Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-05 Thread Greg Cunningham
On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 08:49 -0400, Dan McMahill wrote:
> al davis wrote:
> 
> > FM stereo generator.  The broadcast ones are very expensive.  
> > You can buy one made for a lab cheap.  It sort of works.  A 
> > real broadcast one is simple but much more expensive.
> 
> If anyone feels like building one of these, I can give some extra 
> guidance on analog implementations and how to test some of the 
> parameters using relatively basic instrumentation.  Personally I think 
> this is a good project for dsp though.
> 
> -Dan
> 
... or how about a FM modulation Monitor?  I have the 1994(??) Elektor
FM tuner (4x Toyo 10.7mHz/200kHz xtal filters in IF, 8051 synth ctl) 7/8
built in a box with a mod monitor back-end in mind.
-- 
Greg Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-04 Thread Darryl Gibson
Jason Aron wrote:
> Hey anyone I've been using geda for about six months and I think I'm
> about done with my current project (I get the final boards next
> week).  So while I'm waiting for my boards, I'm thinking about what
> I'm going to do next...  and I'm drawing a complete blank.  Does
> anyone have some good ideas for me?  I'm a hardware guy with lots of
> experience in building radios and audio systems (RF and audio).  I
> know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the back
> corner of a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start on?

Test equipment for 802.11 wireless systems? An in line SWR meter would
be a good place to start.

Or a converter that would let a standard HF SWR meter make measurements
in the 2.4 ghz band?

-- 
Darryl Gibson N2DIY
RLU X 182668/379552

“Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the
distinction of a free man from a slave.”   --  Andrew Fletcher, A
Discourse of Government with relation to Militias (1698)


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-03 Thread Greg Cunningham
On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 22:49, Dan McMahill wrote:
> al davis wrote:
> 
> > FM stereo generator.  The broadcast ones are very expensive.  
> > You can buy one made for a lab cheap.  It sort of works.  A 
> > real broadcast one is simple but much more expensive.
> 
> If anyone feels like building one of these, I can give some extra 
> guidance on analog implementations and how to test some of the 
> parameters using relatively basic instrumentation.  Personally I think 
> this is a good project for dsp though.
> 
> -Dan

By coincidence, Dan Mills, dmills__a t__exponent.myzen.co.uk, a
developer of rivendell ( http://rivendellaudio.org, a suite of broadcast
automation software) has written a complete software audio/RDS FM
multiplexer called stereocoder & a audio processor/look-ahead limiter
front-end  called louderbox ( borrowed from Jamin - a multiband
compressor/limiter) that all runs on Jack (http://jackaudio.org - a
callback based audio server).  It basically spews 192kHz baseband PCM to
stdout as-is. Just find a audio card that does 192kHz & you're smokin...

his cvs is hosted at Salem Radio Labs (watch the wrap)
cvs -d:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home/cvs login
cvs -d:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home/cvs co
louderbox stereocoder
... but as Salem is no longer the primary sponsor of Rivendellaudio,
that may change.  He may also have an alternate cvs.

I asked Dan some time ago if he was interested in shoehorning his coder
into a Blackfin DSP, but he has moved on to other FOSS broadcast
challenges.

If people are interested further, I'm sure he wouldn't mind a chat.
-- 
Greg


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-03 Thread Dan McMahill

al davis wrote:

FM stereo generator.  The broadcast ones are very expensive.  
You can buy one made for a lab cheap.  It sort of works.  A 
real broadcast one is simple but much more expensive.


If anyone feels like building one of these, I can give some extra 
guidance on analog implementations and how to test some of the 
parameters using relatively basic instrumentation.  Personally I think 
this is a good project for dsp though.


-Dan


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-02 Thread al davis
On Tuesday 03 April 2007 02:41, Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan 
wrote:
> On 4/3/07, al davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If you look at the designs of older ones, you will see that
> > they did it with 2 or 3 tubes.   The basic design can be
> > updated to use today's components, with significantly
> > improved performance.
>
> Wes Hayward's book EMRFD has some designs.
>
> > Another one that could be useful is a "Q-meter".  It is
> > used for measuring inductors and capacitors by resonance.
>
> I started designing a small LC meter using an AVR
> microcontroller. Stalled because of lack of time. Have to
> revisit.

