标签: kit

Twenty-five of Silego's GPAK4 mixed-signal FPGA development kits are currently winging their way to the folks who teased and tempted me the most with their imaginative project proposals.   One of these guys was Harjit Singh, who hails from the state of Washington. In his email to me, Harjit managed to press two of my hot buttons at the same time -- space and robots.   More specifically, in Harjit's message he said: "I'd like to be considered for a GPAK4 development kit because I want to see if I can use it to create a robust watchdog system for use in space. Also, I build robots and I would like to see if I can use a GPAK4 for sensor conditioning."   Now, when someone says "robot," I have to admit that my knee-jerk reaction is of a full-size humanoid creation like Ada in my Alex + Ada column. In this case, however, Harjit was actually referring to a micro-mouse incarnation as illustrated in this video (also, you can click here to see a bunch of videos staring Harjit as himself along with his performing mice).   Did you see how fast the mouse was? If that scampered across the floor in front of me when I wasn't expecting it, I think you'd hear me squealing like a schoolgirl while leaping onto the nearest table. These micro-mice are really rather impressive, especially when you compare them to this demonstration by Claude Shannon in the 1950s. My initial reaction when I first saw this was: "Good grief, how on earth could they make robot mice this small in the 1950s?"   It only took me a few seconds to realize what they must have done -- or at least, to decide the way in which I would have achieved this using the technology of the time -- and I was right. As you'll see if you watch the video, the "brain" of the mouse is a honking big relay computer that's hidden out of sight, while its "muscles" (motive force) are actually located in the table.   Returning to today's micro-mice, Harjit informs me that mouse competitions take place across the US, and that the next big one will occur in March at APEC 2016 .   All of this has set my mind buzzing. First, I wonder what Claude Shannon's reaction would have been if I were to hop into my trusty time machine and take one of Harjit's micro-mice back to the 1950s. Second, I want to build my own micro-mouse. I'm hoping to persuade Harjit and his fellow Mouseketeers (I'm sorry, I couldn’t help myself) to write a column telling us more about the physical specifications for the mice and the goals of the competition. Until then, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some more mouse videos (and it's not often you'll hear me say that).

I was just meandering my way around the Adafruit.com website -- as you do -- when I stumbled upon something that made me gasp with awe and admiration (I'm just thankful I didn’t squeal with delight).   This is such a cool idea -- it's a XL741 Discrete Op-Amp Kit from those little scamps at the Evil Mad Scientist Labs. As it says on the Adafruit website: "This is a faithful and functional transistor-scale replica of the µA741 op-amp integrated circuit, the classic and ubiquitous analog workhorse."       In fact, this is an implementation of the "equivalent circuit" from the original Fairchild µA741 datasheet. It comes with terminal posts and solder points so that you can actually connect to it and build up classic and functional op-amp circuits.   But wait, there's more, because I then ran across this Discrete 555 Timer Kit , which also comes from the little rapscallions at the Evil Mad Scientist Labs. In this case, we're talking about a functional transistor-scale replica of the classic NE555 timer integrated circuit, which the Adafruit website correctly describes as "One of the most classic, popular, and all-around useful chips of all time."     I am completely blown away. I think this is a wonderful idea. I only wish I'd thought of doing something like this myself. In addition to being great to play with oneself, these kits provide an absolutely brilliant tool for teaching basic principles to newcomers to electronics. Now I think I want to learn more about those little rascals at the Evil Mad Scientist Labs...

Digilent Inc. is a fascinating company that specialises in creating boards and kits for educational purposes. They sell all of the usual sorts of hardware like FPGA and PSoC boards. But they don't neglect the analogue part of the embedded world, and have some very interesting products in that domain. One is the Analog Discovery, a low-cost USB scope. A companion product is the Analog Parts Kit , which is exactly what you'd expect from the name. It's a box packed with all sorts of components for playing with analogue circuits. Clearly they have a relationship with Analog Devices as the ICs all come from that company and Analog's logo is splashed across their web site. No problem there; I've been a fan and user of Analog's parts since just a few years after their founding in 1965. The kit includes a wide selection of passives like resistors, capacitors, pots, and inductors. The active devices cover a pretty broad range, including transistors, diodes, LEDs, op amps, voltage regulators, and references. But there's also an instrumentation amp and matched transistor packages. Serious parts for serious analogue work. Sensors abound, which makes it possible to build some pretty cool circuits. These include current, magnetic, vibration, and temperature sensors, as well as an accelerometer and photocell. There's also a 6.5" X 1.25" solderless breadboard with 70 jumper wires with pin ends.   Analog Parts Kit—I lifted this pic from Digilent's web site. It does a poor job of showing the wealth of included components.   Ten of the supplied ICs are SMT devices, which would normally create all sorts of headaches for experimenters. But these are cleverly mounted on tiny little PCBs which plug directly into the prototyping board.   DIPizing an SMT part. The Kit comes with zero documentation. For instance, we pros know what "104" means on a capacitor, but the novice will be clueless. The Kit's web page mentioned earlier does have a picture of each component, which helps. And there's a very helpful link to each part's datasheet. Digilent's analogue kit The Kit is a very useful jumble of parts that is just aching for a companion booklet that leads newbies to the nondigital world through the fun landscape of analogue electronics. An experienced engineer who needs parts for occasional experiments will find the Kit very useful. For $60 ($50 if purchased with the Analog Discovery scope) this is also a great deal for a parent of a youngster who wants to learn more about electronics. He will, however, need a mentor or will have to do a lot of homework to find ways to use the components. This page gives a half-dozen experiments. For instance, one shows how to measure the resonance of a loudspeaker, which is a pretty cool concept as resonance is such a fundamental idea in electronics. But there's not a peep about what resonance is and why the experiment works. The company also has over 40 videos explaining analogue electronics with Powerpoint slides. Each has a couple of experiments, too, that use the Analog Parts Kit and the Analog Discovery. I looked at several of the videos and the slides; the courses look extremely complete. Go through them and you'll learn a tremendous amount about analogue. But you'll also need to know calculus, which pegs this above the amateur level. The target market seems to be the engineering student crowd. Yet the components could get a much younger kid interested in this field. Analog Devices has a bunch of experiments here . They use a solderless breadboard but apparently not the Analog Discovery kit, as some of the activities require components not provided with the kit. At least one uses a 741 op amp! A great part in its day, but that day was long, long ago. We had family here over Christmas. One of the children asked about the clutter of test equipment and components in my office. Using the Kit, in just a few minutes we built a sensor that flashed an LED when the temperature exceeded 75 degrees using the TMP01. Then, adding the AD654 V/F converter, a capacitor, and a few resistors we had the temperature varying a square wave's frequency. That, of course, meant using a scope. He was mesmerized. Every engineering student needs this or something similar to get some real hands-on experience with circuits. Reading about the subject is fascinating, but building stuff is what builds great engineers.