Electronics Galleries

Pong : The last time I tried soldering a project kit, I had very poor results. More specifically, I gave up and threw it away. I couldn't get the solder to cooperate, I lifted pads, and burnt the shit out of everything, including myself. I spent some time watching videos of soldering techniques prior to starting the Pong kit, and must say that I'm kind of proud of myself! I had much better results this time, and it even worked on the first try! No green wires, no bridges; it just worked!

Pong

The last time I tried soldering a project kit, I had very poor results. More specifically, I gave up and threw it away. I couldn't get the solder to cooperate, I lifted pads, and burnt the shit out of everything, including myself. I spent some time watching videos of soldering techniques prior to starting the Pong kit, and must say that I ...

Updated: Dec 26, 2008 8:07am PST

Nerdkit : The Nerdkit has proven to be an exercise in patience. I followed the directions for hooking up the LCD perfectly, but it didn't work. The troubleshooting section told me that I had at least one wire from the MCU to the LCD loose or incorrect. I double checked everything, but it looked right. I decided to pull out every wire in the breadboard, and start over from scratch. Same result. What gives? Maybe the Nerds who built the kit didn't preprogram the chip like they said they did? I got the USB to Serial converter driver's installed, skipped ahead to the programming section, "reloaded" the initial program, and it worked fine. Fuckers. Then I decided to play with the C source a little, and reprogram the chip. Hello world. From there, I moved on to the next project, which is adding a temperature sensor, writing and compiling some new code, and loading it on the module. After going through the code to correct a few typing errors, we had ourselves a nice thermometer.

Nerdkit

The Nerdkit has proven to be an exercise in patience. I followed the directions for hooking up the LCD perfectly, but it didn't work. The troubleshooting section told me that I had at least one wire from the MCU to the LCD loose or incorrect. I double checked everything, but it looked right. I decided to pull out every wire in the breadbo ...

Updated: Dec 26, 2008 1:52pm PST

Car Remote : The remote for my car's keyless entry has been finicky since I bought the car. There are two buttons, one of which locks and unlocks the doors, the other of which does nothing. I decided to open it up, and switch the two buttons so the unused one would be the primary.

Car Remote

The remote for my car's keyless entry has been finicky since I bought the car. There are two buttons, one of which locks and unlocks the doors, the other of which does nothing. I decided to open it up, and switch the two buttons so the unused one would be the primary.

Updated: Dec 26, 2008 2:10pm PST