I saw a few items at DX.com that look like they could be very useful. A USB power meter, with even more information in the display, compared to the somewhat lame Practical Power meter. You won’t be caught with a dying cell phone battery with this. It’s a useful addition to your flashlight collection. This
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I ordered some 22 AWG nichrome wire from goldmine-elec.com today. It’s about an ohm per foot, or 3 and a fraction ohms per meter. My plan is to make my own low value resistors for current monitoring. I often want to monitor the current in a higher power LED or input current to a Joule
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LED bulb prices are still coming down, but the general public is still not aware of the advantages and still think the prices are too high. And the public is still unaware of the long term savings in electricity from which they’ll benefit. I still see 60 and 75 watt incandescents in dollar stores, which
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I recently read about RadioShack losing $200 million last quarter. I went to one RS store and found they wanted over $20 for a 5 foot USB male A to micro USB cable. I told the salesdroid that I could get a similar cable for a fraction of that price at a dollar store. He
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I found some soda straws that are thin and about the same color blue as the blue LEDs I got from goldmine-elec.com. I got the idea of using a soda straw from Quantsuff at quantsuff.com. He used two white LEDs in the ends of a short length of white translucent (semitransparent) soda straw to give
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I received a bag of 200 blue LEDS in milk white packages from Goldmine-elec. These put out a diffused blue light that has a wide beam pattern. I’ve been thinking about colored LEDs, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the colored LEDs I use don’t need to be in a clear case and the
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A long time ago, probably 200 years, the scientists experimented with electromagnets by winding copper wire onto a bar or rod of steel. Most anyone that is taking a physics class has been introduced to this electromagnet. This works ok for a battery or direct current but when the current is alternating the solid steel
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I succumbed to temptation and bought some more stuff from goldmine elec.com. I just couldn’t pass up some of the deals they had. I got a whole 5000 reel of 1N5245B 15 volt zener diodes; they’ll probably last till the end of my life, unless I give them away. The whole reel cost only $7.00!
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I ordered these from an Amazon seller, Liroyal-led, a few weeks ago in April. It took that long to ship from Hong Kong. They are 50 pcs of Bluecell 5mm RGB full multicolor flashing LEDs. The cost was $3.45 including free shipping. The case is clear epoxy. I looked down inside and saw four chips
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I received my package of LED’s in the mail today from goldmine-elec.com. Quantsuff emailed a link to their sale on the Nichia NSPB633 blue oval LED (it might say NPSB, but that’s a typo). They are on sale for 100 for $10. I ordered some and I have been playing around, err, experimenting with them
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