/diy/ isn't the only productive board. Come on, let's show them what we're made of.
What are you working on? I'm waiting on some ATmega328Ps and an FTDI breakout to convert my Cherry switch tester into a small multimedia/convenience keyboard. I paid $20 for it, might as well get something out of it. I'll post a guide on here if anyone's interested and I get the parts before the thread 404s.
Also, searching for an image to post, I came across this. I think it'd be a pretty cool little project to wire up some RGB LEDs into an assembly like this, with switches and an LCD at the base. You could put in the resistor value and the LEDs would light up to show you the color coding. It'd be a nice desk ornament with a practical function. Another thing I can do as soon as I get my ATmegas.
I'm interested. I don't know much but I got into bread boarding recently and small electrical stuff.
Here's my pi misc stuff.
>>47161911
>Come on, let's show them what we're made of
>one reply
that's sad
although i haven't been doing too much in this department either - but i think most fun things i was ever doing were atmega things. I've made some two-digit calculator on double 8-segment display, my own hd44780 'driver' (this is, set of functions in C to support it), tried to make AT-XT keyboard converter. All of those things were really fun, those few basic operations, this feeling that you're actually doing something that's really there - loved it.
So I'm trying to power pic related.
The battery setup ATM positions the terminals to accommodate the typical AA AAA battery design (terminals on each end). However, the radio takes a 9v battery.
My plan is to replace the current wires with a modern 9v receptor (both terminals on one side).
I believe this is a sound plan.
Can I ask something?
Done some stuff with arduino in the past but never understood several stuff like voltage, current, amperage etc can someone explain it to me?
>>47161911
I'm waiting for this
https://www.fasttech.com/p/1982101
Plus some leds and stripboards.
>>47162435
I think I might grab one of those to set up a home server on. But I don't have Wifi, only ethernet (dorm room). Could I route my ethernet through the Pi, and then from the Pi to my computer along with my server stuff?
How do I start wiring shit with a low budget? I want to pick up a Fry's starter kit with some diodes, resistor, transistors, jumper cables, and a breadboard. Maybe an Arduino or Raspberry Pi too. However, I have no idea what I should do with any it. What could I build? LEDs that light up according to the beat of a song or something?
Been busy designing a PCB for a discrete 4 bit adder. It'll a nice desk ornament and I've got a few friends who are interested in buying one
>>47162793
It's too much to explain, so you're going to have to Google it. But basically voltage is the propensity of electrons to travel across something. Current (which is measured in amps) is the "amount" of electricity that travels. Or something. If voltage is high enough that the electrons want to travel into your body, and if the current is enough to disrupt said body in some way, you get shocked/killed. Google "how does electricity work".
>>47162858
cheapest soldering station available
universal PCBs (i doubt you want to make your own pcbs now)
go to store and buy whatever you want, you may start from simple amp, they're most fun
although your starter kit sounds alright too, whatever it is.
>>47162858
Get an Arduino for sure, it's awesome for beginners. You only need one though, after you've got the hang of things you can just buy replacement ATmega328P-PU's, pop them in the Arduino to program them, and then pull them out and drop them in breadboards to do the same job.
Build whatever you want. You could make an amp for a speaker, or a robot, or an air piano.
>>47162928
I'm just a beginner. I have absolutely no electrical components. Basically what I want to know is what's some cool shit I can wire?
>>47162941
How about a radio or something? Are there any practical uses I can use it for?
>>47162957
https://www.google.com/search?q=diy+radio
>practical
Yes, you no longer have to buy many things, you can just make them yourself. If you need an alarm clock, you can make one. If you need some discrete PC speakers, you can fashion some together from a dead laptop's speakers and a DIY amp. If you want an automated door locking system or some shit, you can do that too.
>>47162957
Amp is cool shit you can wire. Isn't amp cool? Especially if you have electric guitar.
And it's not that hard, there are shitload of ready-to-go TDA integrated circuits and if you have one, you just need to solder some resistors and caps. I think it's a great start in electronics, to understand what's what.
