Contest for Beginners

[kalel]

Hence why I better not participate. US people think they are the only one that would pay. To be honest, if I would ever win anything here, I would not be able to pay the import fees.

Yes, international contests can be challenging to both sides, depending on where you live. So, we just keep it to the local country and, hopefully, there will be others who will do something similar where they live.

Not being from the US I understand that custom fees and shipping for most things is extreme overseas, especially heavy and valuable items. An international contest reward might require low value, lightweight items to be shipped, or where applicable software items (such as license codes), or coupons for services. But most of those might need to be sponsored by companies (which may have better conditions), and/or perhaps items shipped from China could be used as rewards, due to low shipping rates for lightweight items - that would limit the rewards available however, instead of allowing someone to simply contribute something that they already own, which is probably more appealing.

[bitseeker]

Drop shipping could be an interesting way to deal with some of the import/export issues. However, as you said kalel, part of what makes contests like this appealing and unique is the personal aspect of the equipment coming from someone and then going to the winner(s).

[kalel]

Drop shipping could be an interesting way to deal with some of the import/export issues. However, as you said kalel, part of what makes contests like this appealing and unique is the personal aspect of the equipment coming from someone and then going to the winner(s).

True, although if that was the only way to make an international one, I'm sure some would still find it acceptable. One perhaps challenging thing would be to organize a "reward pool" where people might contribute, e.g. a trusted maintainer might keep a Paypal account for it or such (maybe there's a better service for that). I hope this wasn't too much off topic.

[bitseeker]

It was interesting. Thanks for the ideas, kalel.

[bson]

Thanks for doing this xrunner and bson - You are awesome!

It's really all bitseeker's and xrunner's doing... I'm just contributing a piece of gear sitting here collecting dust.

I was a poor student at one time too, and know what it's like to have a drive to design and build things, but no money for instruments, so will be super happy if bitseeker and xrunner find it a good home where it gets used.

I've been keeping it for a spare since I got a LeCroy WaveSurfer 3000, but I doubt it will ever get used again, so will just sit here indefinitely being of no use to anyone.

It's fully liberated as is, but I can factory reset it should the winner prefer... 

[Jono427]

Thanks for doing this xrunner and bson - You are awesome!

It's really all bitseeker's and xrunner's doing... I'm just contributing a piece of gear sitting here collecting dust.

I was a poor student at one time too, and know what it's like to have a drive to design and build things, but no money for instruments, so will be super happy if bitseeker and xrunner find it a good home where it gets used.

I've been keeping it for a spare since I got a LeCroy WaveSurfer 3000, but I doubt it will ever get used again, so will just sit here indefinitely being of no use to anyone.

It's fully liberated as is, but I can factory reset it should the winner prefer... 

Fixed it - still thanks to all 3 of you for offering stuff to new guys!

[bson]

I once borrowed a lens from a friend in Italy (back when adapting Contax mount Zeiss optics to Canon SLRs was a novelty); after checking it out and writing a brief review I sent it back.  Poor guy got stuck paying several hundred euros in VAT for his own lens to get it out of customs...  (I offered to pay but he seemed to think it was somehow his mistake.)

Shipping to even Canada is a mess of customs declarations, arbitrary fees, and lost goods.  I sold something via a photo forum (forget what), U.S. only, and silly me agreed to ship it to Canada since the buyer agreed to pay all duties and processing.  It arrived broken.  I refunded the buyer, who was still out all the exorbitant customs fees and taxes.  Needless to say, he wasn't very happy.  In the U.S. I'd just refund whatever I received and that's it, maybe pay to have it returned.  Packages don't get destroyed much in the U.S., but even to Canada... it's like they process them with a rock loader or something.

[scdreger]

My name is Scott and I’m new to hobby electronics. What began as a curiosity … one of those things I always wanted to know more about … has quickly turned into an obsession. I don’t really know of another way to describe it.

