So...what did Santa get you?

Digital camera
New mailbox (that can take small packages too, yay for small ebay packages)
Cat toy (box with holes in and small balls in)
Money (so I can get my own shoes instead of getting some in a wrong size)
Thing to put newspapers in (going to put all my Wii stuff in it instead)
Candy

Anyone know any good projects (besides the basic projects) I can tinker with until I get some stuff?

What sort of background do you have in C or C++ programming? If it's "not much", you can learn a lot of the basics of the language by doing some of the standard "Hello, World"-ish examples using serial I/O to/from the PC, instead of using stdin and stdout.

Even if you've got some C experience, that would make a good start, since a lot of people get tripped up by the quirks of Arduino's serial I/O (like needing to check whether there's data in the input buffer using Serial.available()).

If you're already an "advanced" programmer, I'd suggest building a re-usable routine (perhaps state machine-based) that can be called out of loop() to accumulate a line of serial input into a buffer while the Arduino is doing other work. Not only would that be useful to you, but it could be made into an example that would be very helpful to others.

An iPad from which I am writing this post :slight_smile:
I'm not really a Mac fan, but I've got to say I might nerd to recosider...

Happy holidays!

Nowt, but I ordered myself MC Mike's new book and a batsocks tellymate shield.

Beats By Dr. Dre Solo HD Product Red headphones... And other stuff... Like:
A Kinect
2 packs of BuckyBalls (black and silver)
A Fushigi
2 Camera
Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmares Expansion Pack for Xbox 360
$35 GameStop Gift Card... My brother is going to help me get a controller with it (Controller is $65)
2 1600 Microsoft Points Cards

Kaoss Pad 3 (awesomeness)
Wooden alto recorder (finally)
Awesome little RC helicopter that shoots plastic darts! (Super awesomeness)
256 mb RAM for my mpc (not official upgrade, but it works perfectly)
Hakko 936 soldering station (so much better than my cheapo soldering iron)

256mb? Seems kinda little...

256mb? Seems kinda little...

I think it's for a music thing rather than a PC.

Oh, OK. I listen to music, not make it... So I don't know TOO MUCH about it... Like I know mixers, EQs, that type of thing... Never touched a synth in my life.

1000 leds. Now to use them for next years decoration :wink:

1000 leds. Now to use them for next years decoration

Don't forget to use current limiting resistors with them. :wink:

forget the resistors, hook em up to ~48 volts and use them for new years :wink:

1000 leds. Now to use them for next years decoration Wink

I got my brother something similar a few years back, the year after we got our Wii's and we were all like "OMG WIIS R AWESOME" I was going to buy him the stuff to make a wireless sensor, but at like 2.75 a IR led at Radio Shack I was like screw this and went looking elsewhere, found a site that sold them at a much more reasonable price, but there was a min order limit, so I ended up buying like 800 IR LEDs

Shortly thereafter we got bored with the Wii, they still haven't been used... lol

Also, thanks for the advice from before, sorry for derailing the thread a bit, the other gift I got was a cheapo soldering iron

I have pleasant experience with a cheap-o soldering iron

it was given to me as a "craft kit" which featured wood burning, hot knife and soldering iron, never used it as a soldering iron, but as a wood burner and more importantly a hot knife (depending on what tips you screwed to the soldering iron) its still in my collection

also came with a crap set of helping hands that is my "other" pair on the bench today

;D

couple years ago I bought myself a XYtronic 379 soldering station for 45 bucks on my birthday, its comparable to the HAKKO's we use at work at half the price, and I love it

I got 'Electrics for dummies', which I wanted. I'll read it when I go away shortly.

Oh, my grandma gave me a mini doughnut maker.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas

Mikey C

my grandma gave me a mini doughnut maker

Now to make a robot that will go to the store and buy the stuff needed, dump it into the doughnut maker, and make a fully automated process :wink:

I got a hunting cap, a gun case, and a beer making kit. I think the universe is trying to tell me something. :stuck_out_tongue:

256 mb of RAM on the board gives my mpc 128 mb, the maximum. The mpc only reads one side of the RAM board, so you need to buy twice as much memory. Akai also makes an official RAM upgrade, a custom board that only has the RAM chips on one side, but they charge $160!

It's for sample space, because 16 mb (default) is hardly anything, in uncompressed wav files.

  • Arduino Ethernet Shield
  • Ripleys and World Record Books
  • Ebay Gift Cards

I mainly got money, so I have already bought:

  • Ultrasonic rangefinder (for arduino, of course!)
  • The old arduino MEGA (the new one streched my budget too much, and I had no one to share the buy with)
  • Possibly some RGB LEDSs
  • And hopefully, an oscilloscope [smiley=tongue.gif]