arduino, robots, cameras, and life

Introduction - just in case you haven’t renewed your geek card for the past year (decade?) Arduino is a term that refers to a microcontroller on a board that has certain hardware and software ‘shortcuts’ figured out. It was designed to be as plug and play as possible, and to lower the barrier to entry for people who want to let their computer interact with the physical world. The programming language is fairly simple and very well documented, and it is a matter of minutes between installing the software and uploading your first program! Like I usually do, there is an amazon store here in case you don’t want to read my witty banter.

arduino – the meat and potatoes of this whole shebang.
The cool thing about arduinos are that even if you already have one, you canalways find a use for another! You can set them up to ‘talk’ to each other. You can leave a project set up after finishing it, or be able to prototype multiple projects at the same time. Also, there are a wide array of shapes and sizes (and prices) of arduinos, and each one is suited for a different application.

You can start out with the ‘classic’ Duemilanove. It is the original form factor, and most of the shields are built to fit this one. This is a great one to use for prototyping, and if need be you can use a smaller board in your finished project. If this is your first arduino I would recommend getting the kit which includes jumper wires, a breadboard, some LEDs, resistors and a pushbutton. That way you can start making things blink as soon as you get it out of the box!

MEGA - The arduino mega is just like the Duemilanove except that it uses a bigger chip, is a bigger board, and has more inputs and outputs. Most of the code is portable across the two. If you have a project that needs more i/o’s than the smaller chips, then this is right up your alley!

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I am going to do a series of posts on things that geeks might need for Christmas / the holiday season. It will be a learning process, as I am going to rely on the collective wisdom of the internet to pick between a few similar products. Some might be big and some might be small, but I can guarantee that more than a few people are lusting over these…

One important disclaimer is that you need to know the kind of geek you are shopping for
. If you buy a unix geek some anime, they might not be too excited. These gifts are for the kind of geek who is interested in hardware, robotics, DIY electronics, and microcontrollers (particularly Arduino!) If that describes the person on your wish list - you are in luck!

The first gift idea is a desktop mini vice. This is useful for soldering and working on small(ish) tabletop projects. These can not be used for holding a 2×4 while you cut it, but they are perfect for holding a circuit board while you solder in the components.

I saw this the other day while wandering around home depot. It looks like something I need. I’ve been lusting over this panavise for a bit, and there is a strong pull for the dremel one at half the price!

The dremel one looks like it would be easier to set up on a benchtop (i think you have to bolt the panavice down, the dremel has a clamp) and it looks like you could use either one for light machining, soldering, and dis/assembly.

The only contender to those two might be this cheapie panavice, but it doesn’t look like it could stand up to some dremelling, and I like my tools to be multi-taskers!

So I’ll put the question out there; has anyone used any of the three? I’d love to hear thoughts, or suggestions if you have something better!