Welcome to my blog!

I will be documenting my Arduino and other electronics projects here.  First, a little background.  I am a Unix Administrator/security engineer by trade, but have always had an urge to tinker.  My wife got me a Raspberry Pi for Christmas in 2012 & that's when I got hooked.  I burned out my first LED & found out I had to hook a resistor to it and my desire to build circuits was forming.

I started to read about them, and watch tutorials on circuitry and was led to some awesome videos on 8x8x8 LED cubes.  An idea began forming:  DIY birthday presents!!!  I thought "I can do that!"

So, I bought an Arduino UNO and was floored by the price.  $35!!!.  Sigh...  More research.  Supposedly, I can build one for roughly half the cost.  Turns out I can.  Actually, this prototype cost me $5.  $5!!!!!!   It's a prototype, but it works.  The only things purchased were the chip, socket, crystal and perfboard.  Everything else is recycled from an old TV or CatV cable.  Wait.  No I did buy resistors, too.

The secret is to use the economies of scale:  by a lot for a smaller unit price than just one.  Since, I'm doing this to learn and to come up with some REALLY cool gifts, it's perfect for me!

Off to eBay I went and got $42 U.S. worth of components.  I got enough parts (minus the CPU and perfboard) to build 20 Arduinos!  When you add the cost of the CPU, the price comes to roughly $7 U.S.  buy the CPU without a boot loader and the price drops to 5 and some change!  Load the boot loader yourself.

Anyway, welcome!  I'll be building Arduinos, custom boards and shield, and any other electronics I can think of.

That's all for now!