Ok, so I knew it would happen – I went ages without blogging. This is exactly what I had wanted to avoid, but lets see if I can do better in this stint. Although, to be honest, for a couple of days I was sleeping. As in, I would get home, and crash for the day. No idea why, I was just tired. :/

I actually just got done being disappointed. I’m trying to get back into electronics again after starting on it, getting interested, and kinda getting distracted away from it again. So I’m back at it. Now, I’m trying to find a project to do that I find fun, or with a final purpose. If I have a goal of something I’m more likely to try to get it done. So so far I have an 8×8 RGB LED matrix that I need to hook up with 74HC595 Shift Registers and control with an Arduino, a small Joule Thief circuit that works (but in essence is entirely useless for now), an idea, and specifications needed, for a remote shutter release for my Canon G7 (which is a potential commercial product, at least on Ebay, maybe… ok not likely but it’s nice to think it), and now an idea to redesign my own control circuits for an old RC car i have. I already have an AM-RT4-433/AM-HRR3-433 matched transmitter/receiver pair, which is also intended for the remote shutter release jobbie, but can be repurposed for this project no problems. They can be driven directly from microcontrollers, or encoder chips. In my case microcontrollers. On one end, for now, the Arduino, and on the other end (hopefully) a PIC16F627 (if I get my act together and learn assembly) or, if not, I’ll possibly invest in some AVR chips somewhere along the line, along with a programmer for them. Seems there are more AVR friendly projects around anyway, so I might switch to them for now.

But anyway, on to the disappointing thing. While I was taking the old car apart to see the control circuits to see if I could salvage any of it (a few components is about all) I figured I’d get the steering servo out while I was at it and have a fiddle around with it with the Arduino. Annoyingly I discovered that it’s not really much of a servo at all. Just a gearbox with a cutout switch of sorts. Essentially a software controlled gearbox with either full left, full right, or center positions. I want a pulse controlled servo, so it also looks like I’ll have to invest in a couple of those too as I don’t -really- want to be taking them out of my helicopter. Starting to think I might end up just making my own car (the drive motor isn’t up to much either). xD

Ah well, at least for now I guess I can piddle with the shift registers while I scrounge for parts.

In other news, amazingly I’ve actually said yes after being invited out for social drinks and such tomorrow night. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ll be socializing with these people, and the first time socializing with some of the others. I’m told they’re quite fun, so we’ll see. Me being social, who’d ‘ave thunk it?