Advancing the hobby...

Question

I'm thinking of setting aside a portion of my tax return to beef up my electronics hobby resources.

I have a workbench, basic test equipment (oscilloscope, multimeter), tools (soldering station), assorted parts (pulls from recycled circuit boards), knowledge of programming, and a passion for tinkering around with microprocessor boards (Arduino, RaspberryPi, etc.), perhaps advancing into DIY robotics.

What would be the most effective way to invest $300 into advancing my hobby? I'd like to have as much versatility as I can. I thought of buying a bunch of Shields for my Arduino to tinker with. I even considered getting a Gertboard for my RaspberryPi. Then again, I find it fun to throw together a bunch of TTL 74xx flip-flop chips to make digital dice or something like that. I plan on teaching my son a lot of the concepts of the hobby. That's why I'm leaning toward robotics. But I understand there are many different ways I can approach the hobby.

What I don't want to end up doing is buying an expensive item (or expensive collection of items) and finding those items lying around without a significant purpose.

It may seem like I'm asking for a lot, but I'm open to (and appreciate) any and all opinions. I can think of a lot of stuff I could buy right now, but the request for an opinion could open up ideas or avenues to pursue which I haven't thought of myself.

Thanks,

Jeff

shabaz · Answer

When I was little I had a Tandy/Radio Shack kit like this type of thing: and it was lots of fun because of the number of diverse things you could do with it. Now I'm older, the near-equivalent for me is a few boxes of Rs, Cs, transistors and ICs and some boards (either those white breadboards, or stripboard, SMD boards, etc). However, since you're interested in robotics, how about a Parallax Boe-Bot? It comes with a little breadboard, some components so that you can experiment, sensors, a microcontroller (maybe replace that with the one of your choice), a couple of motors, chassis etc. For more advanced stuff, you could add another breadboard or additional circuit/sensors of your own design on top. The Boe-Bot would eat half the budget though, it's not cheap. Otherwise, robotics might be tricky unless you have access to some metalwork tools, etc. If you do, then you could certainly save costs. Perhaps using a toy as a chassis might be a fun alternative. Or, use Tamiya hobby bits to assemble a chassis (probably not cheap either). Others might have better suggestions.

johnbeetem · Answer

VintageVolts wrote:

... I'd like to have as much versatility as I can...

For mind-boggling versatility, I'd suggest a cheap FPGA board such as the XESS XULA-200, now $55 in the USA. Kind of like wiring up 74XX logic, except that the logic elements and wires are inside the FPGA and the Xilinx XC3S200A on the XULA-200 has the equivalent of 200K gates.

Here's a nice review of the module: http://www.element14.com/community/groups/fpga-group/blog/2011/09/02/review-of-xula-200a-from-xess-fpga

Here's the XESS web site: http://www.xess.com/catalog.php

I haven't tried the XESS board myself (other things I need to get working first) but I've used the Xilinx XC3S200A a lot and it's a great FPGA family. There's a good group of engineers who eagerly chime in at the FPGA group here at element14 whenever people have questions and/or comments: http://www.element14.com/community/groups/fpga-group

If you're in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, there's a guy working on an XC3S200A board that plugs into Raspberry Pi: http://www.astro-designs.com/page14.php

For other cheap FPGA boards, check out: http://tristesse.org/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards

Advancing the hobby...

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