What I would buy/bought with $100 at SparkFun Electronics

What I would buy/bought with $100 at SparkFun Electronics

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Since SparkFun Electronics announced Free Day on January 7, 2010, I figured I’d start looking at what exactly I could get for $100. (I’ll only link the big items for risk of being called Spam by Googlebot.) This list is a work in progress, I’ll add more as I search.

To anyone new to electronics, I would suggest the Arduino (See arduino.cc for more information).

Idea 1: Oscilloscope kit and soldering supplies (Probably better to get the Oscilloscope Kit at Seeed Studios for $33)

  • Digital Oscilloscope Kit $45.95
  • BNC probe kit $12.95
  • 9V DC/350mA power supply $5.95
  • Soldering Iron Stand $5.95
  • Brass Sponge $2.95
  • Diagonal Cutters $1.95
  • Total: Not quite done yet!

Idea 2: Reflow toaster controller kit and swag

  • Reflow Toaster Controller $89.95
  • SparkFun Pint Glass ($9.95) OR (SFE Iron-on patch ($4.95) and SparkFun Coffee Mug ($4.95)) OR Sparkfun Projects Case (Clear) ($11.95)
  • Total: $99.85 or $99.90 or $101.90

Idea 3: 3pi Robot (Probably better to get the 3pi at the Maker Shed, since their 3pi bundle is on sale for the same price, and use the free $100 to get other stuff)

  • 3pi Robot $99.95
  • Total: $99.95

Idea 4: Eee PC Hacking (NO. These modules’ antennae are too big for the Eee. A separate GPS with panel-mount SMA would be better.)

  • 20-Channel GS405 (SiRF Star III chipset) or 50-Channel GS407 (u-Blox 5H chipset) Helical GPS Receiver. Either is $89.95.
    (People have been having problems getting GPS to work right when put inside the EEE 700/701/702, but they’ve been trying to use a ceramic antenna instead of a helical one. Maybe helical is the answer?)
  • Surface-mount connector to fit the above. For GS405, $0.95. For GS407, $1.25
  • Total: $89.95+ (or maybe more Eee hacking stuff)

Idea 5: Uber Eee PC Hacking

  • UFl to RP-SMA Connector for external wifi antenna, $4.95 (Plus antenna, $7.95-$9.95) (Sold out for now, i’ll leave it alone)
  • Arduino Pro Mini 328, $18.95 (3.3V version or 5V version) OR Breakout Board for PIC24HJ64 – Mini Bully, $19.95 (3.3V) (Though neither have the serial to usb converter onboard… They would require something like the FTDI Basic Breakout, $13.95)… Maybe I should just make my own from a USB-capable PIC SOIC board?)
  •    OR… Just use an FT2232 chip to do all the controlling! (I’ll custom-build a circuit board based on FT2232 and a latch to control the innards of the Eee… Power switching to various devices, spi expander for sensors, etc)
  • FM Receiver Breakout Board – AR1010, $14.95 (Hmm, not RDS-capable…)
  • Triple Axis SPI Accelerometer Breakout – SCA3000, $44.95 (Temperature compensating, voltage regulated, input 3.35V-10V) OR Triple Axis Analog Accelerometer Breakout – ADXL335, $24.95
  • Total: $?+

Idea 6: Soldering Station

  • Soldering Station Variable Temperature 70W – Digital, $99.95
  • And maybe a smaller tip (each $14.99)
  • Total: $99.95+

Subtotal: GPS (Idea 4) + Uber Eee PC Hacking (Idea 5)

Kubuntu Quick Tip: Foreign Characters

Kubuntu Quick Tip: Foreign Characters

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Here’s a quick tip if you find yourself typing a lot of accented letters, etc. We’re going to assign our keyboard a Compose key.

In Kubuntu, do the following:

  1. Open the “K” menu
  2. Click “System Settings”
  3. Click “Regional and Language”
  4. Go to the “XKB Options” tab
  5. Scroll down to “Compose Key Position” section, and click “Right Alt is Compose” (Or whatever other key you don’t use much.
  6. Click “Apply” and close the window.

See the Wikipedia entry on the Compose key for many different things you can now easily enter with your Compose key, such as ä, à, , ß, ç, ©, 
« and », 
¹, ², ³, 
§, æ and œ, etc.

EVEm V1.1 Carputer

EVEm V1.1 Carputer

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I scored a mega-deal on eBay a while back for this EVEm mini-ITX computer with an EVEm DC/DC power supply, in a generic mini-ITX case.

The EVEm has a VIA C3 Samuel2 600MHz “1GigaPro” CPU and a VIA VT133 Chipset.

