Electronics | words

Saving Money on Arduino Basic Starter Kit

Several sites are selling Arduino “basic starter kits” for around $55. That’s not a bad deal, but they tack on around ten dollars in shipping! These kits generally include:

Arduino UNO board
“Getting Started with Arduino” book
Breadboard
Jumpers
USB A to B cable

I put together my own bundle on Amazon, with free shipping, which costs significantly less:

The total price was $42.84, with free shipping. I saved $22, and the only things missing are a USB cable and some wire jumpers for the breadboard. I have a $2 roll of solid core wire from the local electronics shop for jumpers, and who doesn’t have USB cables laying around?

If you really want purpose-built jumper wires, I have read good things about the NKC Electronics 70 pack ($4.95 + $4.75 S/H) and the CanaKit Premium 30-pack ($7.95 + a whopping $12.52 S/H) looks like it has very high-quality, rectangular connectors.

Entertainment Center Power Consumption

I used my Kill A Watt to measure the power consumption of various items in my entertainment center.

PVR

Antec case, Biotstar TF-7050M2 motherboard, Hauppauge tuners, 2.5″ Hitachi drive.

80 watts peak at bootup
65 watts nominal

Dell 2001FP 20.1″ LCD monitor

(not normally part of my entertainment center, but I was using it to reconfigure the PVR’s BIOS, so it was in the general area)

Monitor off: 1 watt
Monitor asleep: 3 watts
Monitor active: ?? watts

XBox 360

Off: 3 watts
Starting up: 160 watts
Loading GTA IV: 155 watts
In-game: 188 – 195 watts

Samsung 32″ CRT television

Off: 3 watts
Startup: 483 watts (momentary)
On: 92 watts