Electronics Workbench LED Upgrade

I guess I forgot to post an update to the update of my workbench. Not only did I clean up the gigantic mess that had accumulated on it, I improved the lighting and workspace availability:

Prior to this upgrade, I had fluorescent lighting under the blue cabinets over the bench. They extended down about 3 to 4 inches and kinda got in the way. I also didn't think through the placement, so they were back about half-way under the cabinets. This meant they didn't put light out on the front edge of the tabletop like I would have hoped. Here's the old lighting:

The monitor on the left barely fit behind the light and the light extended down lower than the top of the monitor. Dumb. I might have been drinking bourbon that day. Like, more than a shot or two. No matter. That is history. Today, we have wonderLEDs!

Also, notice I suspended my oscilloscope above the desktop. It freed up quite a bit of desktop space. I added some more plastic storage drawers to organize my tools and miscellaneous other parts that usually wound up spilled all over the work mat. I labeled the drawers for quick searching and fun:

I believe I found those at Target. They were inexpensive and they work very well. They have little rubber footies to keep them from sliding around on the glass tabletop when opening and closing the drawers. As you can see, it's easy to tell what's in each drawer... If you're me. My wife needed a few seconds to interpret the labels in order to find the scissors. Scissors cut things. They're for, "cutting." BOOM! Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.

I picked up the two LED bars under the cabinets and the two gooseneck LED lamps at Lowe's (maybe Home Depot, can't remember). All told, I maybe spent $100. The best thing about the bars is that they're quite flat, leaving plenty of headroom for monitors and whatnot. The two flexible lamps clamp onto the little shelves I built between the cabinets:

These are about $20 each. They put off great light, stay cool and I can point them individually to light a component any way I like.

I set up the power to go through a single multi-outlet toward the back and under the ledge of the workbench table top (please excuse the fuzzy photo):

It's an easy reach to turn the lights on and off. The two gooseneck lamps have their own switches on the shelf above, so it's easy to switch them on or off without taking down all the lights.

iPhone Lens Adapters from Photojojo

I've seen a few different add-on lenses for iPhones out there and decided to nab a set for myself to make my detail photos and product shots a little more neato. I went with the Photojojo three-lens kit for $49 US.

These lenses are just little guys. They come with front covers and magnetic back covers that double as little string handles.

Kinekt Design Gear Ring not included.

The lenses are tough little buggers. Appear to be made from aloominum (or Al U. Minium, if you're from Canadia, eh), or something like it. The black front caps are flexible plastic and the backs with the little handles are magnetic metal something something. Quality is nice and the glass appears to be very clean and clear. My telephoto lens did not ship with a fingerprint. I had to accidentally add that myself. It was easy to clean off with a standard microfiber cloth.

Since the camera on my iPhone 4s isn't a solid replacement for my Canon DSLR, I'm not going to tell you this is an ideal replacement for a good DSLR setup. For any sort of high-end product shot or landscape or anything other than fun or convenient photo making, stick with your expensive lenses and DSLRs. For the stuff I do for StuffAndyMakes.com, like videos of blinky LED circuits and little motorized this and thats (and occasional bourbons), it's plenty OK. These lenses give the iPhone optics a little help in its range and that's it. Not super fancy. Good for a measly $49.

Here are some samples of each of the lenses from the same distance imaging the same object (my favorite gadgety ring of all: The Kinekt Design Gear Ring):

Yes, the ring was dirty between the gear teeth. I was too lazy to clean it. Which, by the way, I've found is best done with good old antibacterial foamy hand wash stuff. Get a bunch on the ring and spin it a while. Rinse with water and repeat one or two more times. Works 100% of the time every time. Makes the ring spin freely and happily.

You can see the telephoto is useless as close as I had the camera, but I figured I'd show it to you anyway. It seemed similar to the way the video mode of the iPhone camera looks. A bit zoomed in compared to the regular still photo shot.

The lenses are small, like I said above, and they are magnetic on the back. This allows them to stick to the self-adhesive ring on the phone, which comes off of the phone without leaving a mark. The little string handle/back cap is also magnetic and keeps the back of the lens nice and clean.

Here is one of the lenses on the phone:

Here are some more sample photos:

The macro is the one I'm most interested in, since I do a lot of close-ups on components and stuff. The fisheye is fun, but otherwise useless for me. The telephoto is cool, but I doubt I'll be carrying these around with me very often. They're stuck to the face of my man cave beer fridge next to my electronics workbench. They're conveniently accessible there and that's likely where they'll spend most of their days.

