Ask Slashdot: Good Books and Tools For a Software/Hardware Hobbyist? 85
postermmxvicom writes "I have a friend who is a mechanic, but enjoys tinkering with software and hardware as a hobby. I want to get him a gift that will either broaden his horizons or deepen his understanding in these fields. He is proficient at soldering components and removing them from circuit boards. His programming experience is with a wide variety of scripting languages. He recently used teensy and arduino boards and an accelerometer to add some bells and whistles to a toy car he made. He also used his knowledge to help a friend find and correct weaknesses in his shareware (that would have let 'customers' share more freely than intended). He is fascinated that people can create chips to modify existing hardware. Do you know of any good books or kits (or even tools of the trade) that would appeal to a hobbyist and allow him to grow? Is there anything that might also play off of his handyman/mechanic abilities?"
MAKE (Score:4, Informative)
subscribe him to MAKE magazine.
Hobbyist tools (Score:4, Informative)
Bus Pirate [dangerousprototypes.com]: good for looking at communication waveforms to debug problems. ($35)
Logic Sniffer [dangerousprototypes.com]: For more complex problems than the above, allows looking at parallel signals.($50)
Raspberry Pi [raspberrypi.org]: Tiny ARM11 700MHz CPU with powerful graphics, 10/100 ethernet, USB2.0 host (2 ports), HDMI out, and GPIO connector. Boots from SD card. ($35)
MSP430 Launchpad [ti.com]: inexpensive microcontroller development platform ($4.30)
STM32F4Discovery [st.com]: Development platform for powerful microcontroller. ARM Cortex M4 with FPU, 168MHz (210DMIPS), Ethernet MAC, 2xUSB host/device/OTG, etc. etc. Board has stereo audio DAC with speaker driver, USB Micro-AB connector, 3-axis accelerometer, digital mic, 4 user LEDs, two pushbuttons (one is reset), and onboard debugger which is supported by open source tools. ($15) <--- take that, arduino
Tools! (Score:4, Informative)
I vote tools.
1) Really nice electronics-oriented multimeter. I'm sure he has one already, but it might be cheap/lacking in function/etc
2) O-scope. Super handy and fun too. Old analog ones can be had for cheap. Check craigslist and ebay.
3) Logic analyzer/Bus Pirate. I realize these are two pretty different things, but they fill a similar place in the "debugging digital stuff" category.
Other than tools, I think some kind of audio kit/project would be cool. IMO nothing helps you learn more about how electronics really work than analog audio, synthesizers, amps, etc. It really helps connect the concepts of how voltage/current/power/etc are connected since it all ends up in a very tangible (audible) medium.
Plus: Boom Boxes are sweet. It's a scientific fact.