Real life artifical arms

Hello everyone ;)

I've just read this interesting news article.

About a Chinese farmer, who after an accident in which he lost his hands all below elbows, has built himself a pair of artificial arms which allow him to function properly.

At his home. From scrap. Using a system of levers and pulleys.

Now imagine if a person with such problem would know electronics well. If they had access to needed parts - which aren't expensive...

I take that as a really inspirational text because that's exactly what I'm going for with learning electronics (with my medical studies and all).

Scientists around the world are making more and more progress in interfacing our wetware (so humorously called by analogy in 3 part human-computer-program setup) with software and hardware. Technology advances more and more into this field. And possibly in not so far future we'll be able to get huge enhancement making not only crippled people able to live again normally, but possibly also making our bodies much better performing by gaining additional senses or abilities.
The visions H+ movement proposes seem to be more and more possible and probable.

I think most people at some point in childhood (or later) had a dream to have superpowers like one of superheroes... With advanced technology it can be achievable in very near future, among other methods by cyborgization like this. ;)

I consider it a neat motivator. Do you have similarly crazy (or not?) motivators to learn new skills like this?

1. Safety rules and hazards in electrics and electronics

Hello.

First of all, as this is first post in the series - all the posts starting with numbers are going to be parts of electrics and electronics tutorials/lessons course following each other while unnumbered ones will be on different topics loosely connected with this blog's theme ;)

This post is about hazards and ways to avoid them in electrics and electronics.

Read it or face consequences. Electrics and electronics mean playing with electricity, usually having connection with 130-230V electric grid (depending on country) and with some components that can be loaded to thousands of Volts, all of which can electrocute you instantaneously.

There is this and many more dangers which you usually could avoid easily if you know what you're doing.

Or kill or harm yourself if you don't.

Hence this post.

I'd like to point out that this part is about your personal safety. 

Safety of equipment, of electronic parts you'll mount or dismount - how to not damage them - is a completely different topic and I'll write about them when I'll be writing about those parts.

Now, to the topic.

* Electricity.

High voltage and high amperage. While I will explain whole physics behind this later on. The important part is, electric current can kill you. It is Amperes that kill, however Volts are what's needed to 'push them through' your skin which is a natural insulator against low voltages.

Usually 30V is considered a safety border with anything above that dangerous to health or life. 

Most electrocutions happen at 50V and higher, that doesn't mean you should feel safe with low voltages because with high amperage even if you won't get killed you can get burnt or otherwise hurt depending on what will the current meet on its way.

The current at which you 'can't let go' the wire when you catch it happens usually around 10mA (5 for small children). 

Even 100mA may be enough to stop your heart under right circumstances.

And even the current that won't kill you can cause involuntary muscle contraction which may lead you to touching something more dangerous at higher voltage/amperage, a hot soldering iron tip or something similarly pleasant.

If you don't know what you're doing it'd be best to not touch any electrics or electronics, especially with bare hands.

- Always unplug any electronics and electrics from electricity source - either by unplugging, taking batteries out etc.

- You need to know how capacitors look. Those will soon be described in a post about capacitors. They are like batteries in that they can store electric energy, but they can give it out really quickly, which means that even a capacitor smaller than an AAA battery can potentially kill you as it may very well have 200 or more Volts loaded inside and fire it in one powerful burst... 

- Do NOT touch circuit board on which there are electrolytic capacitors unless you checked their voltage or know they can't have high voltage. Because if they have, you can get shocked as they can be loaded with electricity long after the piece of equipment stopped being used.

- Discharge capacitors before touching them (more on safe ways of discharging them in capacitors post).

- Use insulating gloves unless you like it risky or know what you're doing - I don't, but I do know what I'm doing and I do like doing it risky... And I certainly would wear protective equipment for high voltages.

- Use insulated tools when working with any elements that may be dangerous and which you can't discharge safely (more on that too in capacitors post).

- Watch out with anything wet around electric and electronic equipment (especially that many soldering stations have a sponge for cleaning soldering tip which should be wet with water).

- Always keep your tools grounded when they require it - don't plug a tool needing grounding into socket without grounding, it may save your life if it accidentally gets shorted out.

