Arduino Interest in Toronto or Waterloo, Ontario

Well im on coop right now at St. Catharines. I go to the waterloo and the Toronto area quite a bit do got meet my friends. Either location would be fine with me. I will talk to a few more kids at Waterloo but I dont expect much attention there.

I am helping out redesign the high school curriculum at my old high school and have a meeting with a technology teachers on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be able to spark an interest in them. I know one teacher who would be interested for sure, maybe 2. If the group hits off I know they won't have trouble attracting fellow high school technology teachers in the area.

Also in Waterloo, but VERY new to microcontrollers. (Just got my Arduino today... looking forward to some learnign tonight). After taking a few PLC and computer programming courses, I decided I'd like to do some more tinkering on my own. As long as people don't mind my near ignorance of electronics , I'd be game for a meet-up.

Where's a good local spot to pick up parts (i.e. sensors, servos, etc.)?

Thanks!

I go to Waterloo also (CS grad student). Lots of experience with microcontrollers. Love the arduino, always interested in seeing what people are doing with them.

Dirigible,

I think most of us still feel like newbie's on these things, but not to worry these things are fairly tolerant of minor wiring mistakes.

As to good sources for components, I don't know who you bought your Arduino from but I bet they might also sell various sensors, servos and shield adapter boards.

Locally the best place to get model airplane servos is Flight Craft hobby store on Victoria Street in Kitchener. Small no-name servos on the front counter are about $11.

Beyond that, KW Surplus has some switches and such, but nowhere near the variety that they had 15 years ago. They do have one bargain though, Velmen bulk packs of resistors, electrolytic capacitors, LED's and transistors. The first three packs are a very good bargain in the $15-25 range each you will be well supplied. Not sure about the pack of transistors (I think about $30), they look like a lot of 2N2222, 2N2229 . . . general purpose PNP and NPN transistors so they are all good for experimentation, but it looks like not much variety . . . for $6 you could get 6-10 pairs of the ones you will most likely need for basic experimentation.

If the bulk packs look a little big . . . try splitting the cost with someone else . . . that's one of the nice things about clubs or groups is the ability to share resources of all types.

For general components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs, switches and such) there is Orion Electronics at 40 Lancaster Street, Kitchener who are not too bad . . . and beat the hell out of Radio Shack or the Source of whatever it is they call themselves these days.

I find Orion a little expensive and customer service is not their forte . . . however they are definitely better than Waterloo Electronics on Hartwood Ave in Waterloo. These guys are really just set up to handle commercial accounts . . . although they are glad to take your money as well and they do have some things that are hard to get elsewhere.

Locally my favourite is Sayal Electronics who are on Fountain Street in Cambridge (directly across the street from the Toyota plant). They have tons of stuff at reasonable prices. Customer service varies . . . if you get the young guy in his 20's things are good . . . if you get one of the older guys it is a little more hit and miss. But they have a good selection and reasonable prices.

Down in Mississauga there is an industrial plaza at 1350 Matheson Blvd. that has three electronic supply stores; Sayal, Active and ??? All in one building so it is a good place to go as well.

Now if you have made the pilgrimage as far as Mississauga you might as well carry on for the full Monte and find your way to downtown Toronto to Active Surplus Electronics at 345 Queen Street West. The place is a little hard to find . . . 2nd floor of a skinny orange building just a few doors away from the Silver Surfer comic book store.
Now here you have hit the jackpot of weird, wonderful and wacky technological wonders of all varieties . . . this is the kind of place that KW Surplus was 15 years ago!

Aside from that, here are a few links to some of my favourite web stores:

http://www.nkcelectronics.com/index.html
REALLY EXCELLENT SERVICE!!! Check out the neat little oscilloscope on the TEST page of NKC; I have one and it works very well with small microcontrollers.

REALLY EXCELLENT SERVICE!!!

http://store.fungizmos.com/

Canadian but prices are slightly higher . . . EXCELLENT SERVICE!!!

Thanks for the tips! Got my Arduino at Adafruit... good prices, fast, inexpensive shipping. But I prefer to do business locally if I can.

Been to Active Surplus in Toronto many times... but it's too far away to make impulse purchases, as these things tend to be for me. Was in K/W Surplus for the first time last week. Fun to browse, but doesn't have near a high a nifty-factor as Active. Still, if I need cabinet doors "for less"--this is the place to go! ;D

Will definitely check out Flightcraft. Think I'd like to toy around with some servos.

Dirigible,

I agree with you on buying locally whenever possible.

To that end, I have been talking up the Arduino to the youngest (probably more like in his 30's than in his 20's) guy at Sayal in Cambridge.

They already supply quite a bit of product into the high schools and Conestoga College. Who knows if enough of us ask for Arduinos they might start to stock them.

However if you can . . . get your butt to Active Surplus on Queen Street . . . I always seem to buy more than I plan, but the stuff is great. One of the best places for gears, wheels and pulleys for robotics; and the only place I know to get silver solder in less than 10lb qty.

Last time I was there I bought a couple of the little electromagnet pixels that they use on those orange or yellow highway warning signs over the 401. Apply a current in one direction they flip from black to orange . . . apply the current in the other direction and it flips back. They are only $0.25 each, so on my next trip in a couple of weeks I intend to buy about $10 worth . . . right now I am trying to figure out how to run them with the Arduino.