>>47162435
I've done this sort of thing with an Arduino, but how do you go about doing it with a Pi?
What software do you use?
>you will never return to 2007-era /g/ when this board was filled with actual electrical enthusiasts and not just teenagers from /r/pcmasterrace who spam nvidia/AMD memes
>>47162822
Get a switch
>>47162793
You're probably better off just searching this but:
It's simple to compare electric circuit to water pipes. Voltage is pressure, current is flow rate, and resistance it opposition to flow. That's the very simple version of it. V = R*I, and then power (watts) is P = V*I.
Can't explain much in 2k characters but if you want to know more about electronics, you should learn about:
-Ohm's law
-branches, nodes, loops
-resistors, capacitors, inductors, voltage sources, current sources
-Kirchhoff's circuit laws, nodal analysis, mesh analysis
-operational amplifiers
-diodes, transistors
-AC voltage, phasor domain
>>47163086
Thanks, just something like this would do the trick?
>>47162793
Wikiversity has a course on the basics that covers most of what >>47163133 mentioned.
>>47163139
Yeah, I have one just like that. Great build quality. Just make sure it's a gigabit switch.
>>47161911
I'm working on my own bitbanged I2C implementation to get my attiny10 to talk to an eeprom and sensors that use I2C.
>>47162793
>not knowing how basic electricity works
amerifat education
Currently working on a simple project for university using a PIC microcontroller. Making a pocket-calculator like device that rolls dice; it takes the input [x]d[y] and rolls X dice with Y sides and displays the output on an LCD screen. First time I've used a microcontroller that wasn't an Arduino, over summer I'll probably do a bunch of projects with PICs.
>>47161911
> would make pic related
>>47162435
Keep forgetting that you can do cool stuff like that with the rpi. I guess it's just a matter of which language do you feel like learning.
I have a project which I guess would work off a pi, it just needs brains to drive some leds based of the level of light.
Got an arduino though so I could finally say I did. Will probably hack into it later this week. The hard part is trying to find a way to drive 12v leds. I've been thinking about power transitors/mosfets but think switching would be faster with op amps, given making the led appear to 'pulse' will require pwm I'm sure.
Could probably do it with the pi but in the long run I see the arduino being more stable.
>>47162941
I'm still new to this arduino scene.... didn't know I could do that. That's awesome.
>>47163063
> these feels
>>47162793
First see this guy:
>>47163133
I will give a different one to this guys:
Okay, very simplified explanation here. If you want a real explanation you should read up on some physics/electronics (bunch of shit on Google). This is extremely simplified to the point that it can't be considered correct only to a very simple degree. It is enough to derive the basic power equation and ohm's law to a degree.
Electric potential (Voltage) is the energy (ayy, amount of work it can do) an electric charge moving in the wire carry. Current (ampere) is how many of these charges move through the cable or whatever material in a given time. In every material this charge if wants to move it needs to spend some of it's energy on moving through it. This energy is absorbed by the material. This is the materials resistance. Wires have very low resistance allowing the charge to travel easily, while resistors have usually high resistance absorbing much of this energy. There are other complex materials (multiple materials) which can control how the charges flow. However when the charge doesn't move then it doesn't spend energy. So power in Watt equals to P = UI. P is power, U is the electric potential, I is Current. Ohm's law says U=RI. R is resistance. The absorbed energy from the charges are in most cases turned into heat. That's why resistors get hot and wires can too if you try to put extreme currents on them. The bigger the cross section area of the wire the bigger the current can be.
>>47163061
I've never used an arduino before, but with the raspberry pi, everything is done in python. And a module that let's you control the pins. This program let's me run power through any combination of the three gpio pins. You can see the red green and blue cables. How I have it set up is for each pin on the rgb led can be 010. Where 0 is the pin off and 1 is pin on.
And each of the wire/pins has some resistors to them.
So I can do red green, blue cyan magenta yellow or white or off.
Really fun stuff
>>47163378
If you want to drive 12V LEDs I'd suggest de-coupling the the GPIO pins used for PWM from your constant current LED driver circuitry.
