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jstevenperry

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Everything posted by jstevenperry

  1. Not a robot arm: it's a Trek 5000 road bike. The scope is a Tek 2246, 100 MHz, 4 Channel.. The PSUs are (from l to r) 50 V 1-3 A, 15 V 1-3 A. It's a cool shop. I like it. :-)
  2. Here's my lab (it's got some other stuff in it too:-)):
  3. Thanks for the link. The motors I want are out of stock :-( but the prices are good (even after conversion from Euros to dollars). I'll check back with them...
  4. They make 'em smaller. Here's one that's 2/3 the size of the one in the link I sent, but costs $1 more each. http://www.mpja.com/productview.asp?product=12342+MD. The millipede project specs call for 16 of these motors. I was trying to keep the cost low. --s
  5. I found some of these pager motors here: http://www.mpja.com/productview.asp?product=12343+MD
  6. Ah, heck. Don't sweat it. I was really just giving MP (the moderator) a little jab just as a little joke. Welcome to our forum!
  7. There are a lot of great articles on this site. Start with "articles" from the main page, and especially this one: http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/basics/theory/index.html. Plus ask questions in the "Electronics Chit Chat" forum. This section is specifically for questions about the projects listed on this site. MP will probably be by later to break your knee caps for posting this question here :-). Don't worry, it's happened to many of us. Good luck!
  8. Okay, cool. Well, I have seen vibrating motors in the various electronics catalogs. So now I know what to look for. Thanks.
  9. I have a question about the millipede project (http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/games/002/index.html). What the heck are "PagerMotors" and where do I get them? Thanks!
  10. True, but they have an extensive selection of identical footcare items ;-)
  11. It took 2:22 on my 3GHz HP nx9110 laptop. 1GB RAM.
  12. A 15W soldering iron is fine for most PCB applications. I have one from Radio Shack I bought for about 8 bucks. I've replaced the tip once. It's been a good soldering iron.
  13. I got it now. Thanks for the help. The only reason I decided to use a 7408 is that's all I have on hand. Thanks again to audioguru for the help. Somehow all of the great advice in guru's posts boiled down to "connect a 270 Ohm resistor between each input pin on the TTL Gate IC and ground." I've posted a more detailed explanation with a picture on my blog. http://jstevenperry.com/blog/?p=37
  14. Okay, I'm just going to have to play the "I'm an idiot" card here and ask exactly what the heck to do to wire up this 7408 AND gate. I've got +5 VDC going into Vdd, and Vss wired to ground. I want to use as inputs +5V or nothing. However, it doesn't seem to matter what I run in, since there is a mystery voltage on the input pins (even with NOTHING connected to them). Audioguru suggests using a pull down resistor to pull the inputs to about .4V, and I'd be happy to do that, but don't know what to do. I've googled my fingers off trying to find a circuit diagram to show me exactly a properly wired (with all the "pull down" stuff in place) 7408 gate looks like. So, my question is: what do I actually do on the breadboard to make this "pull down" resistor thing happen? Thanks.
  15. Thanks, guru. I'm recently getting back into electronics after a long break (since college - about 15 years). I discovered after I purchased 10 ea. of the 74xx series (AND, NAND, OR NOR, XOR and hex inverters) from Jameco that they're old, cantakerous TTL gates. That being said, you're saying some stuff that I don't get. I guess it's the "pull it down" comments that are throwing me. What do you mean? How do you "pull down" voltage? Throw it across a resistor? There's no CMOS gate involved in my circuit (that I know of). Basically, each input to the AND is a 5V input. I figured (naively, I guess) that if both were 5V coming in, that the output would go high and 5V (give or take) would be output. That's what I want: two inputs AND'ed together to produce an "answer." That's it. I guess I need to research more about how these old 74xx ICs work so I can figure out how to get them to play nicely in my circuit. Maybe I need other circuitry to get them to cooperate. Maybe I should order the basic logic series in CMOS form from Jameco and just cut my losses? Thanks for your reply. I feel so lost!!