I mean a good old-fashioned one that is completely analog.  
There is an oscillator, then an amplifier driving the "circuit 
under test" in parallel with a variable capacitor.  You adjust 
the variable capacitor to peak or dip, I forgot which.  The 
good old resonance formula tells you the inductance.  The meter 
tells you the Q.  I still have one.  Based on the kind of tubes 
in it  I think it was made about 1940.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-02 Thread Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan

On 4/3/07, al davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


If you look at the designs of older ones, you will see that they
did it with 2 or 3 tubes.   The basic design can be updated to
use today's components, with significantly improved
performance.


Wes Hayward's book EMRFD has some designs.


Another one that could be useful is a "Q-meter".  It is used for
measuring inductors and capacitors by resonance.


I started designing a small LC meter using an AVR microcontroller.
Stalled because of lack of time. Have to revisit.

--
 Ramakrishnan - VU3RDD


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-02 Thread al davis
On Tuesday 03 April 2007 02:05, Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan 
wrote:
> On 3/31/07, al davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > How about lab test equipment.  There is a real need for
> > simple stuff that is too simple to market at the high
> > prices the big instrument companies need to charge.  The
> > kind of equipment you need in a home lab.  Like Heathkit
> > used to make.
>
> One thing I am particularly interested in, is a bench RF
> signal generator, may be not of the class of HP 8640. It
> should be able to have adjustable  output frequency and level
> to start with.  It should be easy to replicate and should use
> commonly available parts like DDS, 1206 parts for instance.

If you look at the designs of older ones, you will see that they 
did it with 2 or 3 tubes.   The basic design can be updated to 
use today's components, with significantly improved 
performance.

Another one that could be useful is a "Q-meter".  It is used for 
measuring inductors and capacitors by resonance.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-02 Thread Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan

On 3/31/07, al davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


How about lab test equipment.  There is a real need for simple
stuff that is too simple to market at the high prices the big
instrument companies need to charge.  The kind of equipment you
need in a home lab.  Like Heathkit used to make.


One thing I am particularly interested in, is a bench RF signal
generator, may be not of the class of HP 8640. It should be able to
have adjustable  output frequency and level to start with.  It should
be easy to replicate and should use commonly available parts like DDS,
1206 parts for instance.

For people like me sitting in India who do not have access to junk
from ebay, these kinds of stuff will be very useful.

--
 Ramakrishnan - VU3RDD


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-04-01 Thread Tomaz Solc
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Hi

> I'd like to see your bill of materials and design for that Tomaz.  It's
> the start of some ethernet labview-like gear.

I'm afraid it doesn't work over the ethernet. It only uses the ethernet
card as a cheap interface to the computer's PCI bus.

Here are the schematics: http://www.tablix.org/~avian/gnuradio

adc.eps is the board with the A/D converter, FIFO buffer and supporting
logic. I have this on a separate circuit board. It is then connected
with a flat cable to a smaller digital circuit inside the computer that
sits on the ethernet card.

8139d_if.eps is the circuit that is connected to a RTL8193D-based
ethernet card. The connector on the top left is plugged into the
Boot-ROM socket. You also need to connect the circuit to the INTA# line
on the card.

I also have some basic Linux drivers written for this thing.

Best regards
Tomaz
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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread DJ Delorie

> From "A Soul of a New Machine" I was reading that book as I was
> developing a .5nSec time interval analyzer back in the early
> ninties.  Could I comprehend the sentiment.

Heck, I worked for Data General for four years, fresh out of college.
Not in the mainframe group, though.  That's the job where I designed
the PC motherboards.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread al davis
On Friday 30 March 2007 19:24, Jason Aron wrote:
>  I'm a hardware guy with lots of experience in building
> radios and audio systems (RF and audio).


I just had another idea ...  Equipment for low-power FM radio.

Some of these stations are on a very low budget.  Commercial 
broadcast equipment is very expensive because of low volume.  
This is where the free/open-source approach, with kits for 
sale, has a place.

