Everyone please post whatever tools and components you have right now so I can get an idea of what everyone has/needs to start building the upcoming projects in the Electronics/Embedded subforum.

I've got 2 PICs, a programmer, and some bags of random resisters, LEDs, and a proto board. Along with whatever else I can salvage from old electronics.

Speaking of which, I really should get around to trying to build one of those HDD clocks....

For analog, resistors, transistors, electrolytic and ceramic capacitors, an audio transformer, headphone jack, a coil or two

For digital: 74-series ICs, LEDs, 330-ohm CLRs for the LEDs, maybe a 7-seg or two with 74-series drivers, and a MAX232 wouldn't be a bad idea.

Also batteries/case, breadboards, wires. Did I miss anything?

Wait; are those parts you have or parts you're suggesting everyone has? If it's the latter I'm going to hold off from posting a parts list until I have an idea of what everyone has/is willing to spend.

@Kllrnohj: What are the 2 PICs? I know you have a 18F4550 but what's the other one?

I was suggesting a bare minimum of parts that everyone should have. My own list is way, way, way, way more extensive. I have nine boxes filled with parts on my desk at school alone, let alone my room at home.

The PIC16F690 that came with the PIC Kit 2 Starter Kit (got it for the programmer for the PIC18F4550)

Assorted resistors
Assorted caps (mostly 0.1 uF ceramic, a couple 100 uF electrolytic)
Voltage regulators (7805s, something else I haven't bothered finding specs on)
PIC 16F87X series micros and ICD (original serial ICD)
Various LEDs

That's the most interesting stuff. The only thing stopping me from really doing stuff with all that is my lack of resonators/crystals.

Which model PIC specifically do you have? There's quite a few chips in the 16F87x series

Mostly -877[A]. I believe I also have a couple -874s.

I have absolutely nothing, so once the projects start showing up, if they look cool and don't cost too much, I may start purchasing.

I heard in another topic that you'd be getting a kit for your CS 210 class; what parts does it come with?

To Everyone: Do you have a parallel or serial port on your computer (the one you'll be using for projects? And I mean *real* serial and parallel ports, not laptop ports or a usb adapter).

I'm getting some kind of Atmel, I think...

I have a PCI parallel port and two serial ports on my machine. Getting software to work with a PCI port is a bit of a pain, but worth it.

Two pieces of equipment I haven't noticed being mentioned.

- Digital multimeter with continuity tester and transistor tester.
- Logic probe with memory function and pulse stretching (these are invaluable for digital work).

If you plan on doing any soldering I'd also recommend a helping hand assembly aid and something to aid desoldering (I prefer to use a desoldering pump, others may prefer desoldering wick).

I use a Willem programmer (PCB3). These can be picked up cheaply "made in China" on eBay. You'll then need something like this if you have non-legacy parallel port addresses.

Edit: One component I forgot (how could I‽) that nobody should be without - the 555 timer IC.

Unfortunately I don't have serial or parellel ports on any of the 3 machines I use frequently (desktop and 2 laptops). I do, however, have a parallel port on an old HP that I'm using as a server (iirc, that is). I've thought about writing a simple client/server so that I can remotely access the server's parallel port, just never had much of a reason to

My Xp/Win 7 desktop has both serial and parallel, as does the Simms box and all six of its nodes.

I have some random wiring, a 15watt soldering iron, some rosin-core solder (not sure what size, fairly small), a de-soldering tool, a couple radio kits (one a crystal radio, the other a now disfunctional tunable radio of some sort), and a bunch of old motherboards that can be raided for parts, and some motors. Nothing chip-related. My old toshiba (XP), an old Dell running Linux, and an even older Gateway dual-booting 98SE and Linux all have parallel + serial. My main laptop doesn't, and I'm fairly certain the old iMac doesn't either.

Lets see, my good comp only has serial but jsut about every other comp I use on a regular basis has both; my laptop (xp), my PIII machine (xp+xubuntu), my server(xubuntu), and my old IBM Aptiva (98se). I also have lots of spare parts lying around, com ports , spare cables, drives old powermacs etc. but alas no micro controllers to speak of.

Microcontrollers are the least of your worries; they're fairly cheap and easy-to-find. At this point I would think that for all of you the most important thing would be to build up a good base of debug hardware, random interfacing parts, breadboards, and wires/jumpers.

Okay it seems the majority of people are willing to spend ~$30-$45 dollars on this endeavor; which is good, because I had a tough time downsizing the kit as it was

Here's what I have so far (all parts are from Futurlec):

Code:


The subtotal is $21.77, and shipping is $6 via international snail mail. If you've noticed I've left a few things out, as everything above I believe are absolutely essential (unless you already have the above parts I suggest you just buy them all). If you do not have a solderless breadboard and wires, then you need to add Part No.'s BREADBRD and JUMPERKIT, which together cost $10.80. In addition, if you do not already have a multimeter, I recommend that you get one (Part No. DM-DT830D, $4.90).

Another "big" expensive I left out were the cost of the microcontrollers, as I wasn't sure what each individual wanted to use; if I were to selectively choose microcontrollers based on what everyone has available to them, I would choose to post projects on the PIC16F877 (Part No. PIC16F877-20/P, $8.90), PIC18F4550 (Part No. PIC18F4550-I/P, $6.90), the ATmega8 (Part No. ATMEGA8-16PC, $4.50), and the ATtiny 2313 (Part No. ATTINY2313-20PU, $1.55). You may or may not want to code for all of these microcontrollers, which is why I left them out of the main shopping list, but I do suggest that you have at least one of these chips as these will be the focus of this subforum (unless someone wants to post projects of their own and port code across microcontroller families).

And for those of you wondering if you need a programmer to program your microcontroller, all of the parts needed to build one are in the parts list.

Rather than buying each resistor individually, isn't it cheaper to buy one of those kits that contains hundreds of the buggers? I have a cheap 480 resistor kit (E3 series) with a handful of DIL resistor arrays in 470R and 10K.