Monday, November 9th, 2015
A teardown & analysis of a Keysight InfiniMax III N2802A 25GHz active probe from TheSignal Path: In this episode Shahriar takes a close look at one of Keysight (Agilent) InfiniMax III active probes. The model N2802A offers 25GHz of analog bandwidth, 17.5pS of rise time and a total differential input...Tags: parts, RF
Posted in Teardowns | No Comments »
Monday, February 18th, 2013
A box just rolled in from Mouser, two days early by FedEx. Mostly 8pin through-hole chips for the Bus Pirate educational kit. Sadly, not free.Tags: incoming, Mouser, parts
Posted in #liveupdates | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
A new Bus Pirate educational/experimentation kit is in the works. Here, in no specific order, are the experiments/parts we plan to include. Almost all are from Microchip. This is mostly an accident, they seem to have the cheapest and most commonly available small serial devices in through hole packages. If...Tags: education kit, parts
Posted in Bus Pirate | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blvC4xhqbOE[/embed] Here's a tutorial on how to automatically generate Eagle parts from manufacturers' BSDL files. These files are available from some manufacturers and include tables listing pin names and numbers. This information is used by the make-symbol-device-package-bsdl.ulp to generate your device. On our wiki we have a tutorial on how...Tags: Ealge tips, library, parts
Posted in Eagle, Eagle parts | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2012
Got an old computer collecting dust? Break out the hot air, and start scavenging for electronics gold. This is just what Hak8or did over the weekend. He took components form an old motherboard, and a SCSI PCI card. For a detailed component by component breakdown of his score check out...Tags: DIY, parts, scavenge
Posted in Chips, DIY | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012
Some time ago a forum member brought up Taobao as a cheap alternative to eBay. Since we like to shop on a budget, we decided to give it a go. Shopping on Taobao is not as easy as shopping on eBay, and consists of more steps between ordering, and receiving...Tags: parts, sourcing, TaoBao
Posted in new parts | 16 Comments »
Monday, September 17th, 2012
Touch let us know about these 4 digit SPI controlled 7 segment displays that cost a little less then $1 a piece. They include decimal separators and a colon separator so it's easy to display time. I picked up some cheap 4 digit 7 segment displays over on eBay for...Tags: 7-segment, ebay, parts, spi
Posted in parts | 6 Comments »
Thursday, September 6th, 2012
A Mouser order with parts for the atx breakout board case arrived. Also some odds and ends for the dp badges for NY. This is a test using a WordPress post instead of twitter. Let us know if it gets too petty.Tags: parts
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
Matseng wrote about the Chinese eBay equivalent TaoBao as a great source for cheap electronics components. While the pricing is cheap, the downside is that most sellers only sell locally, so using an agent is a must. Read his full report below. (more…)Tags: parts, shopping, TaoBao
Posted in parts | 15 Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2012
Lindsay lets us know about a problem he ran into with cheap female pinheaders: I once had problems with a 0.1″ pin header connector – the sockets inside the female connector made extremely poor contact. It was for an LCD display and only about half of the pins were connected!...Tags: hack, parts, pinheader
Posted in hacks | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2012
A while back we posted about an app, Component Organizer, that helps you organize datasheets, and app notes connected to various parts you may be interested in. Yesterday Msr let us know that he has released the source code. You can download it at github. He also added a tutorial...Tags: component organizer, open source, parts, software
Posted in open source, software | 10 Comments »
Monday, June 18th, 2012
We have an ongoing thread in the forum where you can share your latest electronics purchases. Here's some stuff Zeta got recently: You know how hard it is to choose the right conector when all you have is an online catalog and well TE Conectivity (via Digikey) sent me a...Tags: forum, parts, What did you buy
Posted in parts | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
Jawi let us know that the "Big box of parts" is on it's way to Spain. He took out the items pictured above, and then passed it along: The MCP2021 LIN transceiver The minuino board + 328 AVR; The AVR dev.board; Some SMD leds; An iPod dock connector; The bluetooth...Tags: box, parts, route
Posted in Big Box of Parts | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
Most chips have multiple power pins that need to be connected to the same power supply, but Eagle doesn't allow you to give 2 different pins the same name. This short tutorial shows how to get around this and name multiple part pins the same thing. Keep reading below, see...Tags: how-to, parts
Posted in Eagle, tutorials | 11 Comments »
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
Ever wonder how some designs group all the power supply pins in one corner of the schematic? They look organized, and it's easier to understand how the circuit works because pins are grouped by function. In this tutorial we'll show you how to make an Eagle part with separate power...Tags: Eagle, parts, tutorial
Posted in how-to | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
A while back we started a big box of traveling parts in the forum. We had lots of stuff we didn't need so we packed it in a box and sent it along to Sjaak. He took some things out, added some goodies, and passed it to Riktw. Today Riktw...Tags: Big Box, parts
Posted in Big Box | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
Arhi made use of his precision LCR meter to measure capacitance and ESR values of ceramic, tantalum, and electrolytic capacitors. He made his measurements at various frequencies to help him graph the changes to the values over a wide frequency range. From the graph it can be extrapolated that the...Tags: capacitors, comparison, parts
Posted in parts | 3 Comments »
Friday, December 9th, 2011
PIC32 microcontrollers in DIP packages are in stock at microchipDirect. The prices range from $2.51 in the singles to $1.82 in high volumes. This compares well to 8, and 16bit PICs which also range around $2 in the same package. Via the forum. Thanks Shaos.Tags: DIP, parts, PIC32
Posted in parts | No Comments »
Monday, November 1st, 2010
A box of parts arrived from Mouser today. We're not affiliated with them in any way, just sharing our excitement over a big box of parts. (more…)Tags: Mouser, parts
Posted in kit biz | 5 Comments »