It started in March, when after having it “saved for later” in my Amazon cart, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a copy of the “Make: Electronics” book. I read and followed along with the practical experiments until I got to the 555 oscillator which simply flashes an LED. I quickly changed out the passives and hooked up an audio jack to hear the sweet sound of a square wave oscillator – and I could change the pitch with a potentiometer!!! Don’t laugh, but I was so happy to manipulate that pot that I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spent experimenting with that one simple circuit. You see I’ve been into analog synthesizers for years … I knew right then I had to learn how to make real synth circuits.

So I’ve began searching out every bit of information I could about electronics … looking at old schematics, new schematics, youtube videos, EEV blog, diy synth forums, PDFs of old Electro Notes newsletters … you name it. I ordered Make: Analog Synthesizers, fascinated with every detail … I was finally learning how these things worked under the hood.

With this small amount of newfound knowledge, I decided I had to make an oscillator that played in tune, one and responded at 1V/Octave so I could connect it to my modular synth and actually play it in tune. This goal led to more and more discovery … what’s an exponential converter? What’s VBE matching? Oh I can build a circuit to help me match my own, let’s do it! There have been many, many small victories and even more failures (no flames, but I have blown a piece of silicon across the room, haha). I succeeded in making my oscillator and it worked! This led me to make a voltage controlled multi-mode filter and then a VCA … I haven’t made a proper envelope generator yet, so I made a quick and dirty one by pinging a home make vactrol to mimic an envelope. Basically, all the elements of a very rudimentary synth. I keep having to buy new breadboards because I don’t want to take anything apart. Needless to say I’m hooked!

I’ve learned so much over the last few months and have so, so, so much more to learn. For Fathers Day, I received “the Art of Electronics” (from my awesome wife) which will keep me busy for a while to say the least. Another hobby of mine is amateur radio … I have a general class license, so now I’m also looking into homebrew radio projects. This has led to even more discovery. I’m simply having a blast and one of my daughters is even becoming interested, so as an aside I like to make simple circuits to demonstrate some concepts to her – having her lay down wide bands of graphite on paper and then using it as variable resistance to change the pitch of an oscillator brought a smile to her face and now she’s always popping into the garage to ask about what I’m working on.

My lab is simple but functional. For my birthday, my wife bought me an entry level 2 channel scope (I told you she’s awesome!). Luckily, I had been saving up amazon gift cards from Christmas and birthdays for a while so I could get “something good,” so I bought myself a function generator. My power supply is a Elenco +/- dual rail kit that I built and modified by deleting the AC output and adding two LED voltage meters. Being that I have a scope, I’m not sure I qualify for the contest, but all the prizes look amazing and I’ll leave that up to the judges. I won’t have any budget for “lab upgrades” until after Christmas, so I would be incredibly appreciative of any level of prize from this contest. I'd put the equipment to good use on my journey to learn everything I can about electronics.

Mostly I want to say thanks for having the giveaway and more importantly to the community here. I’ve learned a ton from what I’ve read on this very forum and from Dave’s videos (the Op Amp one has been very beneficial to me) and look forward to learning much more. At the end of the day that’s what makes this so exciting. I love learning and this hobby seems that it can provide a never ending path to amazing, new knowledge. I’m glad I took the dive and found the joy of electronics at a hobbyist level.

[xrunner]

Hello Scott, thanks for the entry and writeup. I'd say you have a nice little setup. I see you have Siglent equipment, we have a member here that will be very happy to see that on your bench (he's a distributor in New Zealand). Again thanks for the entry and have fun on the forum, it's a goldmine of information and people who can answer just about any question you might have (about anything). 

[Seaofdep]

just updated my entry  with workstation pic 

[xrunner]

just updated my entry  with workstation pic 

OK, it would help if it was not upside-down, but we can manage. 

[bitseeker]

A-ha! So he really lives down under.

[Seaofdep]

just updated my entry  with workstation pic 

OK, it would help if it was not upside-down, but we can manage. 

lol i didnt even notice , ill fix it

[xrunner]

Hear Ye Hear Ye ...

