Hi
So I have about $75 to spend on arduino/electronic supplies so I was wondering what should I get suggestions please. I have done the basic of arduino and I am good with general electronices. I have a arduino and the Ada fruit starter kit but that's about all. I have 2 website I was thinking of ordering from sparkfun and yourduino.com if you know of some other cheap websites please let me know
Do you have any interests that you can tie your Arduino projects to? What Arduino posts interest you the most?
Robotics sound cool but also controlling real life things with my arduino plus just cool things
Here is a list of project ideas. You could pick one or two and get the necessary parts.
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Projects/Ideas
I would look into expanding your parts catalog.
- Purchase from surplus places (All Electronics, Electronics Goldmine, Alltronics - these three are good companies - there are others, though).
- Get a wider range and number of resistors, capacitors, etc.
- From Electronics Goldmine - grab a box or two of the "surprise boxes" - they are well worth it.
- Perhaps get another breadboard?
- If you don't have one - pick up a multimeter!
- If you do expand your parts catalog - you will need storage; a multi-drawer bin or two will work wonders (or figure out another option).
I also can't stress enough the importance of shopping around before making your purchasing decisions; sometimes you can find things cheaper via surplus than you can from a regular distributor. Sometime the regular vendor or distributor will be better. Shop around (prices are different for similar items even between surplus outlets) - it's well worth it.
If you want to do robotics, and want to use servos - then either Servo City or Ebay will be the place to go (always check Ebay - even for expanding your parts catalog - sometimes there are things cheaper on there than surplus; just beware of potentially too-good-to-be-true deals; if it feels like it, it probably is).
Something else - since you cross-posted to the robotics list:
You might want to take a trip to a local Goodwill or two (or whatever other thrift shops are in your area) and try to find a small to medium sized R/C car:
- Try to get something like a 2WD or 4WD truck chassis.
- Make sure all the wheels and tires are in good shape, are round (spin them, look at them closely as the spin for out-of-roundness).
- Check that the gearbox and motor sound "normal" (nothing sticking, clicking, or broken gear teeth where the wheels freewheel but the resistance to turning is less).
- Make sure that the steering mechanism seems to move properly as you manually (and carefully - don't use a ton of force) re-orient the wheels.
- Make sure the front wheels return to center when you release, and that the centering adjuster works properly.
If what you have selected passes all of that, check to see what kind of battery it takes (6 volt is OK, but 7.2 or 9.6 packs will be better). Don't worry about getting the transmitter (likely you won't find it anyway). Don't spend more than $10.00 on such a vehicle (wait for the 50 percent off Saturday if you're cruising Goodwill!).
If you do all of this, you will end up with a fantastic robot chassis; all you will need to do is remove the body, perhaps do some "tune up" and cleaning of the transmission and motor (depending on whether it was used outside or not). At that point, you can inspect the receiver PCB - many of the cheap Chinese made R/C toys made in the last 10 years or so rely on a chipset called RX/TX (generally RX2/TX2) - if the PCB has such a chip, you are golden - it is very easy to hack such a car (basically, you just solder a ground wire, and wire to the function output pins on the chip, and clip the signal input pin to keep spurious radio signals from interferring; the function output pins can be run to the Arduino via current limit resistors - sometimes even those aren't needed - trace the PCB lines to the motor drivers and such to make sure).
Even if it doesn't, though, you can remove the PCB, and keep the control lines to the motor(s) involved, then drive those with h-bridge shields and the like from the Arduino. It's a much cheaper alternative to just about any of the other commercial robot chassis available out there, and you'll learn a lot more doing, too!
cr0sh:
3. From Electronics Goldmine - grab a box or two of the "surprise boxes" - they are well worth it.
I was looking at that a couple weeks ago for capacitors. Not sure how much time I want to spend sorting. How well organized are those?
As for storage, I'm currently using a couple tackle boxes. Not high capacity, but then I don't have large numbers of components either. The adjustable tray dividers make it easy to maximize space utilization.