Home-Aged Bourbon YUM!

While wandering around at the 2012 Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I stumbled upon the Bluegrass Barrels tent. The guys there showed me how easily white dog (moonshine, or corn whiskey before it goes into the barrel to eventually become bourbon) can be aged at home in your own little charred oak barrel. Is that awesome or what??

So, first thing you do is get some white dog. I got mine at the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto, KY. You can only buy this at the distillery. It's called, "Maker's White" and it's basically moonshine. It's not quite as funny-car-fuel as moonshine, but it's still genuine corn whiskey that has not aged a second in a barrel. I think it's tasty. Other's who've tasted it in my man cave don't agree. More for me.

The tastes kinda reminds me of those delicious corn bread biscuits you find at some restaurants. It's like a liquid version of those with alcohol bite.

You can order your Bluegrass Barrel with your own logo laser-etched onto the barrel head. I ordered mine with an image of the circuit board for my wife's LED mood lamp, except that I changed it up a bit to be more like an advertisement for this blog.

As per the instructions from Bluegrass Barrels, I soaked my barrel. I think I actually left it in the sink for two days. This seals up the barrel nice and tight so the angels don't get too much of a share of your tasty bourbon.

Once it was soaked well enough, it was time to load it up with yummy white dog. I just grabbed a funnel and poured until it was full, trying not to waste a single drop in the process. Some of it was lost to the Andy's Share. Part of the process.

Now sing that 1970s "Anticipation" song from the ketchup commercial over and over again. Sing it for as long as you want your bourbon to age. I let mine sit for about 14 weeks or so.

I sampled the potion every two weeks. To store the samples, I ordered some little glass vials with cork stoppers from Pilot Vials on-line. They were really inexpensive and I got a ton in one box. Here are the samples in order from left to right (2 weeks, 4 weeks, etc.):

You can see the progression from lighter to darker. It was amazing to watch. Sadly, I have little if any patience, so 14 weeks it was. I bought a couple of glass flasks at the Container Store.

The final product was pretty awesome, but just a tad harsh, so I cut the bourbon with just a bit of water to taste.

In hind sight, I would not have done that. It clouded up the bourbon. The taste was totally fine, just a bit cloudy. So, I searched around and found that this could be rectified by "chill filtering" the bourbon. I'm not exactly sure that I did it correctly, but according to what I read, this involves chilling the bourbon to about 27°F and then filtering it. Chilled it in the freezer. Next, I filtered it through coffee filters. It was all I had handy.

This took some of the cloudy out, but it was still not clear brown liquid, like the real brands. But, after I let it sit and warm up, it seemed to clear up for the most part. It turned out to be quite delicious, regardless. Here's a shot glass from a place that I'm sure none of the visitors of the Bourbon Festival know anything about:

Apparently I'm using an AVR/Arduino pinout chart for a coaster in that photo (nerd funny). If you grab some moonshine or white dog from somewhere, I highly recommend you stash some in a Bluegrass Barrel or similar storage device and age some yourself to bourbon perfection. Even if it doesn't turn out to be as top-shelf as your favorite top-shelf, who cares? You aged some yourself and it will feel cool to say you did. You can always pour the not-so-great batches into Jack Daniel's bottles for mixing. ;)

Lipstick Camera Turned Video Microscope

Backstory: In a previous life, I was a freefall photographer. I took photos and shot video while skydiving. Before GoPro and others started popping up on the scene, I had devised a little rig for shooting freefall video without the need for the bulky miniDV camera on my helmet. The setup used a "bullet" or "lipstick" camera which provided a video input signal for a miniDV camera (used as a tape deck at this point) located OFF my helmet and in a pouch under my jumpsuit. I don't remember where I got the camera. They can be found on the InterWebs for $100-ish, maybe less. Anyhoo, if you've ever stuck your hand out of the window of a car moving at highway speed, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure out how non-aerodynamic a miniDV camera is. Needless to say, a lipstick camera cuts through the wind WAY easier than a full-on Sony TRV-20 miniDV camera. A lipstick camera also weighs considerably less than a miniDV camera.

OK, now that I've barfed out a giant intro paragraph, let's get to the nutty-tasting inside of this story: I have this lipstick camera sitting around in a box. I know that when I twist the lens away from the sensor, the camera acts more and more like a video microscope. I have many tiny things I'd like to look at with minimal camera shake.