This contest will end this Saturday at 12 Midnight central time US / 0500 UTC.

If you are out there waiting to enter better get busy!

[Shock]

Only 4 entries so far?

Looks like the USA recession must have ended, hardly anyone needs free oscilloscopes anymore.

[Mattjd]

My name is Matt, and I am a hobbyist and ECE (electrical computer) engineer student. I'm turning 25 in a day. Spent most of my time (graduated 2011) after high school bullshitting in community college while working in warehouses and on farms. I eventually decided I wanted to do something with math and got my shit together. I also eventually found out it is difficult to get a job without a math degree. Turned my eye towards EE because of its so math intensive to study - felt it was a happy medium between practical and interesting. In 2015 I got my A.A.S in mathematics in preparation to move to local Uni for ECE.

Fall 2016 I took my first engineering classes, Introduction to Digital Systems and Principles of Electrical Circuit Analysis. Learned about digital logic and FPGA/HDL in the former and Op Amps, Circuit/Power Analysis in the later. Taking these classes turned me onto EE and CE which eventually led me to this forum.

This past tax season I got a big fat tax return from having worked full time and paying for tuition. Had every intention of dropping it all on gear. I found some of Dave's youtube videos when looking for recommendations. Came to the site, found out about the discount from TeEquipment. I will admit, I signed up purely for that discount. My first post is asking for it in the thread. I was promptly shut down (in a nice way) by Nanofrog.

It was at that point that I started posting to get membership status to get that discount. Ironically, and to my benefit, from discussion I was persuaded not to drop the money, which led me to buy the two Uni-T DMM and Analog Discovery...it's funny how it all worked out.

Since then I have found this site to be incredibly useful; discussing proper HDL programming for FPGAs, asking questions about transistor anomalies I was facing when studying them, etc. My current interest of study is Memristor emulators, and I must say that scope would be amazing for it - create my circuit and view that pinched hysteresis curve on it!


here's an Imgur album of my set up


http://imgur.com/a/A2EsL


In closing, I just want to say thanks to everyone who expended energy and funds putting this together.


Edit(7/6/17): I'd like to add a non academic project I worked on over the winter. My uncle was building a smoke house, and he needed a way to control the power to the heat source. I decided to make him a thermostat of sorts using my FPGA.

What I have is a thermocouple that runs into a Thermocouple to digital converter, which is connected to the GPIO of my DE0. Another wire going out from the GPIO goes to the gate of a NMOS which controls the voltage source going to a solid state relay, which controls the power to the heating element. The heating element is a water heating element by the way.

Basically, when flipping a switch on a DE0 the process would start. Power would be sent to the heating element and once temperature [z] would be detected an ON timer would start. After the time has passed, the power is cut, and an OFF timer is started. This process is then repeated for [y] cycles. The On-Off cycles are important to the smoking of the wood chips. You want them to smoke and burn but not catch fire. Lastly, the temperature and timer would be continuously displayed on the LCD.

Here is a picture when I was testing it all at my house. The water element was burning up if not submerged in water. So i found an old piece of wood and drilled a hole and placed the entire contraption over a pot filled with water.

Some design specifics:

The design was pretty simple, a state machine sufficed. A Warm Up state, Power On State, Power Off State. The most difficult part was getting the timings correct for the readings of the Thermocouple to Digital Converter. I used a MAX31855 and I had to create the SPI Master Module.

[Aviator X]

New member and beginner, here! I almost missed this thread. I am very excited to have found the EEVblog community. I will submit my entry tomorrow. I need to gather a couple of pictures for the post. Thanks.

[xrunner]

My name is Matt, and I am a hobbyist and ECE (electrical computer) engineer student.

OK Matt, we got ya in the list.

New member and beginner, here! I almost missed this thread. I am very excited to have found the EEVblog community. I will submit my entry tomorrow. I need to gather a couple of pictures for the post. Thanks.

Good deal, don't delay the clock is ticking!

