beginners electronics

aidanki

hi all

i did mech eng in UL a few years ago but am now a biomedical/manufacturing engineer, not the most technically challenging position in the world, its more communications engineering than design and build engineering.

anyway Id like to get into some design and build again

for electronics would a kit like this be a good place to start?
http://shop.conrad-uk.com/hobbies/toys/robots/robot-kits/191524.html

or is this just glorified lego and not advanced enough for a college grad?

spideog7

It really depends on what you want to achieve. I'd have a go with Arduino the programming is fairly trivial but they're quite powerful and there is a lot of interesting articles online. Then as you develop with that you'll probably want to add peripherals and in that way you can bring more stuff into it and learn about different things.

mawk

yeah id second an arduino. they start off real easy but the sky is the limit with them. some time after you program it to blink an led on sequence, you can add on hardware, use two of them for parallel processing, network them or run things in real life over the internet, program and build musical equipment, open your front door with a sequence of knocks instead of keys.. whatever!

the uk warehouse of dealextreme has them last I looked. the new version

aidanki

mawk wrote: »

yeah id second an arduino. they start off real easy but the sky is the limit with them. some time after you program it to blink an led on sequence, you can add on hardware, use two of them for parallel processing, network them or run things in real life over the internet, program and build musical equipment, open your front door with a sequence of knocks instead of keys.. whatever!

the uk warehouse of dealextreme has them last I looked. the new version

the code used for an arduino is that similar to code used in industrial programming or I suppose if I go buy one and learn how to program it etc and put it on my CV will people laugh at me

you seem to know a bit about arduinos if you don't mind me asking what have you used them to do?

mawk

no, its not really like plc programming in terms of code similarity. but the logic of how to structure a program is definitely transferable. I wouldnt be ashamed to put digital i/o programming on a cv after some experience with them. once you get some chops with them you could try moving to programming pics or something, good cv fodder.

i haven't used them for nearly enough. sequencing lights and makeshift PWM modules for motors.

try here for some ideas:

http://www.instructables.com/tag/type-id/category-technology/channel-arduino/?&offset=18

DublinDilbert

For the microchip pic CPUs you can get ladder language compilers that will allow you to write plc code and compile it to machine code.

Otherwise it's time to brush up on 'C'.

You could also look at some small PIC development kits...

mawk

true, and if ul's mech degree is anything like cit's one, op probably has some experience with ladder compilers. bosch or siemens I presume.

arduino has a neat advantage over pics or atmegas in that it can supply power to components itself though.
within reason of course, small stuff.

aidanki

mawk wrote: »

true, and if ul's mech degree is anything like cit's one, op probably has some experience with ladder compilers. bosch or siemens I presume.

arduino has a neat advantage over pics or atmegas in that it can supply power to components itself though.
within reason of course, small stuff.

yes have some ladder experience, that might be a way to go

aidanki

DublinDilbert wrote: »

For the microchip pic CPUs you can get ladder language compilers that will allow you to write plc code and compile it to machine code.

Otherwise it's time to brush up on 'C'.

You could also look at some small PIC development kits...

any links for PLC developement kits?

DublinDilbert

A quick google throws up this: http://cq.cx/ladder.pl

Have tried one of these in the past and it worked fine, can't remember which exact one. This one works with pic and avr. Should be easy to pick up a dev board for one of the supported CPUs.