More and more parts are SMD type package only and is just to hard to manually solder, with my old age eyes. Has anyone out there heard of any DIY methods for soldering the SMD type packages to boards? Sparkfun puts out a nice breakout board for 6 pin SOT-23-5 so if there was an easy way to solder the component to the breakout board, it could then be worked with in a normal fashion.
Anyone have any ideas?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
What I'm Doing
Since the link between me and my readers (that would be you folks) is I post--you read, with no feedback I have tended to not post anything until I have some sort of closure. Projects I'm working on but have not finished are:
-Sensor array consisting of a temperature sensor, light sensor, LED along with a uController & XBee to measure light and temperature of a room and provide light based on the brightness of the room.
-Designing the database schema for sensors and controllers
-Evaluating SMD components for sensors like temperature and humidity and how I can solder them to a board without spending a tone of money.
-Evaluating a few proximity sensors to determine which work best and if I can profile them and make it so they can recognize the differences between people for recognition purposes.
-Designing LED light fixtures that could be hand-held yet provide enough light to actually provide light to a room (equivalent of a 40 watt incandescent bulb or more)
-Writing code to interface sensor arrays to the main computer.
-Writing software to remotely control and read the sensors
The reason for working several projects at a time and not finishing one before moving on to another is mostly due to ordering parts, waiting for them to arrive, altering design, research, etc. Since I don't have a brain trust handy and you folks won't participate, it's just me. that's fine and all it just takes me long to finish.
So once I have a project finished I will put together a pot about it and also put together some How-To's so you can build one on your own without all of the design alteration and research. Until then, I will provide status reports when progress has been made.
I am going to try this approach and see if it lends itself to more consist writing.
desNotes
PS I've decided that my readers must really love my writing otherwise they would be providing harsh comments about my poor grammar and spelling, well poor grammar since this blogging software does provide spell check.
-Sensor array consisting of a temperature sensor, light sensor, LED along with a uController & XBee to measure light and temperature of a room and provide light based on the brightness of the room.
-Designing the database schema for sensors and controllers
-Evaluating SMD components for sensors like temperature and humidity and how I can solder them to a board without spending a tone of money.
-Evaluating a few proximity sensors to determine which work best and if I can profile them and make it so they can recognize the differences between people for recognition purposes.
-Designing LED light fixtures that could be hand-held yet provide enough light to actually provide light to a room (equivalent of a 40 watt incandescent bulb or more)
-Writing code to interface sensor arrays to the main computer.
-Writing software to remotely control and read the sensors
The reason for working several projects at a time and not finishing one before moving on to another is mostly due to ordering parts, waiting for them to arrive, altering design, research, etc. Since I don't have a brain trust handy and you folks won't participate, it's just me. that's fine and all it just takes me long to finish.
So once I have a project finished I will put together a pot about it and also put together some How-To's so you can build one on your own without all of the design alteration and research. Until then, I will provide status reports when progress has been made.
I am going to try this approach and see if it lends itself to more consist writing.
desNotes
PS I've decided that my readers must really love my writing otherwise they would be providing harsh comments about my poor grammar and spelling, well poor grammar since this blogging software does provide spell check.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Comments, Spam, etc.
I have adjusted the permissions of the blog so anyone can leave a comment without signing in or having either a Google or OpenID. Bloggers typically jump for joy when their blog is appropriately littered with comments, either positive or negative. While I don't measure my self-worth on the number of comments I receive, I do appreciate the feedback when it adds to the discussion.
So feel free to comment away until the spammers us, which will force me to lock it down.
So feel free to comment away until the spammers us, which will force me to lock it down.
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