[Aviator X]

I have always had an interest in electronics whispering. I love taking things apart and seeing the enigma of components, wondering what they all do. I have a pretty good aptitude for the hobby and my touch of OCD helps me spend long hours researching topics for a better understanding. I consider myself a people person and enjoy discussions with experts in their field. Unfortunately, electronic engineers and electronic hobbyist are a rare breed in my area.

As my responsibilities grew with family and work, my love to tinker had to be suppressed. There simply wasn’t enough hours in the day for everything. Then fate intervened. My eldest son inherited my curiosity of the spark. Since kindergarten, he had a love of robots. I saw it as a phase, figuring dinosaurs and cars would follow, but they didn’t. His passion grew when he found out his school offered a robotics program for third graders. The school could only afford to have a few students participate, so I enrolled him in a free robotics summer camp in preparation for the highly sought after course. That’s when my passion found me again.

My son’s team won first place in Robotics Camp! A geeky father couldn’t be prouder. We spent the rest of the weekend talking about servos, coding, and circuits. It didn’t take long before I was scratching my head as my eight year old was speaking of auto desks and 3D printer coding. When he showed me how to set up a milling machine I was floored. I headed straight to his school. I had to get him in robotics.

You can imagine the disappointment when the school informed us that the program was no longer going to be offered. The rare breed I spoke of earlier had left the school, leaving behind a STEM void. Apparently, all the equipment went with him too. This can’t be. Just when schools are losing art, music, and recess, they decide to take away this valuable program too? With stout determination I declared “I will do it!”

…wait, what?

Ok, I’ve been known to leap without looking a time or two in my life, but now I’m involving my son and other students. I don’t have equipment, I don’t have a curriculum, but I do have passion. That will have to do. An afterschool program is better than no program. I’ve already acquired a soldering iron from a neighbor and a bag of components from the local Radio Shack going out of business sale. This summer, my son and I are building the curriculum. We did the whole basic circuit thing with copper tape and LEDs, but he knocked it out of the park without instruction. I’m going to have to try harder in that department.

In short, I now have a way to indulge in my love for electronics and spend valuable time with my son. And as if that wasn’t reason enough, I can now guide young minds to explore what make things work in our technologically advancing world. This is all very exciting!

Project: Reestablish afterschool program – STEM, electronics, robotics

1.   Develop curriculum (In progress)
2.   Acquire tools, test equipment, components and safety PPE (early stages of acquisition)
3.   Reach out to community for advice, expertise, and encouragement (that’s how I found EEVblog)

I am thrilled to have found a resource like the EEVblog Electronic’s Community. The wealth of knowledge isn’t just going to help me, it’s going to help a community of kids. As great as winning a scope would be, it’s comforting to know that there are folks like you willing to spend their spare time online, helping folks like me try to find a clue. I’m going to do my best to educate, but I know the kids won’t be the only ones learning. Wish me luck on this endeavor.

Abraham/Aviator X


Images:
1. It's amazing how fast and how much kids can learn when they are excited about the subject.
2. I'd hardly call it a shop. More of a shared work bench. I'm still in the equipment gathering process.

[yami759]

Unfortunately, I didn't see this post until just recently. I suppose it's too late to enter?

Edit: I might as well put my entry in here and give it a shot anyways.

I am Fadi, a recent high school graduate getting ready to study electrical and computer engineering at Cal Poly. Though I've been interested in electronics since the eighth grade when I built up my first ever circuit, a solar-powered USB charger, my electronics life had taken a pause until recently due to my high school life getting so busy (life's tough as a high school student founding a programming club at his school while taking community college courses... not to brag or anything ). During my senior year and especially now during the summer, I've finally been able to get back into working on what I love, even going as far as to teach a friend of mine about basic electronics, being that he has recently taken a shift in interest from mechanical to electrical engineering.