I added the specified maximum of 256MB of 133Mhz SDRAM, and am currently using a 3.5″ 6.4Gb hard drive.

For more stats, look in this forum thread and in the English Manual. The support site can be found here.

The DC/DC Power supply is based on the Texas Instruments TL1451A.

Seiko/Epson RG9013F-NZ LCD Screen

Seiko/Epson RG9013F-NZ LCD Screen

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I got this LCD screen free with one of my computer-related eBay purchases.

The label on the bubblewrap says:

Seiko/Epson RG9013F-NZ VGA 640×480 Mono for Dragonball EZ
Used/Excellent – Full Factory Spec Sheet At:
www.openhardware.net/ez328simm/resources.html [archive.org link]

Spec Sheet [PDF, archive.org link]

According to store.earthlcd.com, the EG9013FNZ1 is an STN Passive Transmissive 6.3″ 640×480 Monochrome LCD display with a CCFL backlight.

2homeinfo dot com SPLOGs

2homeinfo dot com SPLOGs

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2homeinfo dot com is a (quite pretty) fascia for a giant splog ring.  Its posts, however pretty, link off to other sites, such as modularhomeweb dot com, (surprise surprise, it’s the same site, just copied over…), except this site has stories whose “original posts” are all on usedmobilehomes dot wordpress dot com.

And this is where the poop hits the fan, so to speak. On this site, each post ends with two SPAM URLs, each to its own SPLOG, along with links back to 2homeinfo  and other copies of 2homeinfo (to keep Google Pagerank up).

From here, the spam circle grows exponentially, where each splog links to 2 other splogs per post.

This SPLOG ring starts out with nicely laid out, handcrafted sites, and ends in bot-created trashy, ugly-looking splogs.

I’ve hand-reported a bunch of third-level Blogspot SPLOGS (that get linked to from usedmobilehomes dot wordpress) to Blogger Support. I’m going to let a spider run through this ring and see how big it is.

(Keep in mind that the bot that creates spam rings like this will throw in legit websites every now and then in a spammed link, to either throw you off the trail, or because that’s a site they want to boost PageRank on)

usedmobilehomes dot wordpress seems to be a news aggregator that pulls articles from other sources and adds its own links to them, along with its own two links at the bottom of each article.

Short story: 2homeinfo -> modularhomeweb -> usedmobilehomes dot wordpress -> Hundreds of different splogs

Update: I received an email from WordPress support regarding usedmobilehomes dot wordpress:

Thanks for the note.

I searched on blog owner, IP address and links from the blog. Caught around a dozen others though none – it seems – directly related to that blog.

But the blog is bookmarked so we keep an eye on what may come from the same place.

So it seems that spammers aren’t just one-trick dogs.

SPLOGS on Free Blog Hosts hosting with WordPress MU

SPLOGS on Free Blog Hosts hosting with WordPress MU

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This type of SPLOG targets WordPress-MU-based free blog hosts such as siggie.net.

This SPLOG posts blocks of text that may be copied from other sources, and/or mixed together to create a regular-looking block of text, generally with entire coherent sentences but not coherent paragraphs. Random groups of words are linked to the target sites, which are either:

  • other iterations of this type of SPLOG, running on WordPress MU and a free blog host (To let Googlebot search a huge network of SPLOGs, thinking they are legitimate sources, ie. Search Engine Optimization sites, as in the example photo)
  • ‘target’ sites (sites the spammers want to end up with a great Google PageRank score, hence showing highly on google for relevant searches)

The page in this particular example seemed to be all ‘target’ links, linking to various user profile pages on various websites.

Blogspot Amazon.com Affiliate Spam

Blogspot Amazon.com Affiliate Spam

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This type of SPLOG (or Spam Blog) is essentially an amazon.com category listing created by a spider. It copies images and descriptions straight from the corresponding Amazon.com page, and posts it to the SPLOG, complete with affiliate link.

This particular iteration creates a blogspot account and creates the maximum number of blogs (5), with names appropriate to what they are ‘selling’ (ie. Grinder Accessories, Collectibles, Nancy Drew books, etc.), with a URL that is slightly mangled (ie. grrinderaccessories.blog…, co-llectibles.blog…, etc.)

If and when you click the links to the items they are peddling, and actually purchase something from Amazon.com, the spammers make money.

Although this is a decent way to make income, keep in mind that the websites mentioned add nothing of value over what you get directly from amazon.com. There are no ‘personal reviews’, no added human commentary to recommend one over another, etc. Please don’t feed the spammers.