Before someone else points this out .  Unless you want it 
just to prove you can do the whole thing free/open-source, 
certain things like CD players don't make sense.

Whether a mixing console makes sense or not depends what you 
want to do.  If a disco or band mixed does the job, you won't 
beat it.  The free/open-source modular approach opens up the 
possibility of building big ones like API makes.  That would be 
worth doing.

I see a few possibilities ...

-Test equipment: modulation monitor, frequency meter.
A box that tells you that your transmitter is working correctly.

- signal processing, compression and limiting.  You can buy one 
cheap that was designed for bands, but it is far from optimal 
for broadcast.  How about a multi-band limiter for FM?
(yes ... I do know how to do it.)

(for the USA) ..  emergency action notification system.  
Broadcasters need to monitor other stations for the alarm.  
It's just an FM radio with a little extra circuitry.  How about 
the extra box to attach to an ordinary FM radio?

FM stereo generator.  The broadcast ones are very expensive.  
You can buy one made for a lab cheap.  It sort of works.  A 
real broadcast one is simple but much more expensive.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread John Griessen

Tomaz Solc wrote:

By the way: Some time ago I made a very cheap A/D converter (components
cost cca. 50 EUR) that used a modified ethernet adapter on PCI bus. It
had maximum 10MHz sampling frequency (TDA8703 IC)

I had some problems with reliability of the FIFO buffer but I believe
that would be simple so to solve. Maybe you could make something out of it.


I'd like to see your bill of materials and design for that Tomaz.  It's the 
start of some ethernet labview-like gear.

John Griessen


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread John Griessen

Randall Nortman wrote:


Clock radio with ethernet



I've been thinking the same thing, except the key feature I'm after is
a morning alertness test:


Instead of putting you through paces, it could just sense environment cues
like pressure on bed, noise in room to decide to nudge you into action again.

A bedroom sensor network!

John G


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread al davis
On Saturday 31 March 2007 14:30, Andy Peters wrote:
> Give me drivers for my existing NI hardware, and you've got a
> deal!

NI has a track record of being hostile to free/open-source.  One 
point that bugs me is that some of their products are derived 
from free/open-source software, and they give nothing back to 
the community.

Example: Multi-sim (formerly Electronic Workbench).  It's really 
just spice/xspice under a fancy wrapper.  With a little work in 
the right places, we could have something superior within a 
year.  We have most of the pieces.  Some of our pieces are 
superior to theirs.  What we lack is the integration.

Considering where gnucap is going, we could be so far superior 
as to render Multi-sim irrelevant, if we take care of the 
integration issues.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread al davis
On Saturday 31 March 2007 14:30, Andy Peters wrote:
> Give me drivers for my existing NI hardware, and you've got a
> deal!

Only if NI releases their entire design under GPL.

The idea is to replace the NI hardware with "free" (as in GPL) 
hardware.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Andy Peters

On Mar 31, 2007, at 10:29 AM, al davis wrote:


Once we have this, we have a schematic program that can draw as
well as Labview can, we are working on interprocess
communication anyway, we are working on waveform analysis tools
anyway, we have a simulator that will soon have real behavioral
modeling.  We would need some interface software for your
board.  Then we have a free/open-source alternative to Labview!


Give me drivers for my existing NI hardware, and you've got a deal!

-a



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Andy Peters

On Mar 31, 2007, at 5:15 AM, Bob Paddock wrote:


On Friday 30 March 2007 21:32, Randall Nortman wrote:


And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.


http://www.thingsyouneverknew.com/website/store/product_detail.asp? 
UID=2007020820322012&item%5Fno=80153&keyword=F1JS&cat% 
5Fkeyword=F1JS&search%5Fpage%5Fno=&page% 
5Fno=

Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Tomaz Solc
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Robert Fitzsimons wrote:
>> Does anyone have some good ideas for me?  I'm a hardware guy with lots
>> of experience in building radios and audio systems (RF and audio).
> 
> A few months ago I joined a project to develop a GSM Scanner [1], at the
> moment we are using a USRP [2] and GnuRadio [3] software to capture and
> process the RF signals.  The basic USRP setup is fairly expensive and
> even more so if you want to listen to the RX and TX channels.
> 
> The project on my to-do list would be to combine some of the features of
> the USRP and SSRP [4], and create a cheaper receiver which is capable of
> capturing two ranges of frequency's at once.

