KermMartian wrote:
So how about a program that will give you the closest value it can with two resistors, and with three resistors, and then you can decide which one is worth it?
yea ideally I was thinking of an output like this
Target Resistance: 45 Ohms
Closest 2 resistors: 28.7 & 16.5 (+.2 ohms .444%)
Closest 3 resistors: 15 & 15 & 15 (+ 0 ohms 0%)
and then I would just decide if that .2 ohm difference was worth using 3 or 2 resistors (in this case it does make a difference when trying to have output as close as .1% )
also after your mention of parallel resistors I'd even go so far as to have the same output again, but for parallel!
I've been thinking about different approaches to the problem as well such as just having the calculator compare EVERY resistor together even if it is well out of the range (ex. comparing a 3M and a 2.5M for a 200 ohm resistor ) and if that would make solving the problem easier at the expense of adding more computations. My original idea of narrowing the search list from the get go was to avoid those unnecessary comparisons, but in the end does it matter to the calculator? what is the speed of the ti-83 processor btw? lol
also my idea for the "memory" of resistors was starting the program with another program that writes all the values to a list, then in the main program calling those values from the list. Do the lists work like that where i can write, for example, 10 ohms to the first number in the list, 11.3 ohms to the 2nd and so on then recall those numbers by saying "L1 + L2" or something?