Molto Bene

My world of perpetually entry-level technology and engineering gets more interesting all the time.

I bought a digital storage oscilloscope. I will need to learn how to use it. I found out Tektronix (a top-level oscilloscope maker) has published a series of exercises designed to teach people how to use DSO’s. The exercises require an Arduino board. I bought one today.

I sort of glanced at Arduino a year or two ago, but I never got into it. It sounded like cheating. I wanted to learn how to design circuits from the ground up, and that’s not how Arduino works. They supply you with a prefab board you can program. I was offended! I thought I should learn electronics so well I could build whatever I wanted out of the drawers at Radio Shack.

I now think I was stupid. Designing circuits from individual components is not simple. It’s probably best left to real engineers. And aside from that, real engineers don’t build everything from resistors and capacitors. They use integrated chips which contain a whole lot of ready-to-wear circuitry. I think getting into Arduino would be a good idea, unless I want to create my first complex circuit when I’m 80.

What is Arduino? Glad you asked.

I don’t know a whole lot about it, but the idea is that a company in Italy sells you a board with a microcontroller and a USB port on it, and they tell you absolutely everything about its design and how to use it. In other words, it’s “open source.” Then you use C to write programs for the microcontroller, and you use the board for projects. There are additional boards called “shields” that snap into the main board, and you can build circuits that are more complex.

You can download a free program that allows you to write code for your boards. You connect them to your PC using USB.

It’s pretty cool, and I am hoping it will also be a gateway to bigger things that don’t require me to be dependent on Arduino.

“Arduino” is a hard word to type. The letters don’t seem to follow each other naturally.

I learned some stuff which may be even cooler than the Arduino stuff. If you use Arduino boards, you will shell out at least five bucks per board, even for Chinese clones, and they take up a fair amount of space. There’s an alternative. There is a family of integrated circuits called “ATTINY,” and they’re the size of op amps. If your project is simple enough, you can program an ATTINY and move your project to it. You can start on an Arduino board and move to an ATTINY.

This is remarkable. I’m talking about a chip the size of a Tic Tac.

Here is the bad news: it’s hard to get an Arduino board without resorting to mail order. Radio Shack sells them; good luck finding a Radio Shack within 20 miles in 2016. If you live in a city full of educated, cultured people (i.e. not Miami), you may be able to find other sellers, but in my area, you are better off shopping for churros, women’s stretch pants that display every possible crease and contour of the pelvic region in minute detail, or really fancy tire rims.

I shelled out $25 for an Arduino Uno board today, and that’s a lot of money for what you get. When you buy the original Arduino stuff, you’re actually making a donation to the Arduino movement, so it’s overpriced. I didn’t feel cheated, though, because it seems like a worthy cause to me. If you buy clones, you’re not hurting anyone, because there are no patents, so if I ever need more boards, China, here I come.

I ordered a few ATTINY’s because they’re so cheap. I plan to play with them eventually. I would love to create a digital tachometer for my drill press. I would be the boss nerd of my whole block.

I don’t promise all of what I wrote is correct. But it could happen.

My studies with the Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab are zooming along quite well. Now that I’ve given up on the idea of writing reports, I’m flying through several projects per day. It was a good move, because it would have taken me a year to do it the other way. Whatever I lose in depth of study, I more than gain in progress from concept to concept.

Today I get started on doing something or other with the lab’s digital display. That’s pretty cool. In my mind, electronics can be separated into two categories: stuff that has alphanumeric displays and digital components, and all the other stuff. That’s probably not quite right, but it’s how I see things. To me, making the leap from stupid circuits that turn LED’s on and off to circuits that put numbers on an LCD screen is a very big deal. It’s a jump from 1920 to 1975. It’s a jump to a realm which includes nearly every interesting electronic device a normal person owns.

You would think a Radio Shack product with the phrase “Learning Lab” in the name would be a kid’s toy, but it’s not. It’s very useful. If it included an oscilloscope, it would be considerably more advanced than the equipment I used in my first college electronics class.

One of the great things about it is that all the things you need for a whole series of projects are included. You can teach yourself electronics using a powered breadboard and your own components, but amassing the materials will be a giant pain in the butt. The cost of the Learning Lab is way more than offset by the grief it will save you.

Unfortunately, you can’t have one. They don’t sell them any more. But there are similar products out there. And you can find them used on Ebay.

The only problem with the lab is the analog meter on the board. I don’t use it. I use a Fluke meter which works better and is harder to blow up.

I guess I’ll fire up the Arduino and try to figure out how to use it. If all goes well, I should have a working minion by Tuesday.