As my senior project, I job-shadowed an electronics engineer and built a dance pad, like one from the popular arcade game DanceDanceRevolution (which I love). The player steps on a part of the pad (usually marked with arrows, but I was too lazy to get those printed, and this looks cooler to me anyways) as a corresponding arrow approaches a part of the screen, indicating when it is to be stepped on, with all of that going along to the beat of music. A fun way for me to get some exercise, as these "dance" sessions can get pretty intensive.

Another project I recently worked on with a team (including that friend I mentioned earlier—this is actually where he started to gain an interest in electronics himself) was a prosthetic arm for a MESA competition. Though the actual prosthesis part of the arm is incredibly basic, simply consisting of two 3D printed fingers, it was still a fun project with its own other challenges. Despite the simplicity, it was still a stressful-yet-enjoyable experience of staying up with the team to complete the physical build, work on documentation, and other not-so-electrical aspects. In the end, we were at least able to manage 2nd place on the technical paper

Finally, my most recent project is an AVR development board, largely inspired by a similar project from The Ben Heck Show. Being that I've gotten annoyed with either using a full Arduino board (which isn't necessary for most situations) or with programming a microcontroller by wiring things up on breadboard and constantly having to look up the pinouts to rebuild the programming circuit, and dealing with swapping the chip between a programming breadboard and a project breadboard, I decided to make things a bit more professional and easy on myself. This circuit is designed to work with a 6 pin AVR programming interface (for which I am using the USBTinyISP) and will be wired to allow for programming of 28-pin and 8-pin AVRs, which can easily be swapped in and out with with a ZIF socket, rather than previously prying it out of the breadboard.

Enough with rambling on about my projects, and onto the workbench!.... or, well, makeshift workbench. Being that I don't actually have the space for another table in my room to act as a workbench (not do I have an extra table for that matter), I simply move aside my PC peripherals when I wish to work on electronics, and let the majority of tools and such live on the side of my desk for the time otherwise. Being that I'll be heading off to university with its cramped dorms, I'll be prepared for a small work environment. My tools consist of the basics, most notably a soldering iron and multimeter. I originally had a cheap RadioShack plug-into-the-wall iron and my dad's old meter, but was able to upgrade to more reliable and much less headache-inducing models with some money I made off tutoring.

You may have noticed something about all my projects—they all, from an electronics perspective, are relatively simple, and in fact, most have a component count in the single digits. Though I have been interested in electronics for quite some time now, I haven't really advanced incredibly far from the basics. Though going to university will surely expand my knowledge and lead to bigger and better things, I still need the tools to succeed. Being that my family is lower-class and going through problems with money right now, I am left to pay for my own university expenses, which will definitely not be cheap. Being able to start off with one less expense to worry about, such as this oscilloscope (not that I wouldn't love the DMM or counter either!) will be a huge help, that I would appreciate immensely.

Lastly, thank you for those who donated the tools to be given away in this contest! Whoever wins, I'm sure these tools will go to someone who is in need of them!

[Mattjd]

I'm presuming that you have until the end of today. They still haven't declared it closed, so you probably still can. Good luck.

[Chris_77]

Hello.

I'm getting back into electronics after 15 or so years away, and am also looking to learn, remember, and pull myself to the "short-run production" level of electronics.

Years and years ago, I was in a merged CS/EE curriculum and took all the coursework you'd imagine. I was interested in electronics--both hardware and software--and started to get into microprocessors, namely, the PIC. I ended up building a "smart refrigerator" that could tell me how many cans of ... soft-drink ... I had in the door, and what the temperature of the refrigerator was. Good times.

Life, moving around a lot, much more school and different disciplines intervened.

I've recently picked up again and have started building/populating my lab. I was a student for 15 years (ouch), have lived the life of a country-song protagonist, and am slowly clawing my way back to feeling okay. But this isn't a sad story; it's a happy one.

