Hamilton Brad
Member Since: August 26, 2008
Country: Canada
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My favorite block for the Intel Edison is the ADC block, because it is absolutely the most essential!
The Edison is such a big deal because it lowers the entry barriers to the world of electronics - something that SparkFun mentions directly in their own product description.
The analog to digital converter board is that extra bit that lets this device interact with the real world by connecting it to all kinds of external inputs, to the real world. Connecting the world of electronics and computers is exactly what the IoT movement is all about.
For people more experienced, many of these sensors are also available with digital protocols like I2C that are very easy, yet daunting to a true beginner. With the ADC board, and a photosensitive resistor you can have this device seeing light in the room quickly and easily - exactly the sort of exciting "Hello World" moment we all remember from when we first started tinkering.
Of course, other microcontrollers all have ADCs built on to them, but it can be so common that it is taken for granted. Secondly, all the connectivity options in the Edison makes getting that room light measurement onto the internet that much easier.
On the other end, once people start moving to larger projects that need real world measurements of things like temperature, level, flow, pressure, pH, and a million other things, the standard for these process measurements is still a 4-20 mA signal. This means there a lots of very accurate, cheap sensors out there that can be converted and brought into the Edison with a simple resistor and this ADC board - a whole other world of possibilities!
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Oh wow! Can someone post the code to use the module to divide by zero please???
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If you wanted to become a great painter, you would need supplies like canvas, paint, brushes; maybe some lessons to teach you the basics, and something or somewhere to inspire you.
If you were a car guy, you would probably have a car that you can tinker with, a junk yard and a parts store to go to, and would seek out other car people to hang out with, share tips, info and show your completed projects to (usually in a parking lot at night).
If data sheets and computer chips excite you though, Sparkfun is where electronics geeks go to learn, get parts, share ideas, get help and be part of a community. -
Again, way to go sparkfun.
As a gift to the people who didn't win anything, but are willing to now read through the 1000+ comments, I ended up with some dough, but I used a trick that I read on the comments from last year...
Go into your firefox config and set the timeout time to something stupid high. That way, it doesnt time out and will keep loading no matter how slow it is. -
This was an awesome use of my day off.
At the very end, was able to get a couple of questions before it was all gone.
its a nice birthday present for me since I am way too house poor to by able to but anything usually. Now I have to figure out what to get.
you guys totally deserve a cookie. I'm sorry about all the things I yelled at that little picture of a computer on fire.
No public wish lists :(