SparkFun Electronics

tlr, It's not obvious to me that books are the best approach. I suggest you invest in a SparkFun Inventor's Kit , work through the exercises in it, then get creative. There's lots of documentation (including tutorials) available through SparkFun and elsewhere on the web. If/when you get stuck, just...

Daisy, First, welcome to SparkFun fora! I'll start off by stating that I have no experience with SparkFun's e-textile offerings. That said, let me see if I can be of some help. 1) The ohm, for which the symbol is Ω, is the unit of resistance. So, the lower the number of ohms/unit length, the more e...

grantkaye, How are you turning the 12V motor on and off? How much current does it draw? You are on the right track about using the 3.3V signal to open a relay that feeds the motor. The details, such as what components you'll need, depend on what you already have and how much current the motor draws...

rrc1962, Without looking at the datasheet (If you had provided a link, I might have looked. :wink: ), it may be that the 40 mA is per terminal and the 150 mA is maximum total of all active pins. As a general rule, though, one should not drive an inductive load (such as a relay) directly with the ou...

EvilWizard, I second Mee_n_Mac's suggestion that you investigate analog multiplexers (MUXs). I don't think "daisy-chaining" (connecting the output of one device to the input of the next) will serve you at all well, but you can connect large numbers of potentiometer high ends to one voltage supply a...

Z.K., Why not just "widen" the center channel so that the pins of your device fall in the holes closes to center? It appears to me you could do this by cutting the board along the channel, then spacing the segments as needed. Alternatively, if you placed two segments such as these next to each othe...

mw78, It is said that gods help those who help themselves. In (at least) that way, forum participants are god-like. Here's a four-step plan for you: Go read this. Search the SparkFun fora for relevant threads. If you don't find there what you need to get yourself started, search the rest of the hum...

scampa, It looks to me that: a) when nothing is plugged in, pins 1 and 2 are not connected and pins 3 and 4 are connected to each other and b) when the correct plug is inserted, pin 1 is connected to the center of the plug, pins 2 and 4 are connected to the outside of the plug, and pin 3 is not con...

samman946, It does not look to me like an issue with a buffer. Each of your subroutines turns on the H-bridge for its intended configuration, but nothing but the "stopmotor" subroutine turns the H-bridge off. Therefore, unless you send a subsequent command, the H-bridge stays where you put it and t...

James, That sounds like a power supply problem to me. Your comment "the motors aren't getting enough torque" may well be a step in the right direction. To oversimplify vastly: for a brushed DC motor, voltage is speed and current is torque. Here're a few things to get you started: What are you using...

Jeremy, Let's start with a basic question: By "Arduino chip", do you mean one of these: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/11021 or one of these: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9061 or something else? More generally, if you include links to the product pages in your posts, you'll get much better an...

Other thoughts: If you do find a gear, pulley, or coupling with a set screw, you may want to file a small flat onto the shaft against which to tighten the set screw. Otherwise, if you ask for much torque, the shaft is likely to spin inside the power transfer device you connected to it. I've had mod...

phijoh, May one ask "Why?"? Unless you need to shave milliseconds, why not write in a higher level language? Also, if you don't tell us on what you're looking to run the assembly code, how is one to know where to start of if what one has in hand is useful? (In the interest of full disclosure: I'm n...

Roms, Here are some suggestions: Go to the product page for the spectrum analyzer and read the comments. Try the code reported (in them) to work. Check to make sure you are using the correct pins. The analog and digital pins are different, and your use of a digital function (pinmode) on what you ap...