It is not quite as simple as I originally thought as you need to change the polarity of the signal, not just turn it off and on.

PS>The only place I would tend to stay away from is Neutron Electronics in Guelph . . . way too expensive!

Hello,
I live downtown toronto, and would be very interested in a Arduino group. There is a really good electronics shop at college and spidina called Creatron Electronics:
http://ca.local.yahoo.com/details?id=1001962091&csz=Toronto+ON&
This place supplies arduino's, arduino variants and tons of shields along with a great selection of parts, really good pricing too :).

Nigel

Nigel,

Glad to hear that Creation actually stocks Arduino and accessories.

To be honest, when I stumbled onto their web site about two months ago, I was so disappointed by their site that I didn't bother to check them out with a store visit.

Now that I know better, I will check them out in a couple of weeks when I am back downtown.

Dirigible,

Depending upon your needs, another possible source of sensors is to make them yourself!

Not knowing what your interest is . . . I would recommend books written by Forrest M. Mims III or others from the Evil Genius series.

In fact EG actually has a book called, Electronics Sensors for the Evil Genius: 54 Electrifying Projects ISBN 0071470360 . . . available from Chapters. I have a couple of books from this series and although they seem to be written for a younger audience (I am an old guy!) the circuits seem to be well designed and fairly well documents.

I have been playing with the simple seismograph from one of Mims Engineers Mini-Notebooks (long out of print, but the same circuits have been reprinted in a single Engineers Notebook) for ultimate inclusion in my Arduino weather station project.

I was in Creatron about 2 years ago. I have checked their webpage and no mention of Arduino stuff.

How do their prices compare to http://www.hvwtech.com/ or other web sites?

hello,
Creatron's website is HORRIBLE it has about 1/10th of the stuff that they actually sell in the store. Their pricing is pretty reasonable, when you factor in shipping and everything they might be 5% more expensive than online shops. The reason I like it is they have everything that I need for all my projects. Plus its 20 minutes away from my house.

So we seem to have quite a bit of interest for a workshop going? Any ideas for a location? Hopefully some place where we could rent cheap or, even better, free! Or if anybody here has a big house, would they be willing to volunteer garage/basement space for the day?

Also, dont forget fundamental logic: http://store.fundamentallogic.com/ecom/

Local Arduino shop based out of Toronto. They're the makers of the iDuino

I would be interested in an arduino group in Toronto

Vodka where do you live?

For those people who have replied that they are interested in forming an Arduino Interest Group in the Waterloo, Cambridge or Kitchener areas, I have been trying to research possible meeting locations.

Since I live I Cambridge, I checked there first and discovered that the rooms available through the city's recreation department start at $20 per hour. I was extremely disappointed that the library will only allow meetings for “culturally based events” and that Arduino does not qualify or so said the snooty *bitch that didn't return my first three voice mails.

The Kitchener Library appears to be a little more cooperative and lists a cost of $35 for a two-hour room rental. This week I will contact the recreation departments of both Kitchener and Waterloo to see if there are some no charge facilities that might be available.

The Kitchener Public Library asks for program suggestions and so I have also made a suggestion to them that they consider the development and presentation of an Arduino workshop and ultimately the creation of an Arduino Interest Group.

Further information will be posted as available.

*Please note that the forum software automatically changed that word on me and while that's not quite what I called her . . . it does get the message across! :wink:

wow good work, keep us up to date.

I would think that UW would allow use of a room if you could find the proper person to sponsor the request. To me, the arduino falls into the realm of 'robotics' and 'physical computing'.

UW has a robotics group. Where do they meet? UW holds and participates in University robotics events each year.

I bet there is a lot of overlapping interest between the 2 groups.

A quick search found these links:

http://uwrobotics.uwaterloo.ca/

http://web2.uwindsor.ca/engineering/cvss/?topic=newsContent&id=2

and finally... robot racing at UW!
http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~rracing/

uwrobotics has their own lab at waterloo. I know a few people in the club but currently they are on coop. I know some of them have a lab key, i gotta ask them if they'll be willing to make a trip down from where they are working to open up the lab for us on a saturday.

Also, I don't know why I didn't think about this earlier, there are always a lot of free classrooms available after 7PM on weekdays, and there are almost never any classes going on during Saturdays. The classrooms are all left open, and I often use them to study or within a group that is working on a project. If we don't need any special equipment, this might not be a bad idea.

Darudude . . . you're the dude!

Can you please follow up on the idea of hijacking some class room space at UoW?

Well there really is no official way to do this. What everybody normally does is go to the engineering buildings and look for a free class room and just settle in. It is normally never an issue if we keep the place tidy when we leave. The custodians come and check up and clean the rooms but they are very polite and never cause any issues. In face they are always curious about what we are doing.

On the odd chance we do get told to leave, its always because there is a class coming in or somebody has booked the room. But in those scenarios we just pick up and move to another room where we continue what we were doing.

Ofcourse, there is a chance (though this has never happened to me), that all the rooms are busy. In this case I guess our meeting wouldn't go through. However the odds of that happening are super, super slim.