Area 51 » Technology

This site was seeded with content from chiphacker.com, a Stack Exchange 1.0 site. Robotics was initially within this proposal's scope, but was removed per discussion (one, two, three) during the beta phase.

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This would be the SE 2.0 version of Chiphacker – Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 2:55

Do we want to aim low for hobbyists (as currently described) or do we want to go with the experts (ie, attract Bob Pease and similar) while letting beginners and enthusiasts also post questions? – Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:12

Shouldn't (or will) Chiphacker not just become an SE2.0 site? We don't really need a new/alternative one then... – Wim Jun 17 '10 at 7:45

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61 Example Questions (9 closed)

active newest votes

up vote 24 down vote

added by Joshua Jun 3 '10 at 14:57

up vote 23 down vote

added by Zombie Praeclarum Jun 6 '10 at 16:08

up vote 21 down vote

added by Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:14

up vote 21 down vote

added by Ken Hughes, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Jun 3 '10 at 16:29

up vote 20 down vote

added by Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:30

Unless you provide the inputs (ie, "from the voltage/current/power/etc") then this seems more like a physics question... – Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:32

@Adam - My thinking on this sample was more calculating the resistance based on the color stripe code - I'll modify the question a bit to make that more clear. – Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:37

On topic, but ambiguous (do you mean by using Ohm's Law, or by looking at the color bands?) – Robert Harvey Jun 3 '10 at 3:39

@Robert - either, really, although I was specifically going for the "this is how to read the color bands" answer :) – Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:47

Ah, this makes much more sense. Now we need to add the code tables for printed resistance numbers on SMD components... – Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:53

show 1 more improvement suggestion

up vote 14 down vote

added by spry Jun 3 '10 at 3:29

up vote 12 down vote

added by Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 4:26

I think this is a pure electronics Q, as opposed to hobbyist related. – Ken Hughes Jun 3 '10 at 9:50

@Ken (and others voting as off topic) - please explain the difference between "pure electronics" and "hobbyist electronics" - Are you saying we should have two sites (ie, mathoverflow and a lessor math site) as opposed to a StackOverflow model where both beginner and expert questions are asked? – Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 23:48

up vote 12 down vote

added by MicTech Jun 18 '10 at 21:29

up vote 11 down vote

added by Joshua Jun 3 '10 at 14:05

up vote 8 down vote

added by Zombie Praeclarum Jun 6 '10 at 16:09

up vote 8 down vote

added by MicTech Jun 18 '10 at 21:29

up vote 7 down vote

added by Tim Jun 5 '10 at 22:15

You probably need to also include "with compiler Z". IAR and AVR-GCC are different in how to program interrupt routines for example. – jamuraa Jun 17 '10 at 18:19

up vote 7 down vote

added by Matias Valdenegro Jun 22 '10 at 15:24

The first book I bought on electronics was "Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims. I got it at my local RadioShack store. It is a fantastic book, done in notebook style... everything is hand-written & hand-drawn. Really neat. – Steve Stepp Jun 23 '10 at 15:24

up vote 6 down vote

added by Craig Jun 22 '10 at 7:03

up vote 5 down vote

added by Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:10

up vote 5 down vote

added by Adam Davis, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Jun 3 '10 at 8:50

up vote 5 down vote

added by Tim Jun 5 '10 at 23:57

up vote 5 down vote

added by Zombie Praeclarum Jun 6 '10 at 16:06

up vote 5 down vote

added by MicTech Jun 18 '10 at 21:28

up vote 4 down vote

added by Vineeth Jun 6 '10 at 7:35

up vote 4 down vote

added by NickAldwin Jun 8 '10 at 0:57

up vote 4 down vote

added by jamuraa Jun 17 '10 at 18:17

up vote 4 down vote

added by Matias Valdenegro Jun 22 '10 at 15:25

up vote 3 down vote

added by glasnt Jun 3 '10 at 3:27

Trying to test if Lego Mindstorms is within the realm of this robotics journey we are going to be undertaking. – glasnt Jun 3 '10 at 3:27

I say yes - the original site, Chiphacker, was as much about embedded electronics as it is robotics (and they have a few Lego questions on there) – Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:32

There's certainly a large enough user group. The proposal for Lego Mindstorms has nearly as many followers as this! – Eric Jun 8 '10 at 15:24

