Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #08849



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: FCO Enr. fco@total.net
Date: Thursday, 6 January 2000 12:42
Subject: Just Another Newbie



greetings,

I'm the sort of person who took a one year intensive course to become
a computer technician, had lots of electronics courses and such but most of
it
after years of inactivity has disapeared. It's to the point where I'm
reading Radio
Shack books on beginning electronics to catch up. I currently work as a
teacher
for a corporate services company teaching lots of various programs such from
html to unix.

I worked in an electronics assembly plant, I ran the entire SMT assembly
line and I did a lot of troubleshooting (someone over the phone would tell
me such
and such part was blown, which explained why it wasn't placing correctly and
I'd take apart a 250 piece head assembly and remove smt chips by hand and
replace it).

So I've got a lot of experience putting stuff together and building circuits
but my actual electronics knowledge is close to nil. I'm really trying to
learn though.

My interest in robotics has existed for ages but I never had the guts to
just
jump in, cause it seemed like I was always over my head. I find the
philosophy of
BEAM robotics absolutely fascinating and I think it's probably the best
thing for me
due to the fact that the robots seem to be highly advanced with such a
minimalist
approach, it's great!

I was going to order the Photopopper kit from Solarbotics but when I looked
at the parts cost I wondered if it wouldn't be more convenient to just buy
all the parts
and build the variants such as the Photovore on Chiu-Yuan Fang's page.

I guess what I'm asking is, can anyone suggest the most cost effective and
versatile list of parts and source that would enable me to get started and
build various
little projects for less? I'd definitely want spares of everything so I
wouldn't have to
place an order every 2 weeks :) (yet).

Thank you for your time!

Andy
fco@total.net

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