Recently made a motion/home occupancy sensor that I can tie into a home automation platform.
>>47162893
>>47163133
>>47163423
Thanks for the answers, I understand it now except I have a question.
I was reading http://m.instructables.com/id/How-electricity-and-electronics-works/ and it mentions static electricity isn't dangerous because although it has a high voltage the current is not enough to do any damage.
But it mentions ohm's law that says voltage is equal to current over resistance.
Doesn't this mean if current is low so is the voltage, aren't they directly related?
>>47163237
Not American but thanks for the input, I'm sure you were born knowing everything
>>47163237
Have fun with your diversified education.
Education isn't perfect anywhere.
>>47164276
I'm the one who asked the question but I'm not American.
I probably learned it in school but either forgot it or wasn't paying attention in the first place.
>>47164034
>it mentions static electricity isn't dangerous because although it has a high voltage the current is not enough to do any damage.
Static electricity the kind which you get from metal stuff and your clothes have very little energy and even their voltage is "low" so they can't harm you.
It's not that simple as that in the general case of electric shock though (not static electricity). The stored energy matters actually, which is transferred to your body over a period of time. Every second depending on the resistance of your body flowing through you until there is no more energy left. High voltage * low current = low power aka it can't fry you, but damage is still possible depending on where it flows through which depends on a lot of things including the different resistances of your body parts. Teasers use this, but it has medical risks. It usually doesn't damages you though. The lower the current the better.
>But it mentions ohm's law that says voltage is equal to current over resistance.
Doesn't this mean if current is low so is the voltage, aren't they directly related?
I don't really get what you mean. Voltage = Resistance * Current and you can reorder this formula.
>>47164034
>it mentions ohm's law that says voltage is equal to current over resistance
It really doesn't. Voltage = Current x Resistance according to Ohm's law. Remember the pyramid rule when in doubt!
>>47164034
>it mentions static electricity isn't dangerous because although it has a high voltage the current is not enough to do any damage.
>But it mentions ohm's law that says voltage is equal to current over resistance.
You mean current times resistance
>Doesn't this mean if current is low so is the voltage, aren't they directly related?
Think about it a bit harder. V = I*R.
If voltage is high but current is low, it just means resistance is high. And if V is high and I is high, then R must be low.
If you hook up battery terminals with just a wire (i.e. very low resistance, thus very high current) the wire will heat up and probably burn (as well as damage the battery so don't do that), because it's too much power (V*I) for it to handle. But if you attach a load to the battery, the wires don't heat up as much because, while it has the same voltage, the current drops so that the circuit obeys V=I*R
As for static electricity, human skin has very high resistance actually (when dry) so that has something to do with it. Also, static electricity discharges in a fraction of a second meaning that whatever was carrying the charge wasn't storing enough energy to do actual harm.
>>47164324
>>47164326
>>47164348
Oops I'm sorry I thought it was dividing not multiplying, that makes more sense, specially taking resistance into account
Thanks very much for the answers you guys are being pretty cool
>>47164426
No problem, you're welcome.
>>47164348
>Also, static electricity discharges in a fraction of a second meaning that whatever was carrying the charge wasn't storing enough energy to do actual harm
That's a bit misleading.
If you take into account the amount of electric charge that the human body as a model can capacitate then the Joules per second in case of an electric discharge and the potential difference of two planes where electric discharge happens (like through airs) it will be in kilo-Volts and damage components with low resistance (human body not damaged).
sorry for shit english, just learning
>>47164499
Yeah, "it happens fast so low energy" is a bit misleading because lightning strikes have a ton of energy in them. But the static electricity people are familiar with doesn't have enough energy to really do anything, though it is able to damage electronics.
>>47164426
Also, there is an Electronics general on /diy/ and you could download Multisim, new name is NI Circuit Design Suite, a circuit designer and simulator. There are torrents available. It can also simulate various instruments (multimeters, etc.) so you can check things out easily.
>>47164597
Thanks ill look into it.
