Smallest flexible circuit

I would guess the ultimate goal is to have their own cameras and other sensors on there.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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On a sunny day (Fri, 17 Jan 2014 08:58:41 -0500) it happened Spehro Pefhany wrote in :

Yews, I heard about that. This one they folded around something the size of a hair IIRC.

It is getting sort of spooky, cameras and transmitters the size of a grain of salt. Powered by the sun? By chemical reactions? NSA will get loads of input... :-)

Grains of sand, each with a camera and storage. Spread them around everywhere- when a crime occurs several of them will have "witnessed" it.

--sp

We'll all have the phones implanted so we can't throw them away before we know, rest assured.

Dimiter

Now if we could use the circuit to measure where the observer is looking, and adjust the focus of the contact lens accordingly, that

*would* be useful.

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Adrian Jansen           adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net 
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On a sunny day (Sat, 18 Jan 2014 07:25:34 +1000) it happened Adrian Jansen wrote in :

There exists a type of adjustable lens that consists of a drop of water that deforms under an electric voltage, and it was [is?] sold for in cellphones, IIRC by some French company .. A thin small version perhaps, do not know the required voltage, and you need a method to get the focal point, in video we just looked at the amplitude of the high frequency part of the spectrum when looking at something with some contrast, easy to focus on that on the camera viewer, so that can be done by wobbling the lens voltage a bit. Do I get the patent now ;-)?

You only get the patent when you publish a design which a patent examiner thinks might work :-)

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On a sunny day (Sun, 19 Jan 2014 07:58:30 +0000 (UTC)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote in :

No, I ignore that, theory being that there will be no communication error in the few cm wire from the GPS module to the PIC input... There is a 'Position Fix Indicator', I use that to see if the GPS data is valid. If so I sync the clock and use that data. Maybe at a later point I will add the checksum check, it is simple, still waiting for all the parts to come in so I can make a small prototype PCB. Got the EEPROMs working yesterday. Next is SDcard (when the connector arrives), and the GM tube, and the solar powered housing it all has to fit in, and the small radios with earphones 'tick' monitoring, and the Nokia LCD driver, I also have an OLED graphics display on order for some other version of the same thing (and my first adventure into OLED driving), and .. and... The hardware design of course.. So, depending on the mailman and world wide pirating of shipping lines... hard to tell when the first prototype will be on display, in use.

So far code space is not a problem, the only time I ran out of space on 18F14K22 was with scope_pic:

but even then I never went for space optimized code... Just kept adding stuff until assembler protested, or was it programmer...

Are there other operating systems than Unix? :-)

Yes FF helps, done that before, good idea.

Some time ago I bought an engraving pen on ebay, on the tri_pic project I engraved some essential things on the alu bottom plate,

Not that that is very readable, the sticker works though. :-)

In this application, it is probably reasonable to not handle a corrupt message (you'll probably get a good message 1 second from now anyway), but I have seen GPS modules just fail to produce a NMEA message at all every once in a while (like, once a day or less).

I would have had the project done on time, teacher, but the Somalis stole my parts! :)

There's one that's really popular for putting underneath computer games. I can't recall its name at the moment, something about a hole in the wall.

I am a fan of permanent marker for one-off things. On the other hand,

30 years is a long time for it to be permanent. :) Out in the "real world", the nameplates that seem to last the longest are thin sheets of metal, stamped or engraved, and fastened to the equipment with screws or rivets.

Matt Roberds

On a sunny day (Mon, 20 Jan 2014 06:01:27 +0000 (UTC)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote in :

Now I did read that in one big chunck. Yes, that takes me back to when I was programming EPROMs in _binary_ (not even hex) for Z80 with DIP 8 pole switches. The code then ran on my Z80, and first thing I wrote was : an EEPROM programmer. It is fair to say I also had a Sinclair ZX80 with BASIC, Later I wrote my own OS for it:

The login on that page is no longer protected with a password so that takes you to the scanned circuit diagrams. This is the I/O card and EPROM programmer, note the +30V programming voltage generator:

Some other cards:

Thing went into the trash some years ago.... used it for many years, modified it at times too.

It is my opinion that every programmer should start by learning some electronic basics, and do some binary programming, just to see where the bloat starts, many these days think all that bloat is really needed.

Mil required these:

'Rijks eigendom' stands for 'property of the kindom', bought it in the surplus, it is a radiation monitoring set: I think the material used for mil was 'resopal' with the text engraved into it.

The interesting thing about my NMEA parser in PIC 18 asm is that the 'main' function reads like this: main_loop: ; activate watchdog clrwdt goto main_loop

Doing everything in interrupts avoids a lot of problems.... It is the opposite approach from 'Viper'.

On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 08:50:51 GMT, Jan Panteltje Gave us:

Consider it an error checking routine, which *must be* performed to insure the continued integrity of the data stored on the machine, up to and including the OS.

Enter Linux. With proper permissions based operation, the machine remains safe, and LOOK! WAY smaller code needed in most apps. That is why the scientific community embraced unix and linux. Lack of bloat was just a side benefit.

The closest thing to that I've touched was an old programmable scanner radio (early 1980s) that stored the frequencies in RAM. The RAM controller needed both +9 V and +5 V to operate. (The 1 kbit RAM itself just needed +5 V.) I think I may have worked on a different version of that scanner that had an EEPROM and more weird voltages, but I don't remember for sure.

Hookup wire provided by the local PTT cabinet? :)

Moving up in the world... ribbon cable! Also a volume control.

It looks like just a thin sheet of alumin(i)um to me, with printing (black ink) and stamping (the serial number), but you are closer to it than I am.

Matt Roberds

On a sunny day (Sat, 25 Jan 2014 02:51:16 +0000 (UTC)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote in :

Yes, i did something like that, a RAM with voltage level conversions holding setup parameters for a digital transmitter, no processor, but full adders to add and subtract a value from the memory locations when up and down buttons were pressed, long time ago, wire wrapped! Then I did it again for a phone dial memory...

Exactly!

Yes, electret mike top right, and SAA1099 sound effect chip next to speaker. The audio DAC is that vertical white thing.

8 bit audio you know,

Yes this one is, but when I was still designing for mil we used that resopal, mounted in the same way...