  16. They're electromechanical, and work just like the picture Ante posted (except the pic he posted was for a 16 key, but conceptually no big diff...a 4x4 matrix versus a 3x4). The problem I'm having now is my AND gates (to produce a signal that corresponds to the exact switch in the matrix that was pressed) are doing weird things. I've posted that to a new topic, so not to pollute this topic. To me, the question I had regarding the 12 Key Matrix encoded keypad has been answered. Thanks to all for your replies!
  17. In building another project I need to whip together some AND gate logic. Basically I want to produce high output if and only if my two inputs are high. Easy stuff, right? Everything seemed to be going well, but my output wasn't what I expected. In diagnosing the circuit (I stripped it down to the simplest circuit that reproduces the problem - see attached JPG), I noticed that there was something fundamentally weird going on. Here's the setup: Circuit powered by 9V battery, running through a 7805CT +5VDC regulator (to power the 7408 gate). Nothing else interesting related to this problem. the IC is connected to two things: +5DVC and Ground. No other pins are connected to anything (take a look at the picture to see what I mean). Here's the weird part: there is a roughly 1.65V potential (relative to ground) appearing at every A and B pin, and 3.6V at the Y pin (the 7408 is a quad gate IC, so there are 4 A's, 4Bs and 4Y's for the basic AND formula: AB=Y. I've included the spec sheet in case my explanation isn't clear.) So basically every input pin appears to be OUTPUTTING a voltage of 1.65V!!! Of course, I would expect the input pins to be, well, input pins...not have a potential appearing at them. It took me quite a while to discover this mystery voltage, which appears at the input pins whether they are connected to anything or not (you can imagine what weird weird things it was doing to the rest of my circuit!). Anybody ever seen this before? I'm baffled! I've also tried every other 7408 I have on hand (for a total of 10), same thing. I even tried a NAND to see if the mystery voltage appears at its input pins. And yes it does. So, is there some other circuitry I need? I figured I could just run two input voltages into the gate's inputs and get an answer. It's not that simple is it? Any help is appreciated! Thanks!! 7408-AND-49146.pdf
  18. Thanks, Ante. Then combine the output pins on the keypad with some AND gate logic and I should have it, right?
  19. 1. Size of the board (number of 5x rows of holes, and the number of +/- bus holes) 2. Price 3. Number of power connections Other than that, I don't know really what else to tell you. Breadboards pretty much are all the same except for the above 3 things.
  20. How old is your computer, and when did this start happening? It's probably nothing. Or you could be the subject of an FBI probe. Maybe even Homeland Security. Just kidding. It's probably just your neighbors. ;-) Nah, relax. You probably have nothing to worry about.
  21. Breadboards are fairly cheap, so you can look in a lot of places. I have two. One I bought at radio shack for about $23, and another (twice as big as the one from Radio Shack) that I got from Jameco that was twice as big, and a few bucks less. Throw in a set of really nice jumper wires, and you're good to go. Here are some links. Board: http://jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=20773 Jumper Wire Kit: http://jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=19289 One thing I forgot to mention: if you're a cheapskate (like me) you can use 22AWG solid wire to make your own jumpers. Jameco sells it in 100' sections for about 5.50. http://jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=36855 HTH
  22. Sorry to hear about the cold. Here in Arkansas it is NICE. 63 degrees F today. Happy New year!
  23. Does anybody have a good circuit diagram for how to hook up a matrix encoded keypad. It doesn't have to be 12 key, that's just what I have. If, say, you have one for a 16 key, I can extrapolate. I am trying to get this sucker breadboarded and it's driving me crazy. I's appreciate any help. Just for fun, what I'm trying to do is hook this keypad up in such a way that when I press a particular button on the keypad, a corresponding LED lights up. But it's not working, and I think that I've just got the wrong picture in my head (I'm not working from a schematic, just from what I think I know about how these suckers operate...they're just a matrix of switches, right?)... Here's a picture of what I've got so far, just to give you an idea of what I'm going for. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
  24. I agree that systems which produce code are error prone and tend to have a bit too much trust put into with them (usually by the bean counters). You da man....
  25. Actually, $690 is a lot to pay to program PICs, considering they only cost a few bucks each. Oh, wait, you were being sarcastic. That's so funny!
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