As a response to yesterday’s Workshop Video on how we stock our parts, Alvaro made a video of his own storage system. He predominately uses portable boxes, which have 4 removable compartmentalized containers. We also talked with Alvaro at the … Read more
What parts do you stock, and how do you store them? In this workshop video we cover: The common parts we stock and try to use in every design Substitutions and shortcuts we take when building a prototype How we … Read more
S7726 shared his Mouser part order for the Soldering Iron Driver v1.5. This board is still under development so we haven’t yet decided on all the parts we will use. One thing to note is to follow the partlist on … Read more
Nabilt tipped us to Arena PartsList. It’s a BOM manager that’s integrated with the Octopart component database. It has neat functions like auto-fill, that automatically adds a part to your database directly from a sales page of a electronics component … Read more
Lithium-polymer batteries are an excellent choice for portable projects. They are relatively cheap, hold a significant charge, and last for a long time. The drawback with these batteries is that they require rather complicated charging protocols. You have to watch out … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated Dangerous Prototypes partlist. This week: tantalum capacitors. We use tantalum capacitors sparingly, usually only when a datasheet specifies. The element tantalum is a conflict mineral, and it’s expensive. For example the … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated Dangerous Prototypes partlist. This week: clock sources. As always, there are footprints for all these parts and more in our public domain Cadsoft Eagle part library. In our workshop the first … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: LEDs. Surface mount LEDs feel a bit smaller than capacitors and resistors in the same package. Despite moving to 0603 C and Rs, we still use 0805 LEDs. … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: Ferrite beads. We usually use ferrite beads as a power supply filter. You’ll find them on the USB supply in circuits with an FT232 USB->serial converter chip, like … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: NPN transistors Transistors do lots of analog tricks, but we only use them to switch high powered stuff with a weak microcontroller pin. Usually an LED. See the IR Toy, … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: buttons and switches. Let’s talk buttons. The 6mm button is the classic button. It comes in surface mount and through hole versions. The 6mm surface mount button, DTSM-6 … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: regulators. This week’s part: voltage regulators. We try to use the cheap 150mA voltage regulators in SOT-23 package whenever possible. These are cheap (from 25 cents in 1s) … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: resistors. If you don’t have a cheap resistor kit with common values, head to eBay and get one now. It’ll prevent last minute part orders and project delays. … Read more
Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: surface mount ceramic capacitors. Ceramic capacitors are cheaper than aluminum and tantalum SMD caps, but come in smaller values. Typical values are in the pF to 1uF range, … Read more
From the Dangerous Prototypes partlist: pinheader connectors. 0.1″ (2.54mm) header is the standard width of bread boards Straight and right angle versions They are used on every project we’ve made so far. Their standard pitch spacing makes them easy to … Read more
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