I would consider my soldering skills to be between intermediate and advanced. Not advanced because I am not really good at working with SMT components. I have tried the surf board technique before and failed. I started college as an EE/ CS student but somehow I ended up in materials science and engineering. I would like a crash course in high level programmable cheep IC's. I would prefer something I can program in C or Basic. I have looked at the STAMP line but I am interested in other options/ suggestions that you may have. Some PSPICE circut modeling help would also be highly appreciated. I would like something that I can get a dev kit for cheep to get started. I can trade sheet metal working, custom chassis making or welding/ brazing of any sort for help with this. I have done a fair amount of custom fabrication both professionally and as a hobby.

Have worked with some other microcontrollers and lots of microprocessors, but have not (yet) done anything with the Arduino.

- Sid

I'm interested in an Arduino class.

Please include me on the order for Arduino (or ATMega) kits.

- Sid

I've built some basic Arduino projects, but only by cobbling bits from existing work. I don't have an EE background and still have trouble coming up with the correct resistor to use, and why. I feel like the best way to learn is to just work on stuff and have someone look over your shoulder when you screw up. I'm interested in classes that'll be friendly to the non EE.

s:r { scott reston }

Maybe we can come up with some original idea? A laser alarm trigger seems hardly a good use for the ATMega.

Dennis mentioned controlling fans... I recall seeing a "kit" online for controlling fans with triac output of an X10 dimmer switch into an A2D circuit, controlling a bank of capacitors.. resulting in a supposively "quiet" fan dimmer. It would be fun to try this out and program the ATMega to do this (will be cool to take the X10 switch out and inteface the powerline directly or through a TWxxx module)... Maybe we can make it a class where we more spontaneously hack and attempt to build something cool, if it fails no biggie, still a good learning experience for us all..

that sounds fun to me, any takers ;-)

BTW, I can go in on the parts purchase..

I like the idea of a standing hack day/hack night

I agree Sensors<-->Conroller<-->Network is very usefull for all kinds of things, I did not realize you were planning on adding a network aspect to the project. I thought it was simply laser --> photosensor --> relay.

not to get off topic on this thread, but the interface I was suggesting was a powerline X10/whatever protocol and if you got a filter in your breaker box and stick to powerline only signals you should be fairly secure. X10 does have a very bad baud rate though, but your not downloading files on X10, its cheap and you have 256 device addresses. In the case we already have a dimmer (say controller wired "directly" to a switch) then the (powerline) interface is no longer the controller's concern, the controller should take the analog input and set up a combination of capacitors to get the appropriate fan speed.

Does anyone have any idea what protocol CP&L is using to turn peoples A/C units off remotely? mewhahaha...

It seems that many of my projects require some flavor of data logging either for their operation or for later analysis to determine if the project even works as designed. Commercially available solutions I've found thus far are way too expensive and inflexible. I need to be able to plug in a variety of sensors. A PC side handles the UI for configuration and data display. The Arduino handles sensor translation and transport protocols. I can think of a variety of useful results: Geo time stamping digital photos, residential security applications, energy analysis controller, solar tracker, etc.

Am I the only one out here frustrated with the poor performance of batteries, mainly the AA NiMH I have pretty much standardized on to run camera, MP3, GPS, flashlight, etc., and not really knowing how good a cell is before packing it into some mission-critical project? The best thing I have going in battery test right now is shoving an AA cell into an old iRiver MP3 player, and seeing whether all 4 bars show up.

I think there is a real need for a tester that pulse charges (charges up battery with short hi-amp pulses, allowing a relaxing interval and a discharge interval between pulses). I have a Velleman PCS10 4 channel datalogger (You might look into this one, Clark -- it is only $50) that makes a nice scope display on a USB connected PC. This could be used to quickly calculate the self-impedance and capacity of a cell.

Probably easy enuf to cook up with glue logic and a pair of totem-poled transistors, but it might work as an embedded controller project for newbies like me.

The latest ubuntu build is pretty easy to install. Just DL it, use Infrarecorder or something to burn a bootable CD, and stick it in. Worked for me.

Really, no one can say anything else until you try that.

Yes, when you boot with the CD in it gives you the option to install a dual-boot or to scrub the Windows Failware and go Ubuntu-only.

My Ubuntu install works great, but alas the old laptop I am using has some serious heat problems.

Anyone out there have any ideas about this? The commercial cooling pads don't seem to help.