By the way: Some time ago I made a very cheap A/D converter (components
cost cca. 50 EUR) that used a modified ethernet adapter on PCI bus. It
had maximum 10MHz sampling frequency (TDA8703 IC)

I had some problems with reliability of the FIFO buffer but I believe
that would be simple so to solve. Maybe you could make something out of it.

I later lost interest in software radio and didn't bother to develop
this further.

Best regards
Tomaz
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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread al davis
On Friday 30 March 2007 19:24, Jason Aron wrote:
> I've been using geda for about six months and I think I'm
> about done with my current project (I get the final boards
> next week).  So while I'm waiting for my boards, I'm thinking
> about what I'm going to do next...  and I'm drawing a
> complete blank.  Does anyone have some good ideas for me?
>  I'm a hardware guy with lots of experience in building
> radios and audio systems (RF and audio).  I know everybody's
> got a long list of projects tucked away in the back corner of
> a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start on?  

Since you posted here, and it appears you want a hardware 
project, and you want to make a contribution to us

How about lab test equipment.  There is a real need for simple 
stuff that is too simple to market at the high prices the big 
instrument companies need to charge.  The kind of equipment you 
need in a home lab.  Like Heathkit used to make.

Another real need is for the hardware side of computer 
instrumentation.  Something like the commercial 
product "Labview".  We have most of the software.  We are 
lacking the hardware.

The first piece here would be a box that has analog inputs, like 
an oscilloscope, plugs into a USB, and provides a data stream 
that  software can use.  One input to one USB would be perfect.  
A more advanced version could sample and store a block of time, 
enabling higher frequencies than you could send over USB 
directly.

Once we have this, we have a schematic program that can draw as 
well as Labview can, we are working on interprocess 
communication anyway, we are working on waveform analysis tools 
anyway, we have a simulator that will soon have real behavioral 
modeling.  We would need some interface software for your 
board.  Then we have a free/open-source alternative to Labview!


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Robert Fitzsimons
> Does anyone have some good ideas for me?  I'm a hardware guy with lots
> of experience in building radios and audio systems (RF and audio).

A few months ago I joined a project to develop a GSM Scanner [1], at the
moment we are using a USRP [2] and GnuRadio [3] software to capture and
process the RF signals.  The basic USRP setup is fairly expensive and
even more so if you want to listen to the RX and TX channels.

The project on my to-do list would be to combine some of the features of
the USRP and SSRP [4], and create a cheaper receiver which is capable of
capturing two ranges of frequency's at once.

Robert

1. http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Gsm
2. http://www.ettus.com/
3. http://www.gnuradio.org/
4. http://oscar.dcarr.org/ssrp/



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Steve Meier
DJ Delorie wrote:
>> That clock advances one *day* at a time.
>> 
>
> "I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no unit of
> time shorter than a season."
>
>
> ___
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>
>   
>From "A Soul of a New Machine" I was reading that book as I was
developing a .5nSec time interval analyzer back in the early ninties.
Could I comprehend the sentiment.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Ales Hvezda
>>
>>> That clock advances one *day* at a time.
>>
>>"I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no unit of
>>time shorter than a season."
>
>That book is the best.
>

Agreed.  For those that haven't read it yet or are wondering what the 
heck we are talking about:

"The Soul of a New Machine"
Tracy Kidder 
ISBN 0-380-59931-7

This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of the
design of a new Data General computer, the Eclipse. It is an amazingly
well-done portrait of the hacker mindset --- although largely the hardware
hacker --- done by a complete outsider. It is a bit thin in spots, but
with enough technical information to be entertaining to the serious hacker
while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day life can
be like --- the fun, the excitement, the disasters. During one period,
when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one
of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note
on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune
in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

From: 
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/computers/TheHackersDictionaryofComputerJargon/chap62.html

-Ales



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Igor2
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, DJ Delorie wrote:

>
>> That clock advances one *day* at a time.
>
>"I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no unit of
>time shorter than a season."