Neato. In fact, this thing is an excellent tool for reading the tiny, tiny lettering on tiny, tiny surface mount devices ("SMDs") on tiny, tiny circuit boards that I am studying. The problem is holding it steady enough and having a free hand (two is even better) to move around the object under study and take notes. (There are more samples at the end of this article.)

My eyes are pretty good considering the amount of time they spend staring at computer screens and my age, but occasionally I run across some parts or circuits where there is no way I can easily read the tiny print without magnification. The image above is coming from the lipstick camera and is being shown on a 3.5-inch NTSC/PAL TFT monitor I picked up at Adafruit Industries.

Holding the camera sounds like a job for a gooseneck from a cheap lamp. Thanks, Ace Hardware! Got one. $12. Unscrew some parts, gut some stuff and boom! Microscope camera stand:

I repurposed some of the DIY mounting hardware I used to keep the little camera on my skydiving helmet. Two plastic brackets and some screws from Home Depot (as I recall) and a piece of yoga mat to grip it better, as it was flying with me through 120+ MPH winds.

I adapted it to the gooseneck lamp by flattening the bracket on the end of the gooseneck and simply screwing the brackets into it.

That was attempt number one, anyway. I routed the cable for the camera, which includes its video signal and power wires, down the gooseneck. The power and video out connectors are routed out of the lamps power cord hole. I dug through my prodigious collection of random screws, nuts and washers and found some #6 pieces that worked like a charm:

Here are some things I looked at with my nifty video microscope:

The device pictured above was used on my skydiving helmet to turn the Sony camera on and off. I can't remember its name anymore. It was very cool. It had a multi-color LED that was fixed to my eyepiece for targeting the camera in freefall. I could get status from the camera, like when it was running low on fuel and tape. The single button make it super easy to work. Prior to devices like that, you had to have someone tell you that the red record light was on before climbing out of the plane.

That image makes my iris look blue or grey, but it is in fact greenish-brown. Taking a picture of an LCD with my iPhone doesn't really keep a color profile intact, of course.

That resistor is a 1/4-WATT, regular old resistor you've put in a thousand projects. The little dood next to it is the tiniest SMD LED I've ever seen. I had purchased and bunch of those little guys for a clock project and had no idea just how freaking tiny they were until I got them in-hand. No. Way. On. Earth. ...Am I gonna figure out way to solder those puppies to something and make them work. Funny thing about that particular one pictured above: I had lost it for months. While I was putting this microscope together, it just showed up next to another not-quite-as-tiny SMD LED I was examining. I think it was stuck to the edge of the ESD foam on my table and just dropped off by coincidence. It's blue, if you're wondering. Intensely blue with 3 volts.

Currency is always fun to scope.

So, the next step in this project will be to make the LCD look nice and maybe conveniently mount it to the base of the scope. I dunno, yet. I have two of these little LCDs and each of them has two inputs. I might use the other one for a forward-looking camera on my RAM 1500 truck. Who knows?

Backyard Propane Fire Pit, Pavers and Outhouse Project

Citrus trees in our back yard

We HAD three citrus trees in our backyard. They were lined up at the west end of our pool (top right of the photo below).

The middle tree was called, "Frankencitrus." It had lemon-esque fruit on it, but the fruit had absolutely ZERO flavor. Ick. A tree nursery person told us that citrus trees are grafted onto citrus tree stumps. Sometimes they don't take to the stump or something like that and they end up being a Frankencitrus. So, I chopped it down:

Frankencitrus stump

What I wanted to put in place of Frankencitrus was a swanky backyard retreat with pavers, a covering and a really cool gas fire pit with glass beads. I draw this up in Blender 3D to get an idea of the space:

Gas fire pit and paver 3D rendering

Of course, it goes without saying, even though I'm about to say it, that it would be ULTRA-SUPER-COOL if I could get the pavers to float approximately 3 to 5 inches above the dirt, like they do in the rendering. The brown layer below the pavers is ground and the gap is meant to show where the base material will go. The rendering shows extra bricks in the corners and whatnot because building things virtually in 3D environments makes the construction process seem easier than it really is, so I thought I would design in rounded corners all over the place. That was dumb.

I excavated the area the old fashioned way: I used a wheel barrow and a shovel.

