
There are a few other tools she recommends and she actually sells her kit in the adafruit store. The only thing I would add to that list would be a little fan to blow/suck the solder fumes away. Of course that could always be your first project.
What would you add?
Tags: adafruit, electronics, ladyada, multimeter, solder, tools
Link dump: May 8, 2008
May 8, 2008 Link dump
Here are a few interesting things I noticed in my RSS Feeds.
- First person RC flying kit
- PCB Drill - a PCB machine you can pretty much make yourself
- Phone Sheep - don’t think, just take a look for yourself
- DIY Solar lantern
- Microcontroller Programming - an intro by those at Make
- Rube Goldberg machines - always fun, videos of the National Rube Goldberg Machine contest held at Purdue University
- Beyond Simple Photodiodes and Phototransistors - Electronic Design article talking about high performance optical sensors
Tags: electronics, gadgets, Link dump, microcontroller, PCB, project, RC
Cornell University microcontroller projects
May 6, 2008 Microcontrollers
Cornell University students published their end of year projects for ECE 4760 - Designing with microcontrollers. Four of the first 5 listed on the page have something to do with musical instruments and one mimics the game Guitar Hero but with a recorder.
Check out their projects and videos here. The archive goes back 9 years to 1999.
One of the projects is a set of Air Drums which would definitely come in handy if you’re trying to play Rock Band at night (or if you’re trying to win the ultimate Air Band competition). Here’s a video of the drums in action:
It is a bit laggy but with some fancier code and optimization I’m sure the response time can be improved.
Tags: electronics, microcontroller, project