Overtaken! Score! – Eric Jun 9 '10 at 18:10

I would say this goes in the Lego Mindstorms group, eh? – jdt141 Jun 27 '10 at 2:45

up vote 3 down vote

added by Tim Jun 18 '10 at 3:06

up vote 3 down vote

added by adamk Jun 25 '10 at 17:16

up vote 2 down vote

added by Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:40

up vote 2 down vote

added by Joshua Jun 3 '10 at 17:40

up vote 2 down vote

added by Evan Plaice Jun 23 '10 at 11:10

up vote 2 down vote

added by Evan Plaice Jun 23 '10 at 11:13

	Why would you use a 5volt regulator when you need 12 volts? – Matthew Whited Jun 24 '10 at 15:05
	Even a weird question (wrong type of 78xx for the required voltage) is a good one... Good example! – zebonaut Jun 29 '10 at 22:02

up vote 1 down vote

added by Dan McClain Jun 18 '10 at 20:40

Another very good example, because one may have to get creative when it comes to finding Nixie tubes... (Go find old instruments at flea markets. Fix them. If you can't: Take out the Nixie tubes.) – zebonaut Jun 29 '10 at 21:46

up vote 1 down vote

added by MicTech Jun 18 '10 at 21:27

up vote 1 down vote

added by RyanTM Jun 23 '10 at 3:16

Very good example question, in my opinion. I've seen a number of designs fail because of weird parasitics of the different types of capacitors. – zebonaut Jun 29 '10 at 21:44

up vote 1 down vote

added by RyanTM Jun 23 '10 at 3:24

Impossible, unless you use a flux capacitor. – Robert Harvey Jun 29 '10 at 21:15

up vote 1 down vote

added by RyanTM Jun 23 '10 at 3:25

up vote 1 down vote

added by Evan Plaice Jun 23 '10 at 11:21

Much too broad, the answer is yes. Specific questions related to a certain microcontroller and a certain protocol should fit though. – Wim Jun 27 '10 at 19:29

up vote 1 down vote

added by MojoFilter Jun 23 '10 at 13:51

	I like the question, but there's probably a more fundamental question: What are the various types of motors out there, how are they used, what are the meaningful specs and the tradeoffs between the various types. – jdt141 Jun 27 '10 at 2:41
	@jdt: That's not a question, it's a multi-page blog entry or research article. – Robert Harvey Jun 27 '10 at 19:18

up vote 1 down vote

added by Gordon Gustafson Jun 23 '10 at 23:56

closed as off topic by Daniel LeCheminant, user5653, DonnyD, Donal Fellows, jdt141 Jun 27 '10 at 2:44

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Wondering what the problem with this question is? Seems on-topic as long as there are reasonable details about what the asker has done so far. If they are just wondering where to get started or are running into a specific problem, it would seem to fall under the category of electronics hacking to me. – Ben Gartner Jun 25 '10 at 22:26

up vote 1 down vote

added by rascher Jun 24 '10 at 18:52

up vote 0 down vote

added by Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:09

closed as off topic by Mark Elliot, alexanderpas, jamuraa, Dan McClain, Jeffrey Hulten Jun 23 '10 at 19:21

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Datasheets can be hard to parse, especially for beginners, but do we want to answer these types of questions? – Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:09

I think something like this is perfect - there is so much information about chips, etc scattered about the internet - let's collect it here! – Jared Harley Jun 3 '10 at 3:11

Well, there's already a good resource for this that is pretty good run by Matt Sarnoff- msarnoff.org/chipdb. Helping people parse datasheets and learn how to use them rather than feeding them the answers might be more helpful here. It's an acquired skill and important if you're getting into embedded electronics- you'd think that the people who created most of the datasheets spoke Math and Klingon as their first language. – Tim Jun 5 '10 at 22:23

In terms of SO this is akin to asking "what are the parameters to the PHP function foo()?" ...and in that sense it ought to be off-topic. (on a side note, the Atmel packages usually vary, so the "a1" bit that might come after the chip name is meaningful in terms of pin-out) – Mark Elliot Jun 8 '10 at 20:20

If the question were "what's the use of the A5 pin", or "what pin do I need to do <this>", that would be a good question. But this seems much too general to me. – Wim Jun 17 '10 at 7:40