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The world could use more shitty, useless threads, so I'm here to provide you with meaningless content!

Premise:
POS love imagefests, but video games have been done before. POS loves packagefests, but I can't get you all to send me stuff regularly without it losing meaning and becoming uninteresting. I want this to be renewable and create a somewhat continuous flow of content.

Execution:
Mini imagefests of all the stuff I order online. Yes, it's that mundane. ENJOY! 

Expect the first one...soon.

Thursday...I got A PACKAGE!


My front porch is beautiful, is it not? WTF I really need to clean up those Christmas light clips.



I had to go down the driveway to get the mail and I'm not carrying that shit around. My driveway is hella steep.



I left it on my printer for a day and a half. I had srs adult business to attend to, so this got put on the back burner.



WHATEVER COULD THIS TERRIBLE PHOTO REPRESENT?



Yep, that digital multimeter I ordered over the weekend. Good job me for ordering something on the Saturday before Labor Day.



Free of its box, I discovered just how sharp those leads are.



As any responsible person would do, I read the user guide before operating my equipment. Found a silly tyop.



It measures the Ohms just fine! FYI, that's a 330 ohm resistor; close enough.



Gotta measure them volts, too! That horrible green flash is an LED on my thermostat project. That English book is my monitor stand.


I'm not expecting much from this little DMM. It was only $8 on Amazon and I mainly got it to read voltages in my circuits to determine if certain pins are functioning properly.

  cant wait for the next PACKAGE

I know y'all love PACKAGEs, and I should have 2 more on Monday. :0

 

Amazon Prime ftw

cant wait for the next PACKAGE

This is actually a great thread idea!

It's a good thing you like this, because THERE'S MORE!

On Monday, I was scheduled to receive 2 PACKAGES...


Wait WTF where's my shit?



Oh yeah, they were both small things, so at least my mailbox was full of not junk mail this time. Yeah, I know that left hinge is rusted and fucked up. The cover still closes. 



WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE IN THESE 2 WONDERFUL BUBBLY BAGS OF AMAZINGNESS?



This one is pretty descriptive. It's an LCD screen that I can use to display shit after programming my Arduino.



Cage 64 sure is excited to see the LCD. It appears that I have to solder my own pins in, but that's cool, I have the tools to handle that.

WHILE I DO THAT, let's check out the other purchase:



I was surprised to see my mini-breadboards come in a resealable pouch! I found that the breadboard that came with my Arduino was getting a bit cramped and my project is going to have several components, so now I have more room to work.



Unwrapped (tm).
Apparently they can hook together to form a single large board, too. Again, Cage 64 is pleased with my purchase.



Check out that shitty amazing solder job. It's been a while and I may be a little rusty. The pins held up to being inserted and removed from the green breadboard several times, so it may not look pretty, but I got the job done.

 
But uh
What's it do

The bread boards allow me to plug in electronic components like resistors, capacitors, etc. and other things like the LCD, LEDs, or even a keypad. Each hole of the sets of 5 pinholes are linked together, so I can plug a component into one, then a wire into another so I can connect stuff together without soldering.

I can program the LCD to display stuff. I will post a picture when I get to that part of my project. I haven't made the code for it just yet.

I bring to you the first of these posts where I received the package and posted the fest ON THE SAME DAY!


The UPS guy got a little sneaky, hiding it back there instead of leaving it on the mat. I mentioned that my driveway is quite steep; steep enough to deter even delivery drivers. Last Christmas season one driver made it up my driveway, but decided against climbing the stairs on top of that, so I found a box under the steps. It was actually NOT the Postal Service...I think it was FedEx.



All these small bubble wrapped kraft packages! What is it this time?!



What all that shiny crap means to say is I bought an offbrand Arduino Mega2560. I was running out of I/O ports on my Uno due to the numerous inputs my keypad and LCD require. That bag was actually very well wrapped around the microcontroller, with tape, no less.



Not pictured is the anti-static bag from which I removed the Arduino.
I was lazy and didn't take a comparison picture of the Uno, but lets just say that the Mega has 54 I/O ports where the Uno has 19. And other stuff, but for now I/Os are what I need.
It also came with this (actually handy) 1ft USB b cable. I can use it on the go with my laptop without the bulk of a 6ft cable. It seems trite, but excess cable is annoying.


You might be noticing a theme across all the items I have fested so far and that's because I started this thread just a little too late to show off the more varied things I got before this. Oh well, as long as someone shows an interest in this thread there will be time to see more junk...even if that person is me.


BONUS TIME

I promised show the LCD off once I had some code written, and here's the delivery!

Click to load

I went with the video because a series of pictures just didn't cut it. It's difficult to tell, but the temperature sensor is next to the keyboard, under the orange/yellow wires. All of the wires look messy, but I promise they're organized and color coded. I also cleaned up the solder on the LCD so it would actually function.



I've had a YouTube account for over a decade...I'm such a lurker.

arduino! we use that at my lab all the time.

Yeah, one of the lab assistants finally got our program on board with Arduino; all the intro students are doing labs with them. While the digital classes still work with the 8051, pretty much everyone in the Capstone class uses an Arduino on their final projects.

I actually got another package 2 weeks ago, but I have been way too busy to throw up an update. I will next week, though, since November is a lot lighter in the coursework than this month has been. I'll also post a picture of my project once we complete it's frame and get it ready to present.