- Remove any metal jewelery - rings, bracelets etc. when working with electrics and electronics - you'll reduce chances of shorting something out by accident.

* Explosions.

While the highest immediate threat is electricity, there also are elements that can explode or send tiny pieces damaging your skin or if you're unlucky hitting your eye possibly destroying it.

- Always wear protective goggles when working.

Accidentally overloading capacitors can lead to them boiling out or even exploding. Other parts can burn.

Capacitors also can sometimes explode when you short them out, so don't listen to idiots saying that to make it safe you need to touch both wires with insulated metal objects.

When clipping wires you can send piece of wire into your eye.

When soldering, solder (or rather its flux) or some impurities may sizzle and send molten metal into your eye...

There probably may be many other such situations. 

So always use protective goggles (possibly ones certified against high velocity fragments). I can't stress it enough.

If you use glasses normally, they could protect you a bit too, but keep in mind that they don't cover eye that well and aren't made to withstand those hits and cost a lot more than regular protective goggles...

* Toxic substances

- Solder used in soldering may contain up to 40% lead which is toxic when ingested. Do not eat it. Wash hands after soldering.

- Rosin (and possibly other kinds of flux) which is used in soldering, when heats up burns producing smoke which can be carcinogenic and otherwise unhealthy to breath in. Use a fume extractor, a fan blowing the smoke away from you, or at least do soldering in a well ventilated place (which should be the case even with fume extractor and/or fan).

* Fire hazard

With electricity there also always is a fire hazard. 

- Never play with electrics/electronics near something flammable. 

- Remove carpets, cardboards and such from proximity. 

- Watch where you place your soldering gun or iron - they may be at around 400 Celsius degrees (750 Fahrenheit) - enough to burn most plastics, wood, paper, set off many flammable substances.

- When wired incorrectly with too high voltage resistors may start burning, wires may start heating up, so always check if you placed all parts to the specifications...

- Don't connect too many cables to one wall socket - especially don't plug in an extension cord into another, don't use divider in divider etc. - their wires may heat too much, melt the insulation and short out causing a fire.

- Never leave unprotected (without casings, untested etc.) systems running unattended - if something goes wrong with no one to quickly react they could cause fire.

* General

- Always have a fire extinguisher, first aid kit and phone close to your workspace - never know when something could go wrong.

- Keep away all those dangerous things away from children and animals.

Thank you for attention, that's all for now.

I'm sure that more even more detailed points and explanations could be added, but those are most general and important ones - when there will happen other dangers along the way I for sure will write about them and about measures to avoid them in related posts.

Feel free to comment with any questions or if you think something I wrote is incorrect ;)

If you're curious about why I'm writing this blog and what it's all about, please visit the first post: Electronewbie Begins

Good luck, keep reading.

And do it with me ;)

Electronewbie Begins

Hello everyone.

In this first post I'd like to tell you who I am, what content I want to offer to you in this blog and why, but first a redirect for accidental polish readers ;)

Jeśli przypadkiem trafiłeś/aś tutaj a wolisz polską wersję językową, zapraszam na: Elektronowy - Nowy w Elektronice

W zamierzeniu ma mieć tą samą zawartość przeznaczoną dla osób nie znających dobrze angielskiego.

What the Faraday is this all about?!
Electronics, computers are really fascinating and so is all that stuff that develops now so quickly. More and more complicated devices that fill our world so much, that they become normal part of our reality: our personal assistants, our external memories, our learning helps, our additional limbs often capable of reaching things we couldn't with our natural appendages and many other things that just make us much better at anything we want and try to do.

For me this exciting world of electronics, robotics and cybernetics is actually a future we all will probably be participating in together.
That's why I decided to learn electronics - do it myself. Especially that being a medical student, soon finishing studies to become a medical doctor, I have my own ideas about where medical cybernetics development might go (and already is going) and for sure I want to be in it.
I guess many people with creative minds will want to learn basics of electronics and physics behind this all and learn it all just like me.
Moreover, as the world gets more and more computerized, we use more electronics and soon almost everyone in very varying fields and trades could need to know at least basics of electronics, knowing electronic elements, proper soldering and desoldering techniques, knowing how to repair that thingamajig that just broke while you need it most.
By learning it now, we get a headstart over all those people who soon will realize that they should have started looking in this direction earlier.

