Aquaponics is Fun

Started breadboarding the first exercise in the #5 Jeremy Blum Arduino Basics video tutorial; it talks about motors and transistors.

Didnt get too far. Got all my electronic components out and sorted through them to find the parts needed for the first Arduino/motor exercise. Got the 1k ohm resistor and the 1 microfarad capacitor. Found a 1N4004 diode, the Arduino Uno, the breadboard and jumper wires. But then I
ran into transistor problems.

The parts list that accompanies Jeremys #5 video says to use a 2N7052 NPN transistor. Well, the
Element14 page for that component says theyre no longer manufactured. Ive got a BC547B NPN transistor and a 2N2222A NPN transistor, but I dont know enough about transistors to know if one of the two transistors I have should work fine instead of the 2N7052. The specs arent quite the same, and I havent yet figured out how to figure that out. Will work on that more tomorrow.

To try and learn a bit more about motors and microcontrollers before the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting this Thursday, I looked at a few more related pages online tonight. One of the topics Im interested in is motor shields for Arduino. Id like to understand when a shield is used, and when the motor is just hooked up to the Arduino without using a shield. Adafruit has a pretty interesting looking shield, the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit. It appears to be a pretty versatile component that could be used for a variety of projects.

Well, thats all for tonight. Ran out of time to figure out anything else. Need to learn more about transistors...