Engineering and Design Links

This is not a comprehensive list of web sites we frequent, or review of their quality etc..., just the ones we have found to be useful over time.

Web Resources

These web sites have high quality open source software available.

avrfreaks.net
"The number one AVR community". A great source for software, projects and programming tools

cpan.org
The Comprehensive PERL Archive Network. A great source for PERL programming tools

mozilla.org
The home page for the Mozilla Firefox browser, and Thunderbird e-mail client. We use both

openoffice.org
The Open Office Project web site. Open Office is an open source office software suite. We use it for documentation.

sourceforge.net
"The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications." Before starting a design check here first!

You can download the latest version of WinAVR (GNU C compiler for AVR and IDE) from this site

7-zip.org
High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
Supported formats: Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB
For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip - and it's free!

datasheetarchive.com
"The internet archive for electronic component datasheets." A good resource for searching for data sheets by part number or description.

Vendor Web Sites

Here is the list of the vendors we use in our own designs. If you need a datasheet, you can download it from the appropriate site below.

Allegro Microsystems, Inc.
Motor Controller IC, Power Drivers

Analog Devices
Op-Amps, I-Amps, Analog to Digital, Digital to Analog Convertors, Power Regulators, Sensor Interface

Atmel
Microprocessors - AVR family, Memory, Interface

MechaBlox boards use the AVR microprocessor family.
If you are doing AVR development, download the latest version of AVR Studio, and locate distributor for the AVRISP device.

Also check out the the extensive AP notes before coding from scratch! It will probably save you a lot of time and frustration.

Maxim Integrated Products
Op-Amps, I-Amps, Analog to Digital - Digital to Analog Convertors, Power Regulators, Signal Interface, Logic, Supervisor ICs. Some very sophisticated I/O parts and a lot of ISP/TWI and One-Wire interface parts.

They sell direct in small quantities, and usually you can even get the hard-to-find parts only Maxim makes.

National Semiconductor
Op-Amps, I-Amps, Analog to Digital - Digital to Analog Convertors, Power Regulators, Signal Interface, Logic

Texas Instruments
Op-Amps, I-Amps, Analog to Digital - Digital to Analog Convertors, Power Regulators, Signal Interface, Logic, Supervisor ICs

Distributor Web Sites

Here is the list of the distributors we work with

Arrow
Full product range distributor. Their web site is a bit clunky, but customer service is pretty good if you need a special order

Digikey
Digikey is kind of the "swiss-army-knife" of distributors. Prices are slightly higher, but range of stock and availablitiy are outstanding

Jameco
A general distributor of electronics, but not as extensive as Digikey for example. They have a very good selection of motors and mechatronic electromechanical parts like couplers, gears etc...

Newark
Full Range distributor. A good web site for ordering, and competitive parts pricing

Online Components
Electronic parts distributor. Not as extensive a product range as Digikey for example, but best web pricing.

Wassco
A distributor of soldering materials and supplies. Lot's of speciality solders, full stock, and much better pricing than the general distributors listed above.