Robot Building for Beginners, Third Edition

CHAPTER 8 ■ CLIPS AND TEST LEADS If you don’t have a continuity feature, the meter should display 0L or ∞ (infinity) or some ver ...

CHAPTER 8 ■ CLIPS AND TEST LEADS A meter with continuity should now display short (see Figure 8-10) and should beep annoyingly. ...

CHAPTER 8 ■ CLIPS AND TEST LEADS Turn the robot’s power off. Remove all of the batteries, if possible. Connect the black test p ...

CHAPTER 9 Resistors Sandwich, the line-following robot, uses many resistors on its circuit board (see Figure 9-1). These resisto ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS Any of the resistor packs in Table 9-1 are perfectly adequate for a start. The Jameco #107879 includes a c ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS 5% tolerance means that a 100 W resistor could be as low as 95 W or as high as 105 W. That’s plenty accura ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS It may be worth buying a cutter from a local store rather than from a catalog (see Table 9-2), so that you ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS Measuring Resistance If your meter isn’t already on the 200 range (or thereabouts) for ohms, switch the d ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS If your meter is displaying 0L or some very large number, double-check the setting you’ve chosen on the di ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS As multimeters have gotten smarter, they do a better job of displaying numbers in user-friendly ranges. If ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS Labeling and Storing Measure and sort all of the resistors in your variety pack. If the resistors are atta ...

CHAPTER 9 ■ RESISTORS You can find inexpensive storage cases at hardware stores and variety retailers, or tackle boxes at sporti ...

CHAPTER 10 LEDs In this chapter, you’re going to learn about LEDs. You’ll see how to select them, test them, and why no self-res ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS A caliper measures small dimensions. The left side of Figure 10-2 shows a T 1 ¾ LED placed in the jaws of the ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS The LED’s shape acts as either a collimating lens (light straightening—like a narrow-beam spotlight) or as a l ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS LED Lens Clarities There are three popular lens clarities (see Figure 10-6). Water Clear Water-clear LED lense ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS Today, colored lenses remain the most common and least expensive. However, with the technological improvements ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS ■ Fun If you want to start trouble, assemble some artists, physicists, philosophers, and psychologists into a ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS Lux or footcandle (fc) measurements describe how much light falls in a given area at a given distance away. It ...

CHAPTER 10 ■ LEDS To determine which lead is the cathode, look for a flat or notched side on the bottom of the otherwise round l ...