Category Archives: Lesson learned

Raspberry Pi serial and the importance of pullups

Another day, another lesson learned. My Zolatron 64 6502-based 8-bit computer uses serial for its main I/O. One day I may add video output and keyboard input. But for the time being, I’m happy to talk to it via a terminal from another machine. So far, that other machine has been my electronics workbench computer – a LattePanda Alpha. And… Read more »

Protip: Buy only female-female jumper cables

Jumper cables with DuPont headers are an essential part of your toolkit. Any dabbler in electronics will have drawers of the damn things – and probably not a few wandering randomly around the workbench. But when the time comes to buy more (where do they go?) there’s always a dilemma. Do you need male-male, female-female or female-male? And how many of… Read more »

Lesson learned: check the power

The PCBs arrived from the fab house and I was impatient to try them out. They’re nothing clever – just a way of saving a bit of wiring for my ESP8266-based IoT room thermometer. Aside from headers, there are just four components (not including the pullup resistor I don’t need anymore because I made a mistake). I hand-soldered on the… Read more »