What are the most commonly used components?

[mkub]

Hi,

What are the most commonly used components and why? Like resistors, capacitors, led wise, etc.

[mkub]

I guess you don't have to post why.

[The_Don125]

Probably resistors, since many things them to operate. All LEDs need resistors so they don't blow up for example.

[mkub]

Oh I see. So what resistances do you think are most commonly used?

[magician13134]

In integrated circuits the most common pieces are transistors. But for regular circuits, I'd have to go with resistors, although lots of my circuits use more LEDs than anything else. For instance, I may have a microcontroller driving 8 LEDs, so there would be 1 microchip, 1 transistor, 1 shared resistor and 8 LEDs.

[westfw]

what resistances do you think are most commonly used?

220, 1k, 10k, 100k, 1M.

220 is your general LED current limiter for 5V (gives about 15-20mA)
1K for transistor bases and more severe current limiting.
10k for pullups and pulldowns on logic.
100k an 1M are less common but show up in longer timing circuits (Mohms * uF = s)

For modern digital circuits, values are VERY loose. Some people like 10k for pullups, others use 4.7k, and people who remember TTL like 2.2k. I got some good deals once on some 1% SMT resistors that I expect to use for most purposes: 1510 ohm (~1k), 9100 (~10k), 909k (~1M), etc...

If you're going to be doing analog circuitry like x0xb0x, you'd better uses exactly the values specified.

[magician13134]

I'd have to add 47 to westfw's list. I use those most often for LEDs powered by microchip output. For something like the MiniPOV where it's only getting a little power from an output pin rather than a direct power source like a battery.

[minerva]

So, you want to build up a little stock of common components for experimenting? Something like that?

Here's what I'd recommend.

Plenty of resistors: 100R, 220R, 470R, 1k0, 2k2, 3k3, 4k7, 10k, 22k, and 100k are 10 nice common useful values.

Capacitors: 100 nF (lots!), 10 uF and 100 uF for power supply filtering.

A few 7805 regulators.

Some 1N4004 diodes (or 1N400x, anything similar) and some 1N4148s.

Some common transistors... say, some 2N3904s and 2N3906s, or BC548/BC558s.