That book is the best.




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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread DJ Delorie

> That clock advances one *day* at a time.

"I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no unit of
time shorter than a season."


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Bob Paddock
On Friday 30 March 2007 21:32, Randall Nortman wrote:

> And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.

http://www.thingsyouneverknew.com/website/store/product_detail.asp?UID=2007020820322012&item%5Fno=80153&keyword=F1JS&cat%5Fkeyword=F1JS&search%5Fpage%5Fno=&page%5Fno=

Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Bob Paddock
On Friday 30 March 2007 21:31, Dan McMahill wrote:

> > And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.
> 
> how about an adjustment based on weather.  That way if I'm planning on 
> doing the 2 mile hike into my favorite fishing spot I won't be woken up 
> at 4:30 if its raining hard!

http://nvlsi.no/index.cfm?obj=document&act=display&doc=281

"Rest assured: Nordic Semiconductor's 2.4GHz transceiver-equipped
 aXbo sleep monitoring system ensures users awake refreshed"


-- 
 http://www.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.designer-iii.com/
 http://www.unusualresearch.com/


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-31 Thread Ben Jackson
On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 06:54:31PM -0500, Dan McMahill wrote:
> 
> I've been meaning to make a simple AM modulator with semi reasonable 
> fidelity so I can make my sirius satellite radio play on my 1934 Atwater 
> Kent console radio...

A friend of mine with a similar idea tried one of those 1MHz can oscillator
plus modulating transformer circuits and didn't get it to work.  He's not
an RF guy, though.  Has anyone else tried one of those?

-- 
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.ben.com/


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Dave McGuire

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:09 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:

Have a numeric keypad for setting the alarm time.


And since we're all geeks, you only need two buttons anyway.  Or one,
if you know morse code.


  --.  .  .  -.-  !

--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL




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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> think of the other person in your bed...

She has her own alarm clock.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Steven Michalske

think of the other person in your bed...

On Mar 30, 2007, at 7:09 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:




Have a numeric keypad for setting the alarm time.


And since we're all geeks, you only need two buttons anyway.  Or one,
if you know morse code.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> Have a numeric keypad for setting the alarm time.

And since we're all geeks, you only need two buttons anyway.  Or one,
if you know morse code.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Steven Michalske

Have a numeric keypad for setting the alarm time.
I don't want to have to use a computer to set the alarm, hence the  
local keypad.

I hate holding the buttons to loop through time.

Steve

On Mar 30, 2007, at 6:45 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:



how about an adjustment based on weather.  That way if I'm  
planning on
doing the 2 mile hike into my favorite fishing spot I won't be  
woken up

at 4:30 if its raining hard!


Ok, so we need something that can run embedded linux (or other OS),
with LCD, ethernet, audio.  A gumstix can do all that, with a little
support circuitry.  It makes for an expensive clock radio, though.

More fun would be a minimal clock radio, and use a PC to make all the
"smart" decisions.  Tiny MCU (pic, m16c), tiny ethernet (cp2200), mp3
chip, and LED display.  Use PoE and avoid the power cord, too.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> how about an adjustment based on weather.  That way if I'm planning on 
> doing the 2 mile hike into my favorite fishing spot I won't be woken up 
> at 4:30 if its raining hard!

Ok, so we need something that can run embedded linux (or other OS),
with LCD, ethernet, audio.  A gumstix can do all that, with a little
support circuitry.  It makes for an expensive clock radio, though.

More fun would be a minimal clock radio, and use a PC to make all the
"smart" decisions.  Tiny MCU (pic, m16c), tiny ethernet (cp2200), mp3
chip, and LED display.  Use PoE and avoid the power cord, too.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Dan McMahill

Randall Nortman wrote:

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 09:05:06PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:


I know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the
back corner of a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start
on?


Clock radio with ethernet (ntp, remote alarm set, wake up to mp3s,
etc).  Mine is a couple of decades old, time for an upgrade.



