From: *christopher west*
I've decided to design
my own PCB from scratch. I'm a electronic engineer by trade so this shouldn't cause to many headaches but if this is too difficult I will consider using an Arduino.
Have you considered using pcb and gschem for the electronics? There's a supportive list and good ways to get library schematic symbols and pcb footprints besides making your own.
if you have any pointers I would
be very great full.
Regards, Chris West
great full. --> grateful.
Have you done much market research on the commercial competition? There are plenty of weather stations proven and working, so all you can hope for is a cost reduction, and it might be tough to beat standard prices as they've been evolving for so long. But, if you think prices are easy to beat, that's a good reason for open hardware.
The functions of a weather station barely make a microcontroller breathe hard, so I immediately think, "What else could you add in the microcontroller part to make a weather station better?", and it strikes me you should use a higher level language than C for the code, and so users can adapt their stations -- use them as development platforms. Then you have a wider market -- scientists start to be interested, tinkerers of course, and developers of instrumentation setups. Otherwise your market is just other EE/CS types, (if they like C).
What I like is python-on-a-chip, running on micros like STM32 or MC13224v. See http://www.redwirellc.com/store/node/1 http://mc1322x.devl.org/ http://www.futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtml
The STM32 stamp board can run elua, a version of lua:
That's another high level language that some say is good for rapid development. I've not tried it yet, but it looks like time.
John Griessen
KiCad is quite capable. It's used in the qi-hardware group where Werner Almsberger has added a nice footprint editor.
Lua is a good language. I don't think you'll go wrong with C however. The entire Arduino universe is a pretty good existence proof that C is palatable. We;ll, they have some libraries that make things easier.
As to your approach to measure wind speed, it is a clever idea, but the old fashioned way is pretty easy. --- Ron K. Jeffries http://ronkjeffries.pen.i http://ronkjeffries.pen.io/o
On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 10:18, John Griessen john@industromatic.com wrote:
From: *christopher west*
I've decided to design
my own PCB from scratch. I'm a electronic engineer by trade so this shouldn't cause to many headaches but if this is too difficult I will consider using an Arduino.
Have you considered using pcb and gschem for the electronics? There's a supportive list and good ways to get library schematic symbols and pcb footprints besides making your own.
if you have any pointers I would
be very great full.
Regards, Chris West
great full. --> grateful.
Have you done much market research on the commercial competition? There are plenty of weather stations proven and working, so all you can hope for is a cost reduction, and it might be tough to beat standard prices as they've been evolving for so long. But, if you think prices are easy to beat, that's a good reason for open hardware.
The functions of a weather station barely make a microcontroller breathe hard, so I immediately think, "What else could you add in the microcontroller part to make a weather station better?", and it strikes me you should use a higher level language than C for the code, and so users can adapt their stations -- use them as development platforms. Then you have a wider market -- scientists start to be interested, tinkerers of course, and developers of instrumentation setups. Otherwise your market is just other EE/CS types, (if they like C).
What I like is python-on-a-chip, running on micros like STM32 or MC13224v. See http://www.redwirellc.com/**store/node/1http://www.redwirellc.com/store/node/1 http://mc1322x.devl.org/ http://www.futurlec.com/ET-**STM32_Stamp.shtmlhttp://www.futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtml
The STM32 stamp board can run elua, a version of lua:
That's another high level language that some say is good for rapid development. I've not tried it yet, but it looks like time.
John Griessen
______________________________**_________________ oshug mailing list oshug@oshug.org http://oshug.org/cgi-bin/**mailman/listinfo/oshughttp://oshug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oshug
On Sat, 2011-06-25 at 10:32 -0700, Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
KiCad is quite capable. It's used in the qi-hardware group where Werner Almsberger has added a nice footprint editor.
That's good to know, I've just done some schematic capture in it and I haven't used any of the artwork layout side.
Lua is a good language. I don't think you'll go wrong with C however. The entire Arduino universe is a pretty good existence proof that C is palatable. We;ll, they have some libraries that make things easier.
I've done a bit of development is C so I'm just sticking with what I know. I'll have to take a look at what Arduino have done and see if it would be easy to incorporate some of there ideas.
As to your approach to measure wind speed, it is a clever idea, but the old fashioned way is pretty easy.
I would love to lay claim to this idea but there are a few commercial systems that calculate wind speed this way. As for doing the old fashioned way I must admit that I need something a little different to keep my interest up when it invertible hits a wall.
Chris W
Have you considered using pcb and gschem for the electronics? There's a supportive list and good ways to get library schematic symbols and pcb footprints besides making your own.
I have thought about that but to my knowledge it doesn't have any 3D functionally as KiCAD does. I'm not sure how full fledged the 3D aspect of KiCAD is as it is very useful when design the 3D CAD models as you can work out clearances for the PCB easily.
great full. --> grateful.
Just for reference I'm dyslexic so unfortunately there will be others, I'll do my best to make my email understandable but the occasional one will slip though.
Have you done much market research on the commercial competition? There are plenty of weather stations proven and working, so all you can hope for is a cost reduction, and it might be tough to beat standard prices as they've been evolving for so long. But, if you think prices are easy to beat, that's a good reason for open hardware.
This isn't a commercial venture, it's just to see if all the tools can be used together and produce something and I'm doing it for fun.
The functions of a weather station barely make a microcontroller breathe hard, so I immediately think, "What else could you add in the microcontroller part to make a weather station better?", and it strikes me you should use a higher level language than C for the code, and so users can adapt their stations -- use them as development platforms. Then you have a wider market -- scientists start to be interested, tinkerers of course, and developers of instrumentation setups. Otherwise your market is just other EE/CS types, (if they like C).
That interesting, I could see about specifying a very powerful chip so I could add bindings for other languages but that's out of my depth I'm not sure if that could be done.
One of my far fetched add-ons to this project was to make them wireless and create a mesh network so multiple units could be put on a site and give weather profiles to be used in micro weather forecasting.
What I like is python-on-a-chip, running on micros like STM32 or MC13224v. See http://www.redwirellc.com/store/node/1 http://mc1322x.devl.org/ http://www.futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtml
The STM32 stamp board can run elua, a version of lua:
That's another high level language that some say is good for rapid development. I've not tried it yet, but it looks like time.
I'll have a look at those when I specify everything up but initial idea is to keep it fairly simple and use my existing knowledge.
Chris W
One of my far fetched add-ons to this project was to make them wireless and create a mesh network so multiple units could be put on a site and give weather profiles to be used in micro weather forecasting.
Mesh networks are complicated, and tend to consume much more power than a simple remote device to central controller approach. This would be a problem if the remote devices were battery operated, but the ultrasonic circuitry may preclude that anyway.
I have just received some cheap RF modules to experiment with, the high power version claims to be capable of 1000M line of sight and costs about £12, that should be more than enough range. When my bus pirate arrives from China I will see how good they actually are!
Nigle
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christopher west -
John Griessen -
Nigel Worsley -
Ron K. Jeffries