Excavation of paver area

Since this thing was to butt up against the edge of our pool decking, I needed the final surface of the pavers to be level with the decking as closely as possible. Since I'd only ever seen pavers installed on DIY Network on TV, I figured that if the surfaces were within an inch of each other, that'd be plenty OK by me.

Frankencitrus's stump was not going to go easily, so at one point I decided to just leave the damn thing in a hole under the fire pit. But, the nagging little perfectionist voice in my head told me that it would haunt me the rest of my life if I didn't at least TRY to fully remove the stupid stump. Eventually, I was able to chop it out of the hole.

The completed excavation looked like this:

Completed excavation, including missing stump

I enlisted (read: fed and provided beer to) my buddy Jake to help with the filling, leveling and compacting of the base material. He and I did it in about a half-day. Not bad. We probably burned a calories each for the 3,000 lbs. of material we moved and smashed.

Base material installation with Jake

Just like on DIY Network, we used steel pipes as a leveling assistant for each one-inch layer we compacted. Three layers got us right to the proper level to make the bricks flush with the surface of the pool decking, believe it or not! Awesome. Lucky amateurs.

Pavers, drainage and gas line conduit

The base was really solid. I was very pleased with it. The plan for the fire pit was to have a tank of propane off to the side of the pavers hidden in a miniature outhouse. I hadn't thought about the final design of the outhouse, but I knew I at least needed that conduit to carry the gas under the pavers to the big pit bowl. That's what the two periscope-looking things are sticking up in the middle of the base material and the left edge of the photo. The bigger pipe with the holes is for draining water AROUND the area instead of under it. In the photo above, the water in our yard runs from left to right (back of the yard to the street).

The pavers we chose are made here in Arizona by the place we purchased the base material from. They're meant to be randomly placed so that no discernable pattern can be seen. That was fairly tough to pull off, but I managed to get it done with only 12 square pieces left. I did have to chop a few squares into slimmer pieces called, "twinkies." Here's the completed paver job:

Pavers completed with mortar edging

I used Type S mortar around the edges (Type S has everything in it and just needs water) to hold the edges in place. I used polymeric sand between the pavers. The slope is gradual away from the pool and everything turned out great for my first paver job. Now on to the fire pit...

24" steel gas fire ring

The fire ring is actually TWO rings in one. It's 24" diameter on the outer ring and about 12" on the inner ring. The pan in which the ring and the glass beads will sit is designed for the paver stone that will be used in the fire pit. I wanted a big ring to get good flame coverage over the beads. I took the advice of a barbecue/fireplace guy and made a screen that goes below the ring on top of the ring to keep the glass beads from mingling with the pea gravel below the ring. I bought a piece of metal lath (used in stucco work and whatnot), cut it into a circle the proper size of the fire pan and painted it black with black barbecue grill paint. You'll see it in a bit.

Next, I ran yellow flexible gas line through my under-paver conduit and got it read for the emergency shut-off valve and the fire pan at the pit end of the conduit.

Fire pit build started

I measured and centered the first layer of the fire pit body. There are four rings of pavers total. Each ring is rotated half of a trapezoid paver and all layers are secured to each other with Liquid Nails®. Stuff is amazing. The final fire pit brick build looks like this:

Fire pit bricking completed

UPDATE (May 2015): Several readers have asked about how many pavers are in the completed fire pit. I used 48 each of the RumbleStone "Mini" and "Trapezoid" pavers for mine. RumbleStone has a brochure with tons of great ideas in it and their recipe for a fire pit calls for only three layers of paver rings, or 36 each of the Minis and Traps. I added a ring to raise up the ledge so it was more conducive to use as a coffee table. :)

Law requires that there is a shut-off valve within something like three feet of the burning thing, so I notched out a space in one of the trapezoid pavers to hold the valve assembly:

Shut-off valve in paver block

Here's what it looks like installed:

Shut-off valve installed

The pan for the pit is about 35" in diameter, give or take. I put a hole in it, as it was intended to be used for wood. I fitted half-inch steel pipe through the hole and into the bottom of the ring and added a 90-degree elbow to it and then connected all of the stuff together under the pan:

Under the fire pit pan

The yellow line comes up from the under-paver conduit, connects to one side of the shut-off valve, then a short piece of yellow line goes from the shut-off valve to the steel elbow. All of the connections between the gas pieces have yellow tape on them to seal them nicely.