I've been thinking the same thing, except the key feature I'm after is
a morning alertness test: to turn off the alarm, you have to play a
game of "simon", repeating some random pattern on four buttons, or
maybe even doing some math or something.  The point of all that is
that I too often turn off the alarm without ever becoming fully awake,
and something like that would force my brain to wake up a bit.

And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.


how about an adjustment based on weather.  That way if I'm planning on 
doing the 2 mile hike into my favorite fishing spot I won't be woken up 
at 4:30 if its raining hard!


-Dan


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> While we are at it, it should make good toast and it should include
> a built-in e-mail client.   :)

Or at least, an LCD display with your day's schedule and weather
report.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> I've been thinking the same thing, except the key feature I'm after
> is a morning alertness test: to turn off the alarm, you have to play
> a game of "simon", repeating some random pattern on four buttons, or
> maybe even doing some math or something.  The point of all that is
> that I too often turn off the alarm without ever becoming fully
> awake, and something like that would force my brain to wake up a
> bit.

And it's easy to do a "zen alarm clock" that starts out quiet and
keeps getting louder until you respond.  No more morning heart
attacks.

> And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.

Yeah, my watch does that, but not my alarm clock.  Of course, my alarm
clock is still a mechanical round-in-circles clock.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Ales Hvezda
[snip]
>
>And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.
>

While we are at it, it should make good toast and it should
include a built-in e-mail client.:)

-Ales



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Randall Nortman
On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 09:05:06PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > I know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the
> > back corner of a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start
> > on?
> 
> Clock radio with ethernet (ntp, remote alarm set, wake up to mp3s,
> etc).  Mine is a couple of decades old, time for an upgrade.

I've been thinking the same thing, except the key feature I'm after is
a morning alertness test: to turn off the alarm, you have to play a
game of "simon", repeating some random pattern on four buttons, or
maybe even doing some math or something.  The point of all that is
that I too often turn off the alarm without ever becoming fully awake,
and something like that would force my brain to wake up a bit.

And don't forget automatic weekday/weekend adjustments.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread DJ Delorie

> I know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the
> back corner of a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start
> on?

Clock radio with ethernet (ntp, remote alarm set, wake up to mp3s,
etc).  Mine is a couple of decades old, time for an upgrade.


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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread John Griessen

Jason Aron wrote:
 Does anyone have some good ideas for me?

I'm a hardware guy with lots of experience in building radios and audio systems 
(RF and audio).

Are you interested in Akustica digital microphones?  I"ve got a back burner 
want to
see what their power draws are, and how their datastream starts up, and what 
minimal DSP
functions are needed to decode that datastream (sigma delta data).  Will go in 
a biologist sound
monitoring system.

John Griessen



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Re: gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Dan McMahill

Jason Aron wrote:

Hey anyone
I've been using geda for about six months and I think I'm about done with my current project (I get the final boards next week).  So while I'm waiting for my boards, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next...  and I'm drawing a complete blank.  Does anyone have some good ideas for me?  I'm a hardware guy with lots of experience in building radios and audio systems (RF and audio).  I know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the back corner of a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start on?  


Let me know

Jason 


hardware project or a hacking geda project?

I've been meaning to make a simple AM modulator with semi reasonable 
fidelity so I can make my sirius satellite radio play on my 1934 Atwater 
Kent console radio...  But of course I started going overboard on 
features.  I should probably cut out the PLL tuning and all and just 
drop back to a number of active devices I can count on my fingers and be 
done with it


Lets see, I need an amp for the bass guitar.  Been meaning to do that.

For software projects, we have quite a list right now!   See 
www.geda.seul.org/gsoc/


-Dan


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gEDA-user: Looking for a project

2007-03-30 Thread Jason Aron

Hey anyone
I've been using geda for about six months and I think I'm about done with my 
current project (I get the final boards next week).  So while I'm waiting for 
my boards, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next...  and I'm drawing a 
complete blank.  Does anyone have some good ideas for me?  I'm a hardware guy 
with lots of experience in building radios and audio systems (RF and audio).  I 
know everybody's got a long list of projects tucked away in the back corner of 
a desk... Is there one that you'd like a jump-start on?  

Let me know

Jason 

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