Tips and Tricks¶
We expect you to look to outside resources for information on practical skills. For specific problems with the lab equipment, you might the Errata section handy. However, this page also includes some miscellaneous notes you may find useful.
Electronics¶
If an analog sensor doesn’t emit the right voltage to drive a particular circuit, it is possible to construct a passive resistor network to add an offset voltage, or an active op-amp circuit to offset and scale the signal to the appropriate level. E.g., the Sharp rangefinder output is too low a voltage to directly trigger our MOSFETs. For more discussion see the Op Amp Level Translation Exercise.
If you are unclear on the wiring of a stepper motor, use a DMM to measure the resistance between the wires. A bipolar stepper will have four wires, two per coil, and the low-resistance of the coil should be unambiguously measurable.