Futurlec Kits

So I'm planning to hopefully be restocking my electronics soon. If everything works out sometime next week I'll be ordering some kits of common electronic parts and maybe a new breadboard. The kits will come from Futurlec and include one of each of the following:

• ($2.45) 1/4W Resistor Value Pack - Even more great value. 300 5% tolerance 1/4W Resistors in standard sizes, that's less than 1c per resistor.
  
• ($4.95) 1/2W Resistor Pack - Standard 1/2W Resistors with 5% tolerance. 300 pieces in useful sizes, for most applications.
  
• ($2.95) Ceramic Capacitor Pack - Ceramic Capacitors in various sizes. Voltage 50V and above. 200 pieces of various common sizes.
• ($3.95) Electrolytic Capacitor Pack - Radial and some axial Electrolytic Capacitors. In various voltages and sizes. 100 quality pieces.
  
• ($3.95) Mylar Capacitor Pack - Top Quality Mylar Capacitors sorted by popularity, includes 1uf, 0.1uF, 0.01uF sizes and many more. 100 pieces of various standard sizes, all top quality and brand new, great value.
• ($3.95) Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor Pack - Over $9's worth of the most common Multilayer Ceramic capacitors, plenty of the most popular 0.1uF and 1uF sizes. 100 standard size multilayer capacitors at a great value price.
  
• ($4.95) LED Pack - Red, Green and Yellow LED's in standard, miniature and rectangular types. Super value at 100 pieces for only $4.95.
  
• ($5.95) Linear IC Pack - Amazing value, 50 of the most popular Linear IC's including the LM555, 7805, LM741, LM324, LM358, 78L05 and many more. These are all top quality brand new IC's and not factory seconds or discontinued lines. The retail price of the parts bought individually is well over $15.
• ($4.95) Transistor Pack - Assorted General Purpose Transistors including 2N2222,C9012,C9013,2N39014,2N5401 and others, all brand new and top quality, a very special buy for 100 pieces for only $4.95
• ($2.95) Diode Pack - Assorted Signal diodes including 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4004 and others. All you need for a long while. 100 pieces for $2.95.
  
• ($5.95) IC Socket Pack - Many different IC sockets, including 8, 14, 16 pins and others. This price won't last, grab one while you can.
  
• ($9.95) IDCC Pack - Assorted IDCC Connectors, including standard IDCC10, IDCC16 and IDCC20 Plugs, also includes the PCB Mount Male Headers in assorted sizes, including IDCMH10, IDCMH14 and many more. This pack also includes 1 metre or Grey Cable in 10 and 14 way sizes. Parts purchased separately total over $20, terrific value at only $9.95.

Please note the descriptions are blatantly stolen from the site :)
It should total around $65 to $70 with shipping, not too bad considering what you get!

Pictures of snow!

I finally got around to setting up a photo gallery for the site after snapping about 55 pictures of the first snow fall of Clarkson Fall 2008. The pictures look pretty cool and are right here.

Snow!

So we started getting warnings and watches for 'Early Season Snowfall' a couple of days ago, and today it started snowing. It started as a cold rain which started to just get thicker as time passed until it started sticking to the ground, now there is about 4 inches on the ground and another 6 or so expected for a total of 10 inches by tomorrow evening. As unlikely as it is, I wouldn't mind a snow cancellation for my classes, as I have stuff tomorrow I don't want to do :) Like my Microelectronics exam, which I'm now going to study for :)

Ramblings of a Krass

This is a general "I felt like writing and there's stuff that happened so I'm going to write about it" post. So.. on with it.

Well, the FM transmitter still doesn't work, I think I just need to approach it with a clearer head and rebuild it and pay more attention as I build it. I know the design works and I suspect I bungled a connection, because I was getting nothing from the first transistor. So I figured I'd switch it out, but when I removed the old one I became confused where to put the new one, and some leads don't seem to match up. We will see how that turns out. For the record I'm using this schematic here.

I'm also planning to resurrect some older projects, and set up a new workbench with my new room arrangement. Oh yeah about that, I rotated the desk 90 degrees and rewired everything. Godzilla and Gojira are now under the desk, and the stereo is fixed. now the room is a lot neater cause I'm using the storage racks to store things, not computers and it just works better. It also left me a ton of space on the desk, and I extended it with a wooden shelf to the heater. So now I have room to work. It's cool!

As far as other projects go, the LED lights are probably next, or some audio mixing circuits. I kind of want to try to build something to interface my ham radio (My call is KC2RGZ by the way) to my Altera DE1 FPGA dev-board and make a simplexer repeater for fun.

Most/all of my project work depends on getting probes for my oscilloscope, and possibly buying all these kits to stock up. They're cheap, $60 buys one of each!

Classes are going well, pretty interesting stuff, but I don't feel like writing about them now.

That's about it I guess, hopefully expect a ton of my projects showing up soon.

Close up of rev 2

This is a close up the rebuilt rev 2 circuit with trimmed leads for neatness and minimal RF issues. Still doesn't work though :-/

FM Transmitter Take 2!

This is the way the project looked at the end of the end of the night. Unfortunately it doesn't work. That thing on the scope is the parasitic properties of the elements reacting to the sensing equipment in the scope. It looks exactly the same with power (9V battery) removed. I'll come back to it another day and try again.

FM Transmitter

My weekend project: I cobbled together an FM Transmitter from a Google'd schematic and a parts raid in K2CC. Now to find a power source!

Uhhh.....

There was a giant inflatable steak in the CAMP lecture lobby when I arrived for my exam...

Uhhh....
Yeah, sure?

This is what we do...

All that stuff represents the fun half of what we do, and this is why I like Computer Engineering.

Project Update

Well after Tom-Tom and Diana visited last weekend I now have the remainder of my tools and such so I'll be working on the Parallel Port LCD project this weekend. It seems like I'll probably need to power the display and backlight from the 9V battery anyway because the parallel port could be damaged if my math is wrong, and I don't wanna risk ending this project early cause I cooked the port!

More to come later I hope....

Radio stuff

I bumped in to Greg and co en route to repeater work so I joined them

Teeeeest!

Testing...

The Apple War machine marches on...

I'm appalled they charge that much for that garbage. I'm even more appalled people are dumb enough to pay it!

Portfolio?

I'm thinking it might be time to close The Matt Cave and transfer my hosting to a new domain, a more professional site to host my actual portfolio of work. I'm not sure, but after my experience in Wal-Mart today I'm realizing I'm running pretty low on cash, more hosting is not an option and I don't know of any particular way to split my current hosting between two domains. If that is an option I'll look in to it as I'm quite fond of this site and the cheesy name and all.

That is all.

She did it again!!

Sam drew this on the whiteboard and signed it. I'll follow up with a color version later.

Argh!!!!

If I ever manage to forget this during an exam again I will hit myself with a mallet!