I have been getting into flight simulation again--I'd forgotten my interest--and have been thinking about hardware. I was gifted LogicBots and Shenzhen I/O and re-discovered the power and joy of designing circuits and components that do something useful. As I'm apparently unemployable now (out of work for 4+ years; under-employed for a decade prior), I've decided to re-roll myself as a sort of Mad Scientist and build hardware for people who want a high-fidelity flight simulation experience, at least insofar as the avionics are concerned. These days, I read lots of books, loads of forum posts, and lurk on the Internet, picking up techniques and re-discovering things I've forgotten. I need to read AoE, but have already looked into hardware debouncing (as my device uses buttons, this is something I'll need. I'm doing it in hardware because, as a mainly-software person, I live in a world of ideal underlying signals).

My workspace is meager but growing with each new delivery. A reasonable soldering station is on the way. My old Fluke 75 is quite good, save for one LED digit that's gone a bit dim. I think it still works properly. My old pocket-sized DMM still seems to work okay. It actively feels good to read and tinker and have some kind of identity again through building electronics into something that might be useful.

Feeling useful is empowering and I am starting to feel almost-useful through electronics. It's an interesting development. I hope to bring a commercial PCB to fruition, not just for some income--I keep telling myself, "if I sell XX units, I could even buy a car!"--but to finally have something in a very long time that I can mark as a "win" and roll this into inertia to build more, do more, maybe leave the apartment every so often. I've started thinking ahead and want to even run a small workshop at the local-ish hacker-space. It's the kind of thing that I wish I had access to and I'll probably do a couple sessions on, "how to build your own small-run PCBs" and send people home with simple battery-LED-resistor PCBs. Maybe even 3D-print enclosures for these on the hacker-space's 3D printer.

Free equipment is great (truly, thank you to bson and xrunner for this!), but pales next to feeling useful again and actively learning interesting things after so long away. Electronics and the community surrounding electronics make for a convincing argument of things improving.

Anyway, here's my work-space, such as it is. I have a sturdy shelf-system that I will probably migrate to, but right now I can't move and assemble something that heavy. So Ikea fold-out table it is.

[xrunner]

Unfortunately, I didn't see this post until just recently. I suppose it's too late to enter?

Edit: I might as well put my entry in here and give it a shot anyways.

Not too late! It ends tonight.

Also got Chris_77 in the mix!

[buck converter]

I think it is great that these contests are held. Thank you to bitseeker and xrunner for putting in the time money and effort to judge this contest and bson for contributing a fabulous prize! Good luck to all contestants!

I got into electronics when I was 10 with a arduino kit. Since then I try to learn all that I can about electronics from books and the internet. I have read "Make: Electronics" top to bottom many times. This forum is one of the only places where I  talk about electronics and my hobby. Now I am a high school sophomore. The only engineering opportunity at school is the robotics club, which is why my hobby at home is important to me. I build small analog and digital circuits. When I bought a used analog oscilloscope, it changed the way I perceived electricity and allowed me to take larger stride in learning everything I can about electronics since I am a visual learner. My friend and I wish to build a digital clock, with 40xx logic and numitron tubes. The DS1074Z would be my first digital Oscilloscope, and would be a useful tool through college and beyond since I would not have room for a analog oscilloscope in a college dorm. A project I a working on right now is a super small POV (persistence of vision), that can fit in a fidget spinner. It uses addressable LEDs that communicate over SPI (apa102). The serial decoding "upgrade" would allow me to learn how SPI and serial communication. I will definitely watch Dave's latest eevAcademy episode when I find the time
files for this pov display https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bztp-P5RbSGpbm1aOUpUTmhGYms/view?usp=sharing
A complete album of pictures here https://goo.gl/photos/eqzvQYV3vHvyrneRA read the captions for info

my Tool cart: https://goo.gl/photos/rQiT6NS9vLCDBfCY8
my work counter: https://goo.gl/photos/nupDjxeHEgoCAvRg7

[xrunner]

I think it is great that these contests are held. Thank you to bitseeker and xrunner for putting in the time money and effort to judge this contest and bson for contributing a fabulous prize! Good luck to all contestants!

OK thanks for the post.

As posted earlier - this contest ends in 2 hours (12 midnight CDT).

I wish there were more prizes to give out because it's going to be very hard to pick the winners!