{"id":9834,"date":"2013-12-21T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T01:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/12\/21\/where-to-send-all-those-lm386-chips-make-them-beam-robot-brains\/"},"modified":"2013-12-21T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T01:15:00","slug":"where-to-send-all-those-lm386-chips-make-them-beam-robot-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/12\/21\/where-to-send-all-those-lm386-chips-make-them-beam-robot-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Where to send all those LM386 chips: Make them BEAM robot brains!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nB0k61cYCv8\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> Over in the BITX20 yahoo group there have been some comments about the shortcomings of the widely used LM386 audio amplifier chip. Many people don&#8217;t like it because it is noisy. I don&#8217;t like it because it is a chip. (In my BITX rigs I have replaced it with a simple discrete component audio amplifier.) So this morning I was pleased to find this video on the Maker blog that presents a very good use for all those LM386 devices: We can turn them into robot brains!<\/p>\n<p> Make&#8217;s video and <a href=\"http:\/\/makezine.com\/projects\/sunbeam-seeker-bot\/\">web page<\/a> on this project are both very good. One paragraph in the page kind of captures the reasons I dislike the LM386: <\/p>\n<h3> <span style=\"color: blue;\">How It Works<\/span><\/h3>\n<p> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The core of the \u201cHerbie\u201d circuit is the LM386 power amplifier chip. To simplify a bit, we can think of the chip as a \u201cblack box\u201d with inputs and outputs that respond in predictable ways, and don\u2019t have to completely understand what\u2019s going on inside. <\/span><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/makezine.com\/projects\/sunbeam-seeker-bot\/\">http:\/\/makezine.com\/projects\/sunbeam-seeker-bot\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p> Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over in the BITX20 yahoo group there have been some comments about the shortcomings of the widely used LM386 audio amplifier chip. Many people don&#8217;t like it because it is noisy. I don&#8217;t like it because it is a chip. (In my BITX rigs I have replaced it with a simple discrete component audio amplifier.) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/12\/21\/where-to-send-all-those-lm386-chips-make-them-beam-robot-brains\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Where to send all those LM386 chips: Make them BEAM robot brains!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,509,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitx20","category-robot","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}