johnsrobotics

maybe a few megs of space/bandwidth for each hak.5 fan/forum member so we can upload our own websites/content. hakspace?

Comcast...need to find a better upload without spending $300/month

Awesome. Picked up 2 2GBers Thanks!

My first suggestion would be to NEVER hook an LED (or any Diode) directly up to a battery...If you had it on there, and it didn't burn out, then that is amazing, but you can always try using a smaller value resistor on the LED in the nightlight circuit. I would suggest a 200 Ohm, but no lower...Also, you could use more than 1 LED, but if you use more than say 3 of them, the current may become too much for the transistor, in which case you can use more transistors...if you have any Ideas, I could help you out with the circuitry. These formulas might help: Ohm's law Volts(V)=Current(I) times Resistance® and Power Law Power(P)=Current(I) times Voltage(V) Common Facts: Super Bright white LEDs drop anywhere from 3-4V 20mA is the max rating To figure out how to power your LED setup, use the formulas above. V=IR so, we'll plug in 3.5V (typical) for the LED...with a 9V battery, this means that the Resistor will have the other 5.5V. Using Ohm's law, this gives us 5.5(voltage on the resistor), divided by .020 (20mA for the LED) gives us an ideal resistor value of 275 Ohms. On our setup, we have a 470 Ohm resistor, so there is a little room to play with lower values before burning it out. The reason I said it was amazing that the 9V didn't burn your LED out, is that the LED drops 3.5V, but any diode acts like a short (zero ohms of resistance) once you get to that voltage. This means that the typical 300mA that a 9V battery provides was flowing through that diode, and shorting out the battery.not good. That's the end of today's electricity 101...like I said lower resistor values, more LEDs, transistors, batteries, etc. If you need help, let me know!

I can't seem to find those prices...I found the 2GB for $90 http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/SanDisk-Cru...roductDetail.do I do see a 1GB for $45...unless someone can point me to a 2GB for $45, I'll just go with 2 512MB drives for $40 I need to get one for general use anyways, as I don't even pwn one yet.

Glad to hear it worked =D Once I get my website up and running, and I'm done with the firefighting robot I'm currently building, I want to do a series of howtos on "cool geeky stuff"...That probably won't even get started until mid-December though, so stay tuned :twisted:

I actually don't know, and would love to find it...I stole this avatar from someone in one of my CS clans' forums.

If the LED does not light when the photocell is completely in the dark, you need to start switching components out. The first thing I would switch would be the NPN Transistor. The Instrucables website says to use a 2n4401, but any NPN small-signal transistor should work (2N3904 is the most common part #). Switch that out, and try again, if still no success, try switching the photocell out. Radioshack normally has all of the required parts...if a local store doesn't have them, they will order them, or if you can order online: Transistor - http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=family Photocell - http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...amp;tab=summary I like to get my LEDs from www.besthongkong.com, but I usually buy large quantities. Notice Radio Shack makes you buy more than 1 quantity of the parts. The best reason for this is exactly what is happening to you now. Parts often fry, and it becomes handy to have a bunch around. Also, it wouldn't be worth the shipping to sell quantities of 1. I normally would never recomend radio shack to buy parts from due to their outrageous prices, but for a few quick components, they are usually the way to go. Your circuit looks correct, so that leaves the possibility of faulty parts. Get switchin 'em, and let me know what happens. Remember not to short anything.

Ah, I see the problem now. You've got your resistors switched around. Desolder the lead of the physically larger resistor that is on the middle pin of the transistor, desolder the lead of the physically smaller resistor that is connected to the LED, then switch them... Since you only had a 470 ohm resistor instead of the 100K ohm (HUGE difference) on the base of the transistor, you were driving it into hard saturation...Most transistors can easily handle anytihng below 9V, but there still may have been enough current to damage the transistor. If it does not work after you switch the resistors, you may want to try swapping out for a new transistor. The LED was dim due to the 100K resistor blocking most of the current, so at 9v (really the LED will drop 2 or more volts, but its a close enough approximation) and 100K ohms, you're looking at about 90 uA (micro amps), and LEDs are bright at around 20mA-50mA (milliamps)...I'm not sure about the current-handling capabilities of the photocell either, you may have to swap it out as well. The rest of your circuit looks right. Let me know how it goes..

This is a little different, but certainly falls into the catergory of coding, and hacking (in the original sense of the term) in general. Sometimes I love coding, and sometimes I hate it...but I mostly stick to the microcontroller world. ASM is very powerful in this manner, but there are lots of higher level compiler and interpreters. I am currently working with the Propeller chip from Parallax...it has 8 32-bit processors in one chip that safely run at 80MHz each, but I've had them up to 160MHz with no heatsinking, and it wasn't even warm to the touch. Parallax developed the thing from the ground up, and it uses 2 languages that Chip Gracey (the inventor) wrote, the Propeller ASM, and the higher-level language called Spin (lol). Each of the 8 cores on the chip (called cogs) have their own video generator, and objects have already been written for keyboard, mouse, VGA, composite video, and a whole lot more. A few are working on an operating system for this chip. Someone has already made a Video game system designed to teach beginners how to code video games. The main reason I bring this up is that the support for the chip is amazing, and the company has a complete open-source outlook, as all of the software is free, free code examples, and free support. The only thing to pay for is the hardware, and you can get away with $25 for the chip and a few dollars worth of components to get it up and running. Check it out: Propeller's product page: http://www.parallax.com/propeller/ Support forums (gives you an idea of what people are working on/have done already) http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25 Hydra forum post: http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default....25&m=131973 Hydra wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_Console Slowly drifting back towards being on-topic, Spin is a very easy language to learn, and getting started with it is no problem, and a great introduction to OO programing as well...be warned though, the designers didn't want to go with the traditional approach of things, they took the aspects that they loved from languages they were familiar with (Delphi, etc.) and added features they wish they had. I have a blast with this stuff.

Here are some common schematic symbols and what they mean: http://arts.ucsc.edu/EMS/Music/tech_backgr...cs/Symbols.html As for the resistor color codes, the first color is the first digit, the second number is the second digit, and the third number is the multiplier (how many "0s"). Any bands after that are tolerance...usually there is only one that is silver (+ or - 10%) or gold (+ or - 5%)...but there are others, and sometimes 2 tolerance bands...for our application, the tolerance bands are not important. So: 100K ohms = Brown(1) Black(0) Yellow((4)add 4 zeros) = 100,000 470 ohms = Yellow(4) Violet(7) Brown((1)add 1 zero) = 470 Here's a little resistor color code calculator: http://www.ese.upenn.edu/rca/calcjs.html I can't make out exactly what is wrong based on your photo...maybe different angles, and more photos? As for the circuit, I'll wire one up tonight and see what happens...http://' target="_blank">