range in accuracy -- meaning a gold band resistor could have a 5-percent higher or lower Ohms value due to possible variance in the manufacturing process. These color bands and the necessary ...

With surface-mount components quickly becoming the norm, even for homebrew hardware, the resistor color-code can sometimes ... the practical range to between 100 Ω and 2 MΩ.

He came up with Ohm Sense, an iPhone app that will take a picture of a resistor and calculate the value based on the color bands. It’s a great tool that we wish we had when we were starting out.