UPDATE: That yellow line blows goats! Actually, it whistles horribly, like the whine from a jet engine, kinda. The whistling comes from resonance inside the line caused by the gas flying over the ridges in the line. You can totally blow into a piece of the line and it will whistle. It's like an instrument. You could add a new section to the orchestra: The GAS section. After a few minutes of research, I found out they make a super-cool type of flexible line that prevents the whistling. Check out this page for an example. If you live in the southeast valley in the metro Phoenix area, I HIGHLY recommend you visit Brooksies Propane on Alma School Rd. in Chandler, AZ. They sell all manner of gas accessories and they fill tanks for cheap. I found the quiet lines at Brooksies cheaper than I found it on-line, FYI. They also steered my to the high-pressure regulator for the size of ring we have. The low-pressure regulator does not provide enough flow to make the fire worth a darn. The BBQ store people knew not of what they spoke.

The pan was then filled with pea gravel (yes, I know the photo has larger rocks in it, but those were there for testing purposes and I forgot to take a picture of the pea gravel before I poured all of the beads into it).

Screen, steel fire ring and pea gravel in fire pit pan

Then I put 40 lbs. of fire glass beads (30 lbs. of clear and 10 lbs. of dark red) and spread them onto the screen:

Beads on screen over ring and gravel

Here is a shot of the beads fully spread onto the pit:

Glass fire beads in fire pan

Next, the tank side of the gas fire pit needed to be assembled. Originally, I was told by barbecue store guys that I needed this kind of regulator for the tank and for the size of ring (they sold me the ring, as well):

INCORRECT propane tank regulator

When I hooked this regulator up to the system, all I got in my fire pit was sputtering blue flames dancing around under the ring:

Lame fire pit flames

Turns out the barbecue store guys aren't really versed in building big-ass fire pits. The other important piece of information that the guys at the barbecue store got wrong was that propane gas rings are to be holes-up, natural gas rings are holes-down. They got it backwards and this is a very important piece of the fire pit puzzle. When I went to a genuine propane place that also sold parts and grills and whatnot, they corrected me on the holes-up/holes-down rule and then sold me the PROPER high-pressure regulator:

CORRECT high-pressure propane tank regulator

This HP regulator came with a copper tube that had ends that made all of this stuff fit together perfectly:

HP regulator copper tank connector

UPDATE: I've gotten quite a few requests for the make and model of the regulator. Sorry I didn't include it earlier. It's a Marshall Escelsior MEG-6120-100 (http://www.marshallexcelsior.com/product.php?id=2553). I recall I paid about $30 to $40 for it in Arizona. On-line, that seems to be reasonable.

The other end fits into the regulator:

Regulator-side of copper connector tube

With this newfound information and hardware and one more trip to ACE Hardware® for a missing coupler, I finally had everything I needed to make FIRE without the need to use sticks!! Behold my FIRE!!!

Gas fire pit operational -- FIRE!!

By the by... That's with the regulator turned nearly all the way DOWN to LOW! When I cranked it up, not only did I get Hollywood-sized special effects flames, I got a nasty-loud whining from the ring. I'm guessing the tank was playing that ring like a flute. Not sure, though. Clearly I'm the LAST guy you ask for propane answers.

The sad but temporary end to the FIRE!! part of this fun DIY story is that the Phoenix region is experiencing its usual summertime 110-degree weather and using a fire pit for the next bunch of months is stupid. But, wait! There's still an outhouse to build!

I drew up some highly technical and serious plans for the covering for the propane tank:

Gas tank outhouse plans

I couldn't get measurements on the army tank, so I built everything based on the dimensions of the LP tank. The outhouse was built to sit on a 16" by 16" walkway tile. I notched a corner out of the tile for the gas line conduit to pop up through. I ran to Lowe's® and searched for rough looking pine planks and found the perfect matches to build a mini outhouse. If there is any interest, I can take more photos of the structure and write up how I built it, but it's pretty straightforward. Here's the outhouse without the decorative hinges, lock and handles:

Gas tank outhouse without decorative hardware

The roof of the outhouse lifts open to give us access to the regulator and the tank. The tank sits perfectly inside so that it and the regulator are protected from the elements well enough. The outer planks of the outhouse sit around the walkway tile base. One of the supporting rings inside the outhouse sits on top of the tile.

