Counting to 1,000,000

[Brisky]

159,785

Well, this one cost me only one euro, in a rural electronics / army dump store.

Even more, I could've gotten a whole bag of the things for 1.50, but most of those would've probably been broken.

This one works, tho! The coil works, and it switches properly, The NC contact isn't fried, now I only need to know if the NO contact works aswell...

[Justin93Daniels]

159,786.

I have spoken... and to that, of which I have spoken, I have typed with my hands.  I shall now commence in the browsing of the interwebs, in hopes that I get a clue on what to do.

[George]

159787
What happened to you?

[HellEye]

159,788

I recommend video games or YouTube.

Hmm... I need to get into electronics

[George]

159789
It's one thing I think is  cool but don't think I'll ever make the time to get into. It looks really complicated!

[Brisky]

159790

Ooh, it works!

Now I can see if I can do fun stuff with it...

[HellEye]

159,791

I just wonder... What uses does it have...

[Brisky]

159,792

Exactly what it says on the tin. It's a relay.

A small electrical signal, from maybe a computer component, or a radio signal, that goes trough the coil, will make a contact allowing for a much larger current to pass trough.

I bet there's a few in your computer, such that it turns on if you press the button once, and turns itself off if it recieves the signal from your motherboard.
There's plenty of 'em in cars, too.
Larger ones are used to start heavy electrical motors and pumps with the press of a button.
They're really quite common.

This is a fairly old, and fairly large one, though.

I've got a modern one aswell here, with two built in switches, instead of one, and for the same rating. (Voltage / amps) and it's almost one fourth the size of the thing in the picture.

And, Gasp!

It fits in my breadboard!!!

[HellEye]

159,753

Ah, i guess it makes sense

[Brisky]

159,754

Electronics aren't as hard to get into as you think, by the way...

There's plenty of stuff out there that's made to just be played with. Like these breadbords, or experiment prints, soo you can make circuits with a bunch of wires, instead of needing a soldering iron, and something to mill printplates with.

Plus, electronics are relatively cheap. Especially chinezium ones.

And, don't forget arduino!

[HellEye]

159,795

Yea I know. But it still requires getting the parts and then having an idea on what to do with them.

[Brisky]

159,796

Eh... I dunno.

I'm just gonna mess with this, and try to make a takeover switch, just for shits and giggles, (Except I don't have any break switches >_>) Because, spoiler alert, I've got no clue what I'm doing, aswell!

But, there are people who totally just make their own stuff, that does something cool and usefull.

I've seen people who made G sensitive circuits that they used to deploy parachutes, on their bottle rockets. I also know someone who wired his house with his very own, self made system, soo he could see the temprature in all the rooms of his house, and controll the heating with that.

There's plenty of fun stuff you can do!

Me, personally. I'm quite interested in going into autonomous drones, when I've got a bigger idea of what I'm doing!

[HellEye]

159,797

Well, I don't do half measures...
It either does something cool or I don't bother.
But since I can't do anything that does something cool...

[Brisky]

159,798

Generally, you need to do something boring, before you can do something cool.

It's the same with this relay. Essentially all it's gonna be doing for now is lighting up a few LED's in a completely predictable way, wich I've done before, at school.
Only now, in the process of getting this to work, I'll learn how to work with these breadboards, and where to find parts / part specification sheets. And that's what it's all about, right now.


If you don't know the diffirence between a PNP- and an NPN-transistor, you're probably not going to make a lot of interesting stuff.

But, if you go trough the effort of playing with them, even if the outcome is merely a few leds blinking on and off, you'll have learned the diffirence, and then you can expand on that.

If you put some time and energy into just doing that messing around, then within no time you'll have built your very own pocket calculator, from absolute scratch! Or, whatever it is you're interested in...

[HellEye]

159,799

I actually know the difference, they teach us that here
Point is... Do I just connect every single part by its own and learn how it works? Okay, sure.
But then... What do I do?
I either know how to make something, so there's no point, or I don't know it's possible/interesting so I don't make it or research it.
I don't have any ideas on what to build.
I mean I have one but it needs more space than I have now.