And having headstart in life always means at least more comfort and at best money - possibly in big quantities.

That's why I decided to write this blog - to help you immerse yourself in this extraordinary, complicated and arcane, often even dangerous (as we play with electricity) world, but at same time - having so much potential, to increase our capabilities to unimaginable levels if we only spend time to learn how to use it and develop our own ideas - which I'm sure everyone of you already has in mind - into real projects and possibly in future implementations.

Just imagine not long ago spaceships - the ones used to land on moon and many other used computers of the power that now your washing machine or microwave may have. Not even speaking of computers we have now on our desks, or the monsters scientists use in their labs.

All electronics worlds' geniuses like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates to name only two most known computers gurus had to learn from ground up. They too had to learn basics of electronics, of programming, of many other things. They spent months and years on learning it all. But where did they get thanks to that initial effort? And both of them said that all the time they had fun - it never was really a chore.
And this is our aim too - to have fun and to learn things that will bring us up, and who knows - maybe to the top one day?

Just repeat with me in your mind words of Muhammad Ali:
"I'll show you how great I am!"

And do it with me ;)

Who will find this blog useful?
- Everyone who wants to learn basics of electronics.
- Everyone who wants to learn physical principles of electronics.
- Everyone who wants to learn basics of cybernetics and robotics.
- All the girls who will have crush on me after reading my posts ;)
- Everyone who wants to learn how to repair their electronics.
- Everyone who wants to earn money because of not spending it on repairs.
- Everyone who wants to build an army of robots to take over the world.

There are probably countless other possibilities, ideas that you could make come true with knowing electronics. A lot of hacks allowing you to make your life easier and make girls/guys love you because you're so awesome.
Well, I guess girls don't need knowledge of electronics to make guys love them, but still - 'nerd' girls who know their way around electronics, computers and all that stuff are just purely awesome. So if you're one of them, go back to the fourth point! ;)

I probably from time to time will do some reviews of equipment elements and other items which could be of interest for you, or simply ones which I got for myself and think that they fit theme of this blog too.

Who am I?

I'm Til Shaedlaer. Well, that's not my RL name, but it's a nick that I use everywhere in internet and it grew onto me so strong that I respond to 'Til' more often than to my real first name as most of my friends use this nick.

I'm from Poland, but in age of computers and internet I don't plan on enclosing myself inside those national borders, so I am making two language versions of this blog - polish (hence the redirect above for polish readers) and english.
I'm medical student, soon finishing the studies to become a medical doctor, but this one direction never satisfied my mind as I always had a lot of interests, computers and technology being some of them, but not limited to those.

What it's all about?
I started getting into world of electronics a few weeks ago. I always liked physics, so I have some theoretical base for it, but didn't know a lot about electronics, resistors, capacitors, coils, transistors, integrated circuits and such. I always wanted to explore world of electronics so started reading up a few months ago already, but didn't really have time to actually start something.
Or at least so I was telling myself.

Many people told me that I do have a gift for explaining things to others. I also am a good, fast learner. So this blog is a project aimed both at my own benefit of motivating myself to get better at it (I'll appreciate all constructive criticism and feedback so that I and everyone reading can get better at it).

And for your benefit of possibly learning something new - especially if you are a beginner, and hopefully as this project goes on I'll be able to offer more advanced knowledge too ;)
In time we'll be able to get to much higher levels, not just basic electronic components and physics laws tutorials and explanations, but also possibly robotics, cybernetics and other ics theory and practical projects.

So, stop telling yourself that you don't have time to start up, get some basic tools (which I'll describe in one of later posts), read a bit up to know what are you doing.
Read my post (which will be next) about general safety in electrics/electronics so that you don't kill yourself. If you don't read and do kill yourself, don't run back to me crying, I'm not responsible for you jumping over it, and I'll call it natural selection ;P

Now, go to read more.
And do it with me ;)