How many times have you been part way through ordering parts for a project when you realize the distributor you are using, doesn’t have any of the part you need in stock? Or maybe you want to design a kit and compare prices of parts. This is where findchips.com comes into play. This awesome free resource will scan inventory across a variety of distributors for a given part number. Not only will you see inventory levels but it is also a fast way to compare prices.
There are many options for powering an Arduino board. The designers did a great job of designing an auto-select circuit that makes it simple to power the boards. However, there are trade offs in how much power is available and how much power gets wasted. Australian Robotoics has a great breakdown of what an Arduino looks like under a thermal camera, when powered from USB and various external sources. I don’t agree with everything that is said in this article, but the pictures are very revealing (and cool to look at).
Fuelling Your Arduino – Why you should use an External Power Breakout | Australian Robotics.
Can you can imagine what people thought about today, 20 years ago? Think of all the crazy things you (or others) thought we would be doing today. Like… Video phone calls from your car, perhaps?
Now use the same futuristc imagination to imagine if someone put together a plan to build a first generation NCC-1701 (“No Bloody A, B, C, or D”). Not just a plan, but a plan to do so in 20 years! If successful, we could get to the moon in a matter of days and Mars within College Football season.
Check our http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/ for more details.
Is there a Kickstarter page yet?
Why is choosing a simple AA battery such a daunting selection process? Manufacturers are keen on giving their products different names and brag about the chemical technology that makes them up. However, it is nearly impossible to make package-to-package comparisons of the battery’s capacitor.
Denis Hennessay has a GREAT write up on Measuring Battery Capacity with an Arduino. In addition to full details on how his project works, Denis even shares the results of several AA batteries. Nice!
Tools like National’s (now TI) WebBENCH have allowed engineers to design power supplies without downloading any software for quite some time. Recently I got an account at Upverter.com. This web application is focused schematic capture with social sharing.
Just announced this week, Digi-Key is looking to enter this area with their new web based tool to share schematics, Scheme-It(sm).
I haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces yet, but I look forward to comparing to Upverter and Eagle version 6 soon.
