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Hi Jeremy,

I hope you will be coming to Maker Faire. I teach Arduino all around the San Francisco Bay area (I met Jeri in one of my classes at The Crucible) and want to chat.

I'm looking for an inexpensive DPDT relay that I can hook up directly to an Arduino. This means 5VDC coil, and resistance of at least 125 Ohms (to get below the 40mA that Arduino can deliver). Finally, I want to be able to use it on a standard solderless breadboard, so it must have a DIP pinout with .3" spacing.

I found the 12P9633 for $1.10, but wonder if you know of anything less expensive.

--
Michael Shiloh
KA6RCQ
www.teachmetomake.com
teachmetomake.wordpress.com
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Michael,

I unfortunately won't be able to make it to Maker Faire this year - I'll be travelling in Europe while it's going on.

That relay looks good, and multicomp is reputable.  I don't immediately know of any cheaper ones that would get the job done, but a good quality relay isn't going to be super cheap.

I have seen the ethernet shield and it is great for it's size and the fact that it stacks right onto the Arduino but, it is sort of pricy at $40 or so (for the kit and the jack and such). It seems to me that I should be able to use one of the many old NIC's I have laying around in my parts box.  Has any one done that? I did a quick gogle search and did not see anything but maybe I just need to look a little farther.

Thanks for any thoughts!

James

NICs communicate via the PCI protocol, definately not something you can talk to with an arduino.  At least no easily...

The correct spelling is Arduino, not Ardunio!!!!!

Wow... bad typo.  Fixed it!

That makes sence but what about an older ISA NIC?

The problem with Ethernet cards is the Drivers.  The W5100 based shields have a lot of the protocol on the chip, so the Arduino driver is less complex. The ENC26xx shields need a more complex driver.  To use an ISA card you would have to provide 2 things which would be major development work: A parallel interface to the ISA bus, which would be 24+ connections, and a new driver from scratch to control the card. 

Not impossible, but highly difficult, IMHO...

Regards, Terry King

terry@yourduino.com

Thanks guys. That all makes sence...now that I hear it ;-)

I have a number of prjects in mind where, I know that I can build a very bare bones Arduino for under $10 but then its 4 times that (per project) to add ethernet. It is-what-it-is i guess but I was just hoping for a cheep alturnative.

Thanks again for your help;

James

Happy Brirthday!  And it was awesome to hear you on my most favortist podcast in the whole wide world, the Amp Hour!

My question is: any DIY projects that you were itching to do but couldn't until you were 21?

Cheers,

Drew