Inside gas tank outhouse

To make the outhouse extra nifty, I added black hinges to the front door that does not actually open. To keep people from trying to open the door, I also put a decorative lock on the door. However, we have enough drunk people visit that someone will probably pull off the front door handle trying to get into pee in our outhouse. Here's the outhouse with the fake hardware (well, the handles are real because they make it easier to lift up the outhouse to switch out the tanke and the silver hinges under the front of the roof are for opening the roof). Stop nitpicking.

Completed gas tank outhouse with decorative hardware

Here's the final set up:

Pavers, fire pit and outhouse

Can't wait for winter!!!

What's the takeaway on this project? Doing pavers in June in Phoenix sucks donkee buttcheeks. I'm thinking that doing pavers in an wonderfully air conditioned gymnasium would still suck just as bad. Building a fire pit isn't so bad, especially since the pavers for that are like super-heavy, non-plastic, non-interlocking LEGO® blocks. The outhouse was really fun to build because the closer to finished it got, the hard I laughed at it. Once we get the pergola up on the pavers (http://low.es/NqLyb9), this will be the bestest place ever [in our back yard] to hang out when it's chilly and drink wine and stare at flames like bugs drawn to a bug zapper.

UPDATE: Here are a couple of pictures of actual usage of the fire pit in colder weather:

DIY Gas Fire Pit In Action

DIY Gas Fire Pit Close Up

Electronics and Hack Workbench

I've had a number of requests from readers to see my workbench in its entirety, as most photos of it are just backgrounds to projects. So, I thought I'd post some photos and explanations in an article. Maybe someone will get some helpful hints or perhaps someone will lend me some helpful advice. First off, here are some wide shots of the mess:

I made the table. The top is made out of three 10"-ish wide pine boards glued together side to side using biscuits. I had a custom piece of 3/16" glass to fit the top. Half of the top of the table is covered with conductive foam to keep static at bay. I ordered a couple big pieces of that from somewhere on-line, can't remember where. It's super convenient for stabbing parts into to hold them neatly. It's also great for discharging static. The legs I've had a while. They were part of a giant desk I built years ago. I got them on-line many moons ago. They have bases that are screwed to the bottom of the tabletop. They then screw into the bases. They're made of steel or aluminum or something strong like that. Under the tabletop, I put a big "X" of 3" wide interlocked pine planks for rigidity. I can stand right on the center of that table and it barely flexes.

Down below the desktop is a six-cubbyhole shelf on little rubber footies leftover from my table saw stand (that is now attached to a rolling platform I made). In each of those cubbies, I put plastic lock-top containers full of various larger items, like wall warts, scavenged PCBs from VCS and such, and cords. This is a great use of space that would otherwise be cluttered up with piles of things.

The blue cabinets came with the house. As with most of the light fixtures and some other miscellaneous pieces left behind by the previous owners, I'm guessing they're from Ikea. They're really handy. I added the little white shelves between the two cabinets. I have a benchtop digital power supply on the lowest shelf for easy access, but that's not my main power source. I'll get to that shortly.

I taped up a bunch of my most-referenced cheatsheets for things like pinouts on ATmega328's, ATtiny13's, common capacitor markings, resistor bands, ISP cables, etc. I also keep my DMM hanging right there and made a little wire hook for the leads.

The parts drawer cabinets on the right of the bench are typical types from Home Depot or Lowes. The more the merrier, as you can see. I keep groups of similar things close together. Eventually, there will be more of these. However, I have to get more creative with my space. To the right of the cabinets is a big painting that I commissioned for my Man Cave™ that I'd prefer not to move.

In some of the larger drawers, I use the conductive foam to hold my many ICs in layers to save space and for organization. I label each group with my handy Brother P-Touch labeler, like so:

Here's another angle on how I stack the ICs in the larger drawers:

I then put an index label on the front of the drawers so I can easily find families of ICs. I haven't yet found a really cool method for storing the 8 zillion resistors I have, but I do sort them by sub-1,000Ω, 1KΩm and 1MΩ drawers. Miscellaneous electrolytic caps are in one big drawer, common caps that are still in their tape from the manufacturer are generally sorted into smaller drawers.

I label the fronts of the drawers sometimes, especially when the drawer is clearly something that will always contain what it currently contains. In the case of my stacks of DIPs and whatnot, they very well organized.

