Page 47 - PDA Robotics Using Your Personal Digital Assistant to Control Your Robot

PDA 03 5/27/03 8:23 AM Page 23
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Tools and

Equipment

To complete the PDA Robot project, some tools like the soldering iron
are essential; some simply make the job easier. The following lists the
essentials and then the “nice to have equipment” you can buy when
your skill in electronics and software earns you a great living, with a
lot of excitement along the way!

Essential Tools and Equipment

Essentials, shown in Figure 3.1, include a screwdriver (A), a pair of
side cutting pliers (B), a utility knife (C), a simple multimeter (D), a
soldering iron (E), a ruler (F), a hack saw (G), a porcelain cooking tray,
and about 45 minutes time on a drill press (www.thinkbotics.com).
Buy a drill press if you plan on making a lot of circuits (see Figure 3.2).
Another very useful tool is a chip puller. Quite often they come with
low-cost computer tool kits. When you reprogram the microchip
(PIC16F876) in this project, it needs to be pulled from the board, pro-
grammed, and reinserted. You can use your hands to pull the chips,
but you risk bending or squashing the pins, as well as frying chips
with a jolt of static electricity. I almost put the chip puller in the essen-
tial list until the couch swallowed mine, and I was simply (carefully)
pulling the chips from the board with my hand. A pair of wire cutters
for clipping the leads off the electronics components is helpful, in

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