Here are some links I have found useful

If you find a dead link or know of a link I should add then please email me at

dingo_aus <at> internode <dot> on <dot> net

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Australian Parts Suppliers

• Dick Smith Electronics    Website has a great search function. Many stores that usually have stock of everything
• Prime Electronics            Excellent range, has many parts others don't, search function only useful if you know exactly what you're after
• Jaycar                             Good search engine, stores are not as numerous as Dick Smith
• Robot Parts                    If you've got the cash for snazzy parts you'll want to look here for sure
• Oatley                            Great place for lots of hard to find parts - well worth a look
• MicroZed                       Australian distributor of picaxe stuff and other general parts
• Altronics                         General electronics. Based in Sydney and Melbourne. Also has mail order.
• Computronics                 Great prices on LCDs especially
• Kaytech                          Mail order supplier from Victoria
• Ozitronics                       Mail order from Melbourne
• Dontronics                      Micro controllers (AVR and PIC) and other fairly advanced compnents
• Volt.com.au                    Mail order kits and bits and pieces
• Cabac                            Sydney mail order for specialist parts - sell braiding for air muscles
• Futurlec                          International mail order - good prices and good selection
• Farnell                            International company / Australian mail order - pricey but good selection
• RS Components             Mail order with sites in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. Pricey but great range and info
• Wiltronics                       Melbourne based mail order - has some nice prices on special ICs
• Modtronix                      Brisbane based supplier of PIC Microcontrollers and a few other parts.
• Rockby                          Melbourne based store - some very good prices on some things
• World of Robotics          Some hard to source robotics parts here
• Kitstream                       Australian supplier of MP3 decoding chips etc
• Bitscope                         Maker of PC scopes and other parts including a SMD to DIP convertor PCB
• Stefans Ideas                 Some code, projects etc and can sell you Mircocontrollers programmed with your code on it and also custom PCB service

Interesting Australian websites

• Aust Electronics Ring    Australian Electronics Webring
• RoboWars                    All about combat robots in Australia
• Joker robots                 Some seriously expensive hardware
• PICAXE resources       New site - great for picaxe -> LCD output info
• RobotOz                      Here you'll find complete kits. Based in Perth
• Greg Newton               Personal site with some interesting projects
• OxygenMP3                An Australian MP3 player built on the STA013 and a Motorolla HC11
• Plasform                      How to do vacuum forming at home

Overseas sites that contain information

• RobotRoom                  David Cook's website with heaps of robot projects
• LynxMotion                  Commercial site with many thought provoking products available
• SolarRobotics               Overseas parts supplier for solar bots
• Pololu                           Overseas parts supplier. Can do custom laser cutting for you
• TechGeek                     USA robotic community
• PICAXE                       All about the Picxe Microcontroller
• PICAXE i2c devices     A list of i2c devices that work well with PICAXE
• BeyondLogic                Site with lots of info about hacking hardware
• Chipdir                         Helps you find chips that your after
• SpeakJet                      Single IC that produces speech (~$USD25). Released Feb 2004
• Speechchips                 Site all about IC chips that produce speech
• Electronics links           Huge collection of World-wide links on Electronics and associated topics
• Resistance Calculator   Input colours and get back value (nice graphics)
• Cybotix                       One man's site about androids he builds, contains instruction on creation or Air Muscles
• Shadow Robots           UK firm that produce cutting edge robots - great for ideas
• Web-EE                      Must see for electronics and useful tutorials etc
• Andie's Theatre            A German fellow with some very interesting electronic projects
• Electronics Projects      Some great projects here
• Robotcorps                  All about robot software
• Nelnick                        Has some great hardware and software projects for robotics - especially wireless comms
• Robot Haven               General robot web page - worth a look
• SparkFun                    Awesome place for hard to get Robot parts. Well worth a look
• AmericanMicroSemi    USA site specialising in sourcing hard to find parts

LCDs

• LCDinfo                      Software for the T6963C and the KS0108 LCD controllers
• Liquid                           More great LCD info here and software

MP3

• EE 476 MP3 player   Final year EE project - as simple as it gets. Uses an Amtel controller
• Yampp                      Great site with lots of information
• STA013 application   Awesomely informatively explanation of how to use the STA013 MP3 decoding chip from ST

Schematics

• Commlinx                    Lots of curcuits
• ePanorama.net             Lots of types here too
• AaronCake                 Some special purpose ones
• PCI Board                  Great link showing how to build a PCI board from scratch

Microcontrollers 

    Microchip PIC

• Microchip                    The maker of PICmicros
• PIC course                  Learn how to program the PICMicro
• Van Ooijen's page       Great guide to starting with PICs and other stuff PIC related including the JAL compiler
• PIC Yahoo Group       Place to ask questions
• PIC routines                A great place for PIC assembler routines for all sorts of common functions
• Barry's Projects           Some really cool projects to do with Remote Control models

    Amtel AVR

• AVR Freaks                Portal for AVR
• Amtel AVR home        Amtel's official page
• AVRbeginners             Place to start with the AVR
• AVR Yahoo Group     Place to as questions
• AVRLib                      C library of AVR functions for lots of common tasks. I2C, SPI, Hard drives, SD/MMC, Servos, STA013 etc
• WinAVR                     Suite of tools including the open source (free) C ompiler, AVR-GCC and the software needed to use it.
• CodeVision                 Commercial C compiler for AVR. Has a free version. Wide support for programmers
• Bot Goodies                Some great projects including a MIDI drum machine. Mostly uses AVR uC

    Non-specific

• Interfacing a FAT32 hard drive
• mikrocontroller.net       Huge source of microcontroller stuff - even more if you speak German
• Workbench                  Lots of Microcontroller projects

 Casting Plastic and Metals

• ARMS Model IT         Brisbane supplier of materials for casting plastics and alloys - Great people to deal with!

Bipeds

• Havinga Robots          Bipeds, CNC mills, servo control etc - but especially the bipeds

  Stepper Motors

• Electronics.box.sk       Great place to start with stepper motors

Casting

• Metal Casting             Metal Castign for the masses - how to do it at home

Soldering

• Soldering Guide          As the name suggests, a guide to proper soldering

Pages that contain information about Sound

• DIY MIDI                   Entry point for using PIC and Stamp chips to produce MIDI

Overseas parts suppliers

• Donberg electronics    Irish supplier of chips - has info as well
• Siteplayer                    Webserver module - allows your project to be web enabled

 Bookstores

• Bookware                     Mail order within Australia - quick and efficient service

 ISPs I recommend

• Internode                      Great service with my ADSL so far