Thursday, November 8, 2018

Electronics Maker Christmas stocking fillers list


It's that time of year when my family ask me for ideas of presents for Christmas and my Birthday.  (both December)

With electronics bits being a bit specific/esoteric I stopped trusting that if I said what I wanted they would get me the right thing after I gave my wife a link without a description for a new CPU.
By the time she clicked it the link redirected to a few screws.  Luckily she checked before buying and I was able to get her the alternative link.

So, these day I provide a wish list email with more items than I expect to get so I still have the surprise when I open the packaging as to what they give me.

This year I've decided to share the list.  This list may be added to as I think of more things.
Before you ask things like Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, Circuit Playground boards are not on this list as these are things I have usually already got a stash of.  This list is for the other bits that make those things useful.  The kind of things it would be useful to have before starting a project but may not have already or may have run out of.

I try to keep the items to less than £20 so for many these are good stocking fillers.


USB Current Tester - £4.50
I buy random items off the Internet and for batteries and USB PSUs I want a way to see if they meet their stated ratings.






Heat Resist Soldering Mat£9.90 - £15.00 - There are bigger and smaller ones out there as well.
I have a regular A3 cutting mat but like this because of the different compartments to keep bits as I regularly drop screws and tools and hope this will help me be more organised when working on something.




I sometimes use buttons with spade connectors and at the moment I solder the wires on which is not ideal.  Want to start using the correct connectors for the correct job and not just bodge something that later causes a headache that I have to fix.




Anker 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub  - £10.99  
Sometimes for the Raspberry Pi I need to burn multiple SD cards.  The great Etcher will burn multiple images at the same time so with this I can add 3 more to be burned in parallel (it's not 4 as I lose a port to connect it)




Starting to try and be more organised so like the idea of this set of wires.  I have loose spools of wire around the place so the plan is to replenish the spools when they run out.



Saying that I still do breadboard stuff so it's always good to replenish the stock of Dupont jumper wires.



Having recently committed a project to an actual prototyping board rather than using a breadboard I want to do more of that for my Raspberry Pi projects so need a bunch of 2x20 female connectors to hand.  Last one I used I 'borrowed' form a Kickstarter I backed, so that's now an incomplete kit.


I'm always looking for microSD cards, so every year I add them to the stocking filler list.
They're small and I'm clumsy so replenishing stock is an ongoing activity. 




1 comment:

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