Just bought my first Arduino

Community General Discussions
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Senior year (undergrad) Computer Engineering major here with way too little real world electronics experience. I'm taking a microcontroller class where we're programming PIC chips in Assembly and I've always secretly wanted to be able to build robots, but was always intimidated by the idea of learning uControllers.

After finding this website and doing a little programming in class I got motivated to buy a setup and learn how to do this stuff. Woo!

I bought the basic Arduino USB board and some bare breadboard. I have plenty of electronics lying around and have a pretty good grasp on all that - but I've never had to learn very much about actually driving circuits with batteries since I've pretty much always had a power supply on a bench in the labs - that'll be an adventure.

One question I have is about small DC motors & servos - where can I buy them, how cheap can I hope for them to be, and what should be the minimum rating(s) I should look for for the Arduino Light-seeking robot (https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/2164)? I know the OP just used RC car parts but I don't have much lying around and think it might be cheaper to buy proper parts.

 

Thanks!

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Motors and servos

For your motors, you will want a gear motor. A DC motors spins really fast and has little torque, so you need to gear it down to be useful for most robotics applications. You can either get/build a gearbox, or just go for gearmotor, which has a gearbox attached.

Servos vary in size, torque and speed. There are little 9g servos, 18g servos, 48g, etc. (referring to the weight in grams).

The price list for LMR members from DAGU has some examples.

https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/files/LMR_price210809.pdf

You can get servos and gear motors many other places to. Check the links at the bottom of the home page for robot shops you can order from.

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Woah, I’m new here and I
Woah, I’m new here and I hadn’t seen the DAGU pricelist yet. I’ve just received the last shipment I was waiting for and now I’m going to have to order from DAGU! Thanks a lot! :stuck_out_tongue: