amuck-landowner

Electronics

shawn_ky

Member
What are they called? I had one when I was, I don't know, 6 or 7. 8 at the oldest. I just remember making it chirp, light this thing up, light that thing up, etc. :p
They are called.... wait for it.... wait for it.... Electronics Learning Lab... :)

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3814337  Here is one version for sale. There are several that range from building an AM radio, FM Radio, etc up to more expensive ones..
 

pcan

New Member
I have both the Arduino Uno and a couple of Raspberry Pi's. Both boards are fun to use, but lately I use the Raspberry Pi almost exclusively. My projects needs the ethernet interface: the Arduino ethernet shield is somewhat expensive and has limited capabilities; the Raspberry Pi has a far worse general purpose I/O, but the ethernet jack is standard on Model B board and the computing power is quite sufficient to power a real web server.

I am now testing the Raspberry Pi camera module. The time-lapse feature could be a useful addition to the server room monitor application I described on one of my previous posts here; I am now figuring out the best way to feed the pictures to a standard application such as Motion. I will also use further I/O pins to monitor the status of some telecommunication equipment. A cheap photoresistor is connected to a Raspberry GPIO pin, and a fixture keeps it in contact with the equipment LED. A cronjob polls the status each minute. If the LED lights up, a email is sent. I am already using this contraption to monitor a industrial machine; the manufacturer recomended monitoring solution was quoted over 1000 EUR.

A further project will be the monitoring of old UPSs that have no network monitoring board. I am testing some interfaces ordered at http://www.yoctopuce.com/, specifically the bistable relay and the watt-meter.

Electronics is mostly a hobby for me now, but I am actually a electronic engineer; in 2000 i switched career to the IT field after more than 10 years on analog electronics and microcontroller interfacing. Digital electronics is mainstream, but I still found interest on analog projects. I also used to restore electron tube vintage radios and amplifiers; the designers had to be resourceful to overcome the limitations of that early technology, so schematics are always interesting to check. In early times, the manufacturer always shipped the schematic diagram togheter with the radio; sometimes it was on the rear panel itself. This way, repairs could be made easily and economically. The net result is that a 1950 radio or Hi-Fi amplifier can be repaired today with ease - after some standard maintenance, you can turn it on and it works. I strongly doubt that any of the current consumer electronics device will be still working in 2070, and you will not have any meaningful source code of the VLSI chips inside to attempt a repair.
 
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MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
Look what arrived this morning :)

1039828_10151558298336980_1952629577_o.jpg
 
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