Hello, I am looking for a hardware / OS platform that will allow me to develop a digital clock, digital frame and digital thermostat. I am a professional programer but I am not up for writing drivers for this project. I want something that gives me basic functionality and allows me to develop my application on top. Is there a cheap way to do this with couple of hundered dollars? I can consider linux solution or Windows CE .Net. Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
post in comp arch.embedded would be a good idea
martin
There are probably at least a couple of orders of magnitude of complexity here between the simplest way to implement the simplest of the mentioned projects and the snazziest way (within reason) to implement the most complex. You probably have a vision of what you're intending for each of the three -- or are you intending to make one thing that encompasses all three?
For example, there's absolutely no need for WinCE or Linux or any other operating system in order to make a thermostat, unless there are unstated requirements for a real-time color display, an interactive TCP/IP-based interface, or some other flashy stuff that needs a file system/word processor/media player, or if by thermostat you don't mean an on-off relay for a floor heater but instead it's the HVAC controls for a 60-story building.
So a little more effort on the specification end will likely narrow the domain of suggestions to something more useful.
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
On a sunny day (Sat, 6 Sep 2008 13:09:04 -0700 (PDT)) it happened humbleFunGuy wrote in :
Just use an eeePC. I am using one as digital picture frame... to display slides with music:
As Martin said, comp.arch.embedded is the group for microcontrollers.
Huh? A professional programmer, but not up to writing drivers?
Linux (or Windows CE) will work, but is overkill. They buy you a nearly complete O/S and toolset making the digital frame and clock a matter of simple scripting. The thermostat will require some sort of sensor, which will either be a ready-made off the shelf device (serial, USB, etc.) or you'll have to write a simple driver and build some h/w.
Look in the back of any electronics magazine for an ad for a one board computer with a VGA or QVGA display. They come in either Linux or Windos flavors. Go with whatever O/S you know.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ There was a man who entered a local paper\'s pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of them would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
Linux OS. You will need to control things with USB, or with serial. That means writing an app that opens a device for serial, but that will be a bit more complex for USB.
OTOH, it'll also drive a monitor, so you can just write an XWindows app for those functions. There are some cool USB touch screens it'll drive, which might be even better. They are kinda pricy, though.
I don't think it has hardware for a thermostat, so you'll need to buy some kind of thermostat that talks USB or serial, unless you want to build the hardware yourself. Here is a microchip temp sensor that outputs the temperature using SPI:
You could probably talk to it using the RS232 modem signals on the serial header. You could hack it together for a few bucks in parts.
Regards, Bob Monsen
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