Try again now if you had trouble with the Online Resistor Color Code Tool. I had some trouble getting the Java code running inside a blog post. I think that is resolved now. Was a tense hour or so as I learned a bit more about Java and embedding applets.
Let us know if you see any problems. One remaining problem is that this applet may not prompt you with a link to get the Java Plug-In. Anyone know the right way to do this? I did search and find a good bit of text on the subject at processing.org but none of that worked for me. I went to Sun and learned from their tutorials in a mad rush.
Posted in Development Tools, Parts, Workshop Tips, Workshop Tools.
Here is a cool java applet written to help find valid values for 5% and 10% tolerance resistors. Quick clicks to common values and a clickable table of standard values in included. The tool even shows you the resistor code to make ordering parts easier.
I created this tool as my first web based Processing.org project. The small picture shown here is just a screen shot. The active applet loads from the full article page after the jump.
I have plans for several new online tools and some ideas for improvements to this one as well. The first new feature will probably be a part number lookup on Octopart for the selected resistor value.
This is an experiment to see if the electronics and microcontroller hobby community are interested in this kind of online tool. Comment with possible improvements and suggest some new online tools and links to any other online tools of interest.
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Posted in Development Tools, Parts, Workshop Tips, Workshop Tools.
Scrounging is a good way to get parts your your electronics workshop. Rather then throwing away that old piece of electronics, take it apart to salvage reusable parts. In this article an old Small Business 4 line Phone is salvaged for parts. This article was submitted by Charles Stutzman as part of the uCHobby giveaway program.
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Posted in Discovering, Parts, Scrounging, Scrounging Parts.
Wright Hobbies has started selling the perfect prototyping board for breadboard lovers. The Protoboard 400’s pad arrangement and connections match those on a 400-point solderless breadboard. The pads in each row are connected together on either side of a 0.3 inch gap. A pair of power rails on each side match those on a normal solderless breadboard as well. The 0.3 inch gap is not wasted or empty space like on the typical solderless breadboard. They are connected along the board to create another set of power rails.
Wright Hobbies sent 5 sets to uCHobby as part of the sponsored giveaway program, one prototyping board and one matching solderless breadboard in each set. I plan to keep one set but the other four will be given away with a comment contest.
Details on the contest and a close up of the new prototyping board after the jump.
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Posted in Contest, Development Tools, Parts, Review, Workshop Tips.
Reading my feeds today I came across the EEVBlog in a post at Electronics Lab blog. Many of the uCHobby readers probably watch the Electronics-Lab blog as well but I wanted to add my vote to the EEVBlog as awesome for Electronic Hobbyist and Makers.
My only complaint is that I don’t see how to get the video podcast working with ITunes. You can subscribe to the feed in just about any RSS reader but I would prefer the video to download automatically in ITunes or Miro.
I have written the engineer about this. I’m hoping he fixes things up so we can subscribe easily. In the mean time, I setup a subscription in YouTube to watch all the existing videos one after the other as I work.
I am impressed and anxious for more. I highly recommend EEVBlog.
Posted in Discovering, Electronics Links, Review.
Visualizing Sensor Data With the Arduino using Processing and an Infrared Distance Sensor. This article was submitted by Cory Barton as part of the uCHobby giveaway program. Cory shows us how to combine the Arduino, sensors, and the Processing environment to visualize real world sensor measurements.
In this first picture we see an IR sensor Mounted to a servo on small robot
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Posted in Arduino, Development Tools, Discovering, Ideas, Microcontroller, Projects.
In this article Jacob Woj continues with his getting started with Microcontroller projects theme. In this third article Jacob helps us get started with the AVR Dragon. The AVR Dragon is a great tool for AVR development. It is the perfect companion to Atmel AVR Studio and AVR-GCC.
More getting started with microcontrollers articles at uCHobby:
Full article after the jump
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Posted in Development Tools, Discovering, Microcontroller.
Scott Shaw sent a message minutes after the previous article about the microcontroller class at Cornel.
Scott says "I saw that link to the Cornell course web site today and I though you might be interested in the course web sites of Purdue. I have taken all of these classes and there is some good information in each of these."
More after the jump
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Posted in Discovering, Ideas, Microcontroller, Projects.
By admin
February 22, 2009
I received an email from Bruce Land about the Designing with Microcontrollers ECE 4760 class at Cornell University. Bruce suggested that they class web site would be a great resource and that uCHobby should link there. After a quick review of the site, I agree. The site offers a great deal of instructional and solutions to interesting problems using AVR microcontrollers. More about the class and assignments after the jump.
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Posted in Discovering, Ideas, Microcontroller, Projects.
By admin
February 22, 2009
OK we have selected the five winners for the comment contest related to our first post about breadboard adaptors. The winners are Cail, Shawn Vincent, Mikael, Joseph Yumul, and Randall Bohn. If you are one of these winners send your mailing address to dfowler@uchobby.com. All the ideas and comments were great so I chose the five winners randomly.
There are a few flaws on these boards, most notable is that the connector pin-out was wrong on the MIDI boards. More details about these boards and flaws after the jump.
Continued…
Posted in Contest, Projects.
By admin
February 1, 2009
Try again now if you had trouble with the Online Resistor Color Code Tool. I had some trouble getting the Java code running inside a blog post. I think that is resolved now. Was a tense hour or so as I learned a bit more about Java and embedding applets. 