Also, Terry is putting together an IC grab bag. His store has grab bags for caps, diodes, transistors, LEDs, maybe some other stuff, e.g. http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=144
Thanks so much all, i like the idea of exspanding my parts plus I am working through the practical arduino so I think I can get some stuff for that plus I might get some ultrasonic range snenors they are cheap from yourduino.com
justjed:
I was looking at that a couple weeks ago for capacitors. Not sure how much time I want to spend sorting. How well organized are those?
Not organized at all - just a bunch of stuffed plopped in a box.
I will say, though, that for the two large boxes I got (I am a masochist, I guess! :D), that the parts I got more than made up for the cost of the boxes - there was some really nice parts in there - leds, switches, potentiometers, capacitors, etc. There was also an absolute ton of resistors and other axial components that would be difficult to sort...
justjed:
As for storage, I'm currently using a couple tackle boxes. Not high capacity, but then I don't have large numbers of components either. The adjustable tray dividers make it easy to maximize space utilization.
I use Stack-On multi-drawer cabinets for my small parts. One 60-drawer cabinet can easily hold an E24 series of resistors (which I fulfilled - 100 pcs of each - from both All Electronics and Alltronics). I have others for other parts, then some smaller cabinets for various other components (not too mention a few cabinets for my hardware stuff - screws, nuts, bolts, washers, etc).
I also have a bunch of other larger containers for storage of larger components (motors and other bulky items). The key to storage I found was to plan out what you need to fit the items you have, then purchase as many of the containers and such all at one shot plus a few extra (it ended up costing me around $300.00 for containers). I bought all of my containers (in three different sizes) from Walmart. I did it this way because stores (and/or manufacturers) change their container styles on a (seemingly) yearly (or quicker) basis. Since nothing is "standard" - in the end you end up with different style containers that don't stack together or organize nicely otherwise - if you buy them "as needed". Buy them all at one shot (not easy or cheap - I had to go to a couple of Walmarts due to wiping out the stock at one) - and you avoid that (though you end up having to store a few empties - but at least you have them when you need them, and they match what you already own).
Once you have your containers - the next big thing is labeling - so invest in a label machine (you can find nice ones occasionally at Goodwill - way cheaper than retail).
http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29_31&products_id=221
A logic analyzer is awesome, this one is within your price range
I had one of the Stack-On plastic drawer cases, and it was OK, but didn't survive being moved around a lot. I'm short on space, so I need to be able to put my electronics away (which sometimes means on the floor, temporarily) to make space for some other thing I'm doing. So I find the tackle boxes work well for being buttoned up and stuck on a shelf or pushed into a corner.
And I'm with you on incompatible boxes. I have a collection of various types of those, and it's quite irritating to find a type you like, then go back to get more and they're nowhere to be found. I like these in various sizes. Mainly, I suppose, because there's no way to lose the lid.
if you want to store small components, i highly recommend using a 3 ring binder, trading card or business card holding sheets, and small zip lock bags
i recently stocked up on some zip lock bags and anti static zip lock bags just for this purpose
Hi Frank, Great idea on the binders. I have lots of boxes with small compartments for components and small subassemblies like ultrasonic sensors etc. But for small semiconductors the binders would be a space saver. And I'm in a small apartment most of the next 2 years. Back Home I built a 10M by 10M 2-floor barn so I'm really dangerous there... The boxes from IKEA are pretty good, though and many stack on shelves so you can get 100's of parts in a small space. I have really nice boxes available in China but it's not worth shipping. Maybe some day I'll ship a lot to the USA and ship from there??
On parts: I am just finishing $10 kits of "52 Most popular IC's" (Mostly linear, interface, opto, a little digital). The other $10 kit is 10 power FETS. Hope to have those up on yourduino.com today.
Also there are $5 kits of: 180 small transistors , and another of 80 diodes. This stuff is here: http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_list&c=15 Also R and C assortments.
DISCLAIMER: Mentioned stuff from my own shop... but I'm not making much on these component things. They will be pretty cheap to ship by HongKong post, and take 10-14 days. DHL starts at $15 :0
All these things will (Real Soon Now) have an information page on my wiki: http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/ and links to all the Data Sheets (Except a couple weird small transistors my supplier put in)...
I'm having a good time feeding my Parts Addiction. Sometimes I even make things with them 