electronic project

[Nick]

hi

i've been thinking to start an electronic project to learn more about the working of all those components and circuits. the only problem is that i don't really have ideas

i want to make something 'special', but feasible as a starter.
it might be something radio controlled, since i have a sender/receiver here from an old rc car, and i wanna do something with it, but i don't really know what xs

i hope you understand what i mean, and if someone has any ideas, feel free to tell me thanks a lot!

P.S. not with an arduino or any other microcontrolled stuff yet, since that will be too hard to start with, and i will do thing i don't understand myself

[shmibs]

do you have any experience with this stuff yet? if not, you should just grab yourself a breadbord, some wires, some basic gates/capacitors/LED's/switches/etcetera and just try setting up a few simple circuits that implement different expressions(things like (AandB)or(BandC)or not(D)) before you start working with anything more complicated. after that, try setting up simple devices, like a receiver for a key fob (those things that open garages/car doors).

[Nick]

a little yes, but very little.. i built a board that makes two led blink after each other, but that's it xs

well, that was what i was planning to do, but i want something to make, like "running" leds or so, something simple

[jwalker]

hmm, im taking a college electronics class and i have a book of projects at school...
i'll see what i have in it, it is prety basic

[Juju]

Actually, the Arduino is pretty straightforward to use. But yeah, you should get a breadboard and all this stuff to get the hang of it. Start with basic stuff, then you could do more complicated stuff.

[Nick]

i would love to use the arduino, but if i don't understand the basics of it, it's useless to start arduinoing.. but i will pass to that stage later on

and jwalker thanks, it would be wonderful to have some ideas, since on the internet i don't really find any xs

[jwalker]

i will see what i can do, i have to get it moday because it is at school, they have some prety cool projects too
also, if you know some C, the arduino is realy easy to understand, i made a sketch that allowed me to do some stuff with a parallel
circuit that would blink leds at diffrent intervals the verry day i got it

[Nick]

would it be a good idea to buy for example this or this ?

it's a kit with an arduino, breadboard, resistors etc, for €60 (about $65 i guess), then i have different components, and an adruino for later on, or is too expensive?

[jwalker]

since their about the same price... either one would be fine, it comes down to what you think you would want for components in any projects.
if you dont know what a component is, look it up and see what are its capabilities and limitations and what it can do, this will help you decide.

[Nick]

i know all of them (their functions, not the specifications) and i like the one with the servo the most, because (in the future) i would like to make an wireless (radio/ir) controlled robot, so that would be already a start and one can buy the other components everywhere, so i think i would take that one..

so you think i should do that? ok, thanks

[jwalker]

if it has what you need, then yes
the arduino is a great, i love my 2560, that is for sure

[renatose]

I'm also taking my 1st steps through the world of electronics and what I did was to buy a 28X1 picaxe microcontroler which is programable in BASIC and it's really easy to start with. Then I bought a breadboard, a capacitor and a resistor kit, a bunch of LEDs, some temperature sensors to have some inputs, some ICs and so on... I buy most of that stuff in ebay, except for the PICAXE microcontroler.
You can also buy a project board with the microcontroler... I think that it is easier to program than the arduino but to some extent is more limited also so I am planning to buy an arduino in the near future even knowing that by now it can do anything I imagine doing to do.

I am planning to create a shield to interface with the nspire through RS232 and a C program on the nspire it would be great to have some help thinking about that

[Nick]

hmm, that would be great, but i won't be able to help you xs since i'm new, and my C programming skills are still 0... but i hope it will work, but it won't be easy, be sure of that

[renatose]

I'm near zero in C programming also. We would start at the same level... I think that the harder part would be the C programming to the nspire since the electronics part and the picaxe programming seem pretty easy

[Nick]

yeah that's true, but do you know how you can make them communicate? i have heard of protocolls and such, but i really don't know anything about it xs you should make it look like a real nspire somehow, so it can just send/receive files like from another nspire