Oh, the excitement!

When the power  boards arrived yesterday, I began a search for a proprietary method of connecting LEDs to the Arduino as I have a use for the MAX7219 chips I recently bought. After a bit I discovered the ideal solution from the same supplier. Not only is there a board, there is a complete dot matrix display in component form. They have single units to bid on and packs of four for a fixed price. This is the fixed price option here and there are auctions currently for just one.

And another thing.........................

I have received only one comment about the new layout so far, Ian suggested a slightly bigger and thicker font as he is having a little difficulty reading the previous one due to age related eyesight issues. So I have opened up the font a bit and made it bold. 

Power supplies, again.

Anyone who has read this blog on a regular basis will know that I have been working on producing some suitable power supplies for my projects. I have been successful but at a cost. The cost mainly being in my time and the size issues of some of the components. So I have been looking out for a cheaper alternative for some time. I found a very nice looking board with almost the exact specifications and handling as the ones I was building in the Cool Components listings but they sold out as soon as the new stock arrived due, probably, to the very good price. So I widened my net and found a slightly different model for a somewhat higher price and bought a couple of them. Very nice quality but larger than I was looking for. So I kept looking and finally found the original boards on sale from a Chinese supplier for an even cheaper price as long as I bought at least three at a time. I took the plunge and ordered six. The Hong Kong Post Office caused a delay in delivery by a change in their procedure, they now x-ray everything leaving the country, but the supplier, Chip Partner, kept me informed and the goodies finally arrived yesterday. So here they are,

Next move......

I have now widened the template and altered a few minor items, there may well be more to follow but please let me know via a comment if you like or dislike any changes.

Changes in the pipeline

Several changes will be happening to this blog in the next few months. The first is the change of name as now seen above. The old name changed when I moved on from just Arduino to Raspberry Pi as well. Now I am also taking an interest in the Cubieboard I decided that just adding the new product to the name was a board too far. So, after a moment of epiphany  yesterday evening, we now have the name of Tech That!. I won't apologize for the pun as I have loved them all my life and this was just the opportunity I was looking for to insert another one into my life. The second change should happen soon, the old icon will disappear and a new one will arrive. This is only a stopgap until I am able to think of something more suitable than a caricature of me. The third change I would like to make is a bit more fundamental, as I know that a lot of people who read this blog don't have a modern widescreen monitor. Since it's beginnings, this blog has always catered for standard screen monitors. However, with such a lot of new information available, I would like to make use of a different template in order to maximize how much can be seen without scrolling down. If you have any strong concerns about this please contact me as I would like to take this step with your agreement. 

So, to restate the obvious, this  blog now covers Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard products and may well also take on other home and educational products as time passes. As an example, I am currently playing with EL wire and hope to be able to interface it with an Arduino in order to produce a copy of a neon sign.

As always, if you would like to contribute to this site please email me and we can work it out.

English: Diagram of electroluminescent wire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Close up of El-Wire of a variety of colors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)