I have so many parts, now, that I have built a spreadsheet to track them. A majority of the parts I have I've thrown on the end of orders because the parts looked cool or handy. When a grab bag of common transistors will only add a couple of dollars to an order, why not? AVRs are my favorite microcontroller, so I have a drawer dedicated to various renditions of that family of chip, as you can see on the middle left drawer above.

I don't know if people notice this in the background or in screenshots, but I use a 15" MacBook Pro for my benchtop computer. The battery failed, so it's always plugged into AC, now. It's now a flip-open desktop workstation, pretty much. I use this MacBook Pro to program microcontrollers and to have convenient access to the web and what not.

Our house is all Mac all the time. I have a Dell box used as a network storage server, but that's it. My regular desktop is a big-arse 27" 3.4 GHz iMac with a second 27" Cinema Display. Both are on wall-mount arms which are supposed to make my desk cleaner. However, as you can see in the photo below, all that's done is make more room for me to pile parts.

Of course, what desk area would be complete with a jackalope and an oil painting of a monkey in a fez?

About my primary power supply... I took apart a my wife's old computer that she had when we met. It was a sad, sad old computer I'd given her to get her by that I think I salvaged from my uncle's office. The power supply makes for a fantastic DC power supply. It provides very clean and reliable 3.3VDC/14A, 5VDC/22A, and 12VDC/10A power. This was crucial when I was working with peltier devices, which drew more amperage at their ideal voltages than the digital power supply could give them. This Dell power supply doesn't even break a sweat when a peltier device asks for 3.5A. The max on my digital PS is only a little shy of 3A.

I turn the supply on or off using this little toggle switch I rigged into the main jumper for the power supply.When I become ambitious about really finishing organizing my bench, I will snip all the extra wires and connectors and clean up the power supply. I'm also going to extend the voltage and ground leads and put nice ends on them to make it easier to connect and disconnect them from my many breadboards. Speaking of...

I whipped together this little adapter so that I could quickly connect and disconnect the various voltage leads from the power supply to my breadboards. I quickly got tired of screwing and unscrewing the thumbscrews on the breadboards when I wanted to switch them out. Eventually, these connectors will be on-the-ready toward the back of the benchtop and the switch for the power supply will be mounted more conveniently. The power supply will be relocated up and out of the way. Right now, sadly, it sits on two pieces of wood on the ESD foam.

When I work with my favorite microcontrollers, the AVR series from Atmel, I don't usually use a proper Arduino board, even though I tend to use the Arduino IDE. Instead, I whip together a quick circuit with either a 16 MHz or 20 MHz quartz crystal on a breadboard. I usually have three or so of these setup and ready to tinker with. I do actually have a few different types of Arduinos I've purchased with gift cards, recently. Here's an example of a typical setup for me:

I followed the recommendations from the ATmega328 datasheet for what components to put around it. There's a 10µH inductor on the analog voltage reference pin (in the photo above, it's on the Vcc pin, so ignore that). There's a 20 MHz quartz crystal on the XTAL1 and XTAL2 pins. Each of those pins is also connected to ground with 20 pF capacitors. Often times, I put a 7805 5V linear regulator on the + rails of ones side of the board and the other has either a 7812 12V regulator or LM10863V3 3.3V regulator on it. Of course, the proper capacitors near the regulators to clean up power are usually on there, as well. Don't forget the polarity diode so that you don't accidentally hook up the power supply leads backwards and cook something or popcorn an electrolytic capacitor.

As you can see from some of the above pictures and the one below, the edge closer to where I work on the glass surface gets cluttered with the parts I reuse the most.

About once every few months, I will clean up the area and put things back where they belong.

I keep my notes and diagrams and doodles in these awesome little Field Notes® brand notebooks with graph paper inside. They're about $10 for a 3-pack and each notebook has 48 pages in it. They're the perfect size to sit on the bench next to a project. Not so big that they require a lot of open space. Not so small that they're just not useful.

Last, but not least, I present my bourbon cabinet, complete with my hand-dipped (by me at the distillery) Maker's Mark® bottles. I have in my collection about 20 different bourbons. My goto at when we're out and about, of course, is Maker's Mark®. :)

That's it for the tour. If any of you have suggestions or comments, please, please leave them below in the comments section. I'd especially love to hear how you guys are storing your resistors. The ultimate trick still eludes me. I don't want to waste a little drawer for a single value, of course. Dividing up the drawers makes it too time-consuming to get one. I'm thinking along the lines of a Rol-O-Dex of resistors or something. I dunno. Comment away.