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For a 5v voltage regulator should I buy the LM7805ACT which has 3A 2% OUTPUT TOL 3-TERMINAL or the LM7805SCT which has 1A Pos Vol Reg? The second is slightly more expensive, but they appear to be pretty similar so I'm not really sure what the difference is.

I'm using it to regulate a 9v power source to an axe023 by the way. 

Thanks. 

Ok, to make sure I would not mess up I got a little help reading the circuit from Instructables. After following this word for word, I found that my circuit simply did not work, and when I touched the transistor it was extremely hot.

Here is what I put together following the instructions:

[Honestly, that's the best photo I got.]

While I wait to get some real parts, I've been tinkering around a bit. I made sure that one of my photocells could endure 9 volts without exploding (out of voltage regulators), and connected it to a buzzer and battery to see what would happen. It worked pretty well, and I found that the more light the photocell took in the more power the buzzer got (and thus the louder it got). However, when I replaced the buzzer with a small motor I got nothing. I tried a few other motors and still wound up with zip. How to I make the motor spin faster as more light is taken into the photocell?

[yay, I got the image up!] 

Ok,

 I know this is very very basic, but what the heck, I want to make sure that I put everything together correctly.

So would c and b be wired together and connected with a 10k resistor and then c goes to 0v and b goes to a 22k resistor then serial in?

Ok, I want to be able to easily make my boards programmable by wiring a 3.5 mm jack to an 8 pin picaxe microcontroller. However, I'm not completely sure which wire goes where to do this. The jack has 5 pins, anyone know which goes where to program a picaxe 8 pin and hook it up to a battery?

Thanks :) 

What is the best (free) software to use to make PCBs? Also, what is the best service to use to order custom pcbs? (I'm on a tight budget here)

Thanks! 

Anyone know of a place I could just buy the little jack to connect a picaxe microcontroller to my computer?

Thanks. :) 

Hi,

What is the best way to begin learning to program with the picaxe microcontroller? I searched for books, but for now I'd rather focus on free online ways to learn.

How did you learn to program picaxes?

Thanks :) 

I've been programming a BASIC Stamp II, and so-far-so-good. However, one of the main things that has bothered me about it is its cost. I couldn't afford to build all my robots with a BS II. 

I was wondering, as this is one of my biggest concerns, what's the difference between the BASIC Stamp programming Language and the PIC language? This may seem like a dumb question, but keep in mind that I'm pretty new to all this.

 Seeing that there's a PIC chip inside the BS II, I'm hoping that there's no difference.

Hi,

As many of you know, my experiences building robots have been painful at best. So, I'm taking a step back, and I will follow Frits's wonderful tutorial.

Because I live in America, I'd prefer to buy my parts from a U.S.-based site to avoid longer shipping time,additional fees, etc.

I've run into a problem: Frits's tutorial calls for 1 L293D Motor driver. At mouser.com I found a short list of products similar to what I need.

Which will work?: