From a (not so recent, last summer) trip to my uncles place(In Russia)
I came back with a nice beginners collection of electronics parts.(He used to work with electronics all day)
Problem was that all the parts were mixed up in various ziplock baggies
and I finally got around to sorting it all out.
Because of moving, this isn't all of it, there was a third bag with a bunch of IC's and the like, but we're in a semi-current state of moving and the bag is lost within some box.
so here's what I have, not trying to steal ideas or anything, but what coolness can come of this?
The buttons are a combination of 1cm and micro,
the transistors are unmarked,
there are a few matching resistors(bought from old projects) but most are various,
LED's are 3mm, 1.5mm and "bar" style, in red yellow and green.
"other stuff" is a DB25 male connector, buzzer, and possibly burnt out IR LED transistor(I applied 5v through it :/)
Hehe
I just bought a cheap wooden organizer at Ikea yesterday, and I stored a bunch of my junk in there ^^
Cables & soldering stuff, motors & moving things, caps & transistors
Leds & optics, hardware & connectors, resistors & pots
Various useable stuff, things to scavenge (mostly calculators), various chips
Damn, saw these in the flyer a while back, but only now notice the price.
What I like about having 60 drawers is that I can organize by Resistor values, and if I have like 100 each of a different value, just group em 1-100ohm, 101-200ohm, etc.
Yeah, those are goodies. I think there's an electronic store near my home that is about to go bankrupt (yeah, it's a shame :-/) maybe they'll be ok to sell some of those huge organizer with at least 10000000+ drawers... If i can have it fully filled, JACKPOT
I'm gonna start looking for old electronics from before the surface mount era, grab dads heatgun and start salvaging
Another thing I forgot to mention was 3 reed switches from old keyboard but I haven't tested them as I don;t have a magnet at ready, and an odd metal tube type thing with a piece of glass on top,
Are you aware of the Super Electronic Surprise Box from Electronic Goldmine? I get one or two every once in a while. It makes your parts collection bigger, helps put the energy back in your electronics relationship
You get thousands of good parts, hardware, stuff that you have no clue about, and stuff that's obvious trash. It's wonderful. Here's a close-up pic I took about 5 minutes ago, after dumping two Surprise Boxes on a table. I have an area about 2'x4' covered like this....
The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk
Basically, it's a fair size box that people stuff with their old electronics, you sign up on the wiki with your site, Flickr feed, etc(something that shows your worthyness)
And someone that lives near you that has the box can mail it to you, you take and put back in more junk.
Assuming they're hand assembles from an (organized?) collection of stuff, as random as they try to make it, it's bound to be somewhat similar in part selection? That the case?
Yes...interesting you would realize that before even receiving one of these. The boxes do end up with a sort of theme. I've gotten boxes that were lots of LEDs, some with a lot of TTL oscillators, etc. There is always a good mix of different types of parts, but you will more likely get 10 to 50 of about 100 different types of components, with a lot of random ones mixed in. In these boxes, I must have 200-300 BC549 low-noise general purpose NPN transistors. And a lot of 1Nxxxx diodes, and RCA jacks. Also 6 RF computer pens, and 5 sound-player modules which say something I can't understand.
Went to the site, decided to "order" two of the boxes(just to check shipping)
Calculator says the "Cost" will be $32.74 not sure if that's just shipping, but way too much(I live in Canada)
An option would be to have it sent to a "Relay house"
My dad knows some people that let you ship your stuff to their house, then you drive over and pick it up, they charge $3 for any package that doesn't need a forklift to move around.
But getting dad to drive down there is gonna be a pain, he goes there every couple weeks anyways but... still.
mace, I checked Electronic Goldmine just after seeing your photos on flickr (MAKE pool). It's a shame they don't have any backoffice thingy that calculates shipping cost to france.
Anyway, I saved almost 300 bucks by ordering samples from maxim, linear, etc.... So for the time being, I got a lot of stuff to play around with ^^ http://play-collective.net/blog/archives/56
It'd be awesome to get singles of a whole bunch of IC's.
Linkage to "Order" site, or did you email them with a request?
In other news, a new addition to the goodies box,
A real life Arduino
I'm halfway through the newbie initiation, I've run an LED directly from a pin(it was 13 tho :/) I've run ~2A off the +5 while it's connected to USB, I've written some code that failed to compile.
Als that's left now is to run a switch without a resistor
You can get free samples from many suppliers. For example (if you want to give a try to the good ol' 68k family ^^) you can get a whole bunch of the Freescale family of µC and microprocessors for free (or almost free, depending on where you live - It's US$6/?~4) shipping for France)
Edit : The link melka have given is full of good pointers... Gonna finish my exams and start ordering ^^
As I said, I ordered only via the manufacterers websites, only via email, no phone call or annoying customer relation email, and I didn't pay for anything, not even shipping to France. I will receive samples from Freescale, Cypress, Maxim, Microchip, Linear, Analog & TI. In fact, TI's & Freescale order already arrived, so I'm starting to play with my TLC5940 in DIP, but the other chips are in some really small SMD format, I have to find some easy to use sockets/breakout boards.
(I continue in French, as this relates only to matters of shipping to France ^_^)
@melka : Tu n'as vraiment rien payé pour les échantillons Freescale ? Quand j'ai essayé, le site a calculé des frais de port (très faibles) pour la France... Quand as tu fait ta commande ? Utilises-tu l'email d'une école ou d'une institution similaire ? Merci.
@tehboii : non non, j'ai rien payé du tout, pas même les frais de port. Envoi fedex super rapide, commande passé mardi soir, reçu jeudi. J'ai commandé ça :
MC13202 : 2.4GHz RF transceiver for 802.15.4 applications
MC34671 : 600mA High-input Voltage Charger for Single-cell Li-Ion and Li-Polymer Batteries
MMA7455L : 3-Axis Digital Output Acceleration Sensor Actually.
L'accellerometre etait en rupture de stock donc pas expedié mais j'ai reçu les deux autres.
Tip on how to order samples from Freescale - English version follows.
J'ai trouvééé !
Joie.
Freescale ne facture plus de frais d'expédition sur les demandes émises depuis des domaines "corporate". Je m'étais originellement inscrit depuis mon gmail-poubelle.
En recréant un compte Freescale depuis mon compte pro @disposition-worldwide.com, je n'ai plus rien à payer.
Joie et économies.
Merci en tout cas, tu as bien fait de dire que tu n'as rien payé, je n'aurais pas cherché sinon ^^
English : When ordering from Freescale, you should use your own domain instead of common e-mail providers. If you fail to do this, it might (except probably if you're within the US) add some processing costs to the order.
