Inventory, April 2010
The full spread. This includes three awesome kits from Nightfire Electronics, a new soldering iron from MPJA, some hardware from Sparkfun (hook up wire, solder sponge, DIP AVR ICs), and a whole mess of hardware from Futurlec.
The Futurlec order took the longest (about three weeks), but came from Thailand via Hong Kong and their prices were VERY difficult to beat. Component prices vary wildly, and on some stuff (ICs, potentiometers, crystals) they were competitive, but on others (heat shrink tubing, male and female headers, crocodile clips) their prices were 1/10 of competitors.
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| From April 2010 |
Details
Three chips, Atmel AVR ATtiny85’s. Handy for building custom USB devices or tiny synths (with light modification to the source code). On the back side of this bit of foam is an AVR ATMega328 (Arduino Diecimila upgrade).
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| From April 2010 |
Five ATX power supply conversion kits. Banana plugs, banana plug sockets, and totally classy SPST on/off switches, all panel mount.
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| From April 2010 |
Potentiometers galore. A bunch of linear rotary pots, 70mm linear sliders, 30mm linear sliders, and a handful knob covers for making circuit bent toys looks more “professional”.
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| From April 2010 |
Workspace. This is where I do stuff right now. Handy because it’s a rolltop and can close, not handy because there’s no space to the sides for the kids to get involved. A work in progress.
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| From April 2010 |
What’s Next?
So I’ve got it, now what am I going to do with it?
Build, make, re-make, invent, explore, search, find, ponder, repeat. I don’t know, that’s why I’m building a personal lab. If I knew what I wanted to build I’d buy the kit, assemble it, and be content with hard boundaries on what I can and can’t do with the hardware. I’ve decided that I don’t want to be an electrical engineer, but the road to embedded systems design is paved with electricity, so this is a learning time. We’ll see where it leads.
