It’s a Atmega8 w/ 3 axis accelerometer. I’d like to ad a blue tooth serial port, and rechargeable battery power supply (charged through a usb port).
And if I get really adventurous I’d like to make a variant version that uses an ARM7 or ARM9 micro. But I don’t know how the programming interface works for those.
I’ve done something similar with a Tiny2313 AVR and an accelerometer.
Leon
Leon:
Are the bluetooth modules difficult to work with? How did you interface with one? Does it behave just as a normal serial port connection would?
I’ve never used them. I have used SFE’s Nordic modules.
Leon
leon_heller:
I’ve never used Batch PCB. I use a service that gets me much better quality PCBs in under a week. I can get untested boards with a 24 hour turnround for £30 GBP each from the same supplier - PCB Train - in Newbury, UK: http://www.pcbtrain.co.uk/Leon
Gold Phoenix produce fantastically high quality PCBs, they have never let me down, I have spent thousands of dollars with them. Also, their assembly service is excellent, I recently submitted a 4-layer PCB fab/asssembly job to them and they made sure all the instructions were clear and asked detailed questions to ensure the assembled PCBs were as I’d intended. Communication was really good and was far better than dealing with a local company I’ve used before (this was surprising!?).
PCB Train may produce good quality PCBs as well, I don’t know, I’ve not used them. Therefore it would be a mistake to say otherwise, can you substantiate you claim that PCB Train quality is better than Batch PCB (Batch PCB is a client of Gold Phoenix) ? How is it better?
jazzist:
leon_heller:
I’ve never used Batch PCB.I use a service that gets me much better quality PCBs in under a week.
Therefore it would be a mistake to say otherwise, can you substantiate you claim that PCB Train quality is better than Batch PCB? How is it better?
Simple. BatchPCB isn’t leon_heller approved!
I see that you’re new here. If you have a spare moment
search this forum for keyword: “pulsonix” and author: “leon_heller”
I submit that you should read back through this thread, bigglez, and have an objective look at your own posts. They’re actually rather vitriolic. Your previous post, for example, seems essentially to be an attempt to polarise a new forum member into one of two camps, yours or leons. In short, you’re trolling.
jazzist:
leon_heller:
I’ve never used Batch PCB. I use a service that gets me much better quality PCBs in under a week. I can get untested boards with a 24 hour turnround for £30 GBP each from the same supplier - PCB Train - in Newbury, UK: http://www.pcbtrain.co.uk/Leon
Gold Phoenix produce fantastically high quality PCBs, they have never let me down, I have spent thousands of dollars with them. Also, their assembly service is excellent, I recently submitted a 4-layer PCB fab/asssembly job to them and they made sure all the instructions were clear and asked detailed questions to ensure the assembled PCBs were as I’d intended. Communication was really good and was far better than dealing with a local company I’ve used before (this was surprising!?).
PCB Train may produce good quality PCBs as well, I don’t know, I’ve not used them. Therefore it would be a mistake to say otherwise, can you substantiate you claim that PCB Train quality is better than Batch PCB (Batch PCB is a client of Gold Phoenix) ? How is it better?
PCB Train offers a full professional PCB prototyping service - multi-layer boards with 0.15 mm tracks and 0.3 mm vias as standard with quick delivery. Batch PCB can’t meet those design rules or their delivery times, AFAIK, although Gold Phoenix presumably can.
I just used their quoting system for a small six layer board (19 mm x 42 mm) and was surprised at how cheap it was - £94 for two boards (five working days). I’ll have to use someone else, though, as they can’t manage the small vias for the BGA chip I’m using.
I also use PCB Pool a lot, they are just as good.
Leon
mkissin:
I submit that you should read back through this thread, bigglez, and have an objective look at your own posts. They’re actually rather vitriolic. Your previous post, for example, seems essentially to be an attempt to polarise a new forum member into one of two camps, yours or leons. In short, you’re trolling.
Bigglez gets up everyone’s nose, it seems to be his mission in life. He used to keep asking for forum members’ first names ad nauseam when they didn’t include them in their posts (he never said why he needed the information), but seems to have given up that strange obsession.
Leon
I just have no idea why you would rebut a technical statement with a personal attack. It achieves nothing, and makes you look like an angry, angry person.
bigglez:
jazzist:
leon_heller:
I’ve never used Batch PCB.I use a service that gets me much better quality PCBs in under a week.
Therefore it would be a mistake to say otherwise, can you substantiate you claim that PCB Train quality is better than Batch PCB? How is it better?
Simple. BatchPCB isn’t leon_heller approved!
I see that you’re new here. If you have a spare moment
search this forum for keyword: “pulsonix” and author: “leon_heller”
Here is one reason why I like Pulsonix - they are very responsive to suggestions from users. The BGA footprint wizard automagically generates breakout tracks and vias for each ball, but they are all oriented the same way. I wanted this breakout pattern:
http://www.leonheller.com/psx/Fanout.gif
which makes adding fanouts much easier, and leaves room for decoupling capacitors (they have to be 0201 parts which is getting a bit small) in the central channels.
Modifying the one produced by the wizard meant that I had to rotate each breakout, which wasn’t too bad with the 144BGA I’m using at present, but will get rather tedious with the 512BGA part I’m also using. I asked Pulsonix if they could add this feature to the wizard in the next release. They got back to me the same day with an example of how they would implement it, for my approval. They had actually added it to the code there and then, to test the idea.
Do other PCB CAD suppliers respond so quickly to a user’s suggestion?
Leon
Sometimes I think they actively disregard users’ suggestions. Altium would still be selling Protel 99SE if they listened to users. It’s a joy to use, and works flawlessly under WinXP if you can get a licence, but won’t even start up under Vista.
They probably wouldn’t make as much money, features have to be added to win customers from other products and justify price increases.
The problem with Altium is that they they have added loads of stuff that not many people actually use, like FPGA development. I’m fairly sure that almost everyone who uses Altium uses Xilinx and Altera tools for designing their FPGAs, and then exports the pinout data. Then there are the new mechanical design features, they probably don’t get used much either. I suppose the latter makes sense to Dassault who now own Altium, as they are responsible for CATIA, which is the best mechanical design package available - most cars and aircraft are designed with it. I had CATIA training when I worked for BAe, it’s mind-boggling.
Leon
leon_heller:
The problem with Altium is that they they have added loads of stuff that not many people actually use, like FPGA development. I’m fairly sure that almost everyone who uses Altium uses Xilinx and Altera tools for designing their FPGAs, and then exports the pinout data. Then there are the new mechanical design features, they probably don’t get used much either.
Yeah, that’s why I prefer 99SE. The newer versions haven’t added much in the way of schematic capture or PCB design (a wee bit, but nothing you couldn’t live without for small to medium size designs), but they have a ton of extra baggage. I’m not sure if you can buy licenses for 99SE on eBay or whatever, but it’s be a decent investment if you could find one.
leon_heller:
as they are responsible for CATIA, which is the best mechanical design package available
We’re starting a 3D mechanical CAD software argument now?
Pro/E forever!
Has anyone used it to design a jet fighter?
Leon
Not yet, but I’m working on it. Get back to me in 2020.
Lots of this is though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian … _Destroyer
All 3D CAD packages have their place.
What is being used to design the actual ship?
Leon
Not sure. I have seen a model of the bare metal in Pro/E, don’t know if that was exported from another package or created from scratch.
perhaps we should just start the windows/linux debate right now, invoke Godwin’s Law and save ourselves some time 
