Components

My recent experience with the Bald SENSE sensor feather wing project reminded me that time is often our most valuable resource. This video documents the journey that has taught me crucial lessons about design, assembly, and the value of turnkey PCB assembly services. See what went right and what went wrong, and how I ultimately brought this project back to life with the help of MacroFab.

A common question that comes up about pull-up resistors: what value do you pick and why not just use a piece of wire? In this follow-up electronics tutorial, the bald engineer looks at how to pick pull-up resistor values. Show Notes Pull-Up Resistor Tutorial (Episode 15) AddOhms Discord Server Arduino Internal Pull-Up Resistor Tutorial (baldengineer.com) Chuck Norris On Pull-Up Resistors (baldengineer.com)

Previously, we looked at resistor voltage dividers. Sometimes I get questions about using these instead of regulators. In this video, I show why that doesn’t work. In fact, I go one step further and show that Zener regulators do not work either. Voltage Divider as a Regulator Show Notes Other videos to watch #13: Voltage Dividers #7: Comparing Uno to Pi #17: Linear Regulators Links Zener Diode makes for a lousy regulator 3 (baldengineer.com) In the episode, I am featuring the Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 breakout 4. I highly recommend this board if you are interested in the ESP8266. It doesn’t have a serial to USB interface. However, it is far more reliable (and usable) than those worthless $5 8266 boards on eBay. (By Far.)

Another kind of motor is the BLDC. Otherwise known as the Brushless DC Motor. Unlike the motors we talked about in #20, a BLDC has no commutation ring or brushes. This means no sparks, longer life, and very fast RPMs. Commutation is done electrically. In this video, we show the inside of a BLDC and show two ways to control one.

This Addohms Brushed DC Motor Tutorial goes into the third dimension! Using a variety of 3D models, we show you what makes a brushed DC motor, a brushed DC motor. Then, like usual, we break two simple ways to control them with a microcontroller like the Arduino. You can use a single BJT Transistor (remember those from #10?), build your own H-Bridge, or use a popular H-Bridge chip.