The Adafruit blog just posted a neat papercraft resistor calculator. If you haven’t yet learned the horribly offensive mnemonic for resistor color codes, now’s your chance to have a cheap and portable resistor value reference.
This papercraft resistor calculator is the latest in the family of Circuit Playground tools that include a fabulous electronic reference app we reviewed some months ago. Instead of an Android or iOS device, the papercraft resistor calculator runs on its own mechanical computer; a series of four printed disks and some paper fasteners.
If you’d like to print out your own resistor calculator, Adafruit put up the PDF on GitHub and posted the Illustrator file on Thingiverse for easy editing. It’s not the old-school cool of a slide rule, but we could easily see this resistor calculator being useful if you’re ever lucky enough to teach electronics to children. At least then you won’t have to share that offensive mnemonic.
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I see nothing offensive here.
That’s not the one I’m thinking of.
By the way, anyone commenting with the very offensive version will have their post removed. Figuring out the offensive mnemonic is left as an exercise to the reader.
@anonymous:
The WCTU is greatly offended by your version!
B^)
radio shack used to sell these. I still have a couple on my parts bench.
hahaha that mnemonic is awesome ! Didn’t know until now. Thanks 😀
I love these things 🙂 I find them at flea markets and such from time to time. Makes me yen for the old days of tube testers in shops and those cacrds on the counter 🙂
Now we just need to ISO the paint used for the markings. As I have noted on HaD before, one manufacturer’s red is another’s orange, etc lol.
Maybe my eyesight is getting bad from screens too. Good to see these lil paper calcs are not lost 🙂
I was taught the ‘offensive’ version by the Navy. And I taught it to my girlfriend. But since there were two b’s in it, she changed the first b to make it even more offensive, but easier for her to remember. Too bad I can’t share it.
Don’t worry, I got it 😉
I thought someone else was drawing resistors http://eds.dyndns.org/~ircjunk/images/156_drawnresistor.jpg
I wrote a program for learning resistor colour codes by repitition:
rue_house: What is the colour for the value 6?
purple
rue_house: No, the answer was blue. What is the colour for the value 9?
white
rue_house: Correct. Your score was: 50%
I wrote a program for the TI-83 calculator to translate resistor codes when I was in high school.
anyone know if there is a TI calculator programming utility that will run in Linux? I’d like to share it.
For anyone looking for the mnemonic, I believe it to be the 2nd one here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_color_code_mnemonics
(linking is acceptable, right?)
No you are going down like Bit Torrent sir 😉 Hahaha..
A slightly more compact variant,
http://www.robives.com/blog/resistor_colour_wheel
Now THAT’s pimp! I wouldn’t use it, but I appreciate the difference for those that will. Thanks for sharing…
I have trouble discerning the color bands on 1/4 watt resistors even with the help of a 20x loop. However, I have no trouble reading them when I take a megapixel+ photograph. What’d love to see is an app that will identify all resistors in a photograph and display their values.
I know what you mean. I’m at the age where a pair of glasses with a set of magnifying lenses clipped on is essential. The shades of colour the manufacturers often use don’t help either. Especially with the blue resistors.
A daylight balanced bulb can help a little. Failing that, use a multimeter. It will at least get you into the right area.
I feel compeled to create a truly horribly offensive mnemonic.
A 60’s era Popular Science mag suggested this memory aid:
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As I recall, it was accompanied by a classic sketch/cartoon by Roy Doty.
Are you kidding me? I want to know what it is now!
I never knew there was an offensive one, so of course I had to go and look.
Curse you, Hackaday. ;P
All you need to know is the rainbow ROY G BIV. The only colors that aren’t in the rainbow are Black and Brown. Black has no color so it is 0 and Brown is number 1.
don’t forget gray and white!