Help please

You need to refine your goals. Choosing gadgets is way down the list after clearly defining your objectives, funding, etc. What particular problems do people with engineering background have that you expect to help solve? How will they know about your program? What will you promise potential participants? How will you get paid? The answers to these questions will help focus your requirements.

Thad

Hi, Thanks Thad.

I am not trying to solve any particular problem. My aim is to set up a centre in my departmnt ( I am a teacher in an engineering college in India) for providing the necessary infrastructure so that people who want to do any research and/or development work will have the facilities. By this I mean work that are neither too trivial (like introducing students to the fundamentals) nor too complex only "money-no-problem" labs can take up.

Doesn't matter. Only people involved with our dept. in some way will be using the facilities.

All the general hardware and software platforms for their work.

Doesn't matter again. This is part of my job.

I hope this helps. Funding available for the project may be disregarded for the moment, because I can't say for sure. I shall try to sqeeze in as much from the wish list as permitted by the budget. I am just trying to make up my wish list.

Thanks again.

Prasad.

There are much wiser people here than me but I generally split the embedded world into 2 sections

a) little processors like the 8051, Atmel AVR, Motorola MSP430 that fit into 40 pin packages or less, where you have to design the hardware and software, many one man companies are like this. The progams can just a a few lines of assembler, or compiled C. This is the world I inhabit.

b) where you buy a ready made complex microcomputer board like a PC104 format, more or less a 486 PC on a little board. Quite complex devices and I have no comments to make.

If you start in my "little" embedded world, you can buy cheap kits for development, cheap programmers etc(KitsRus,Dontronics) Lots of tools are freely avaiable, and you can be up and running for less than a

100$. You can build simple stuff on stripboard, or get people like PCBPool (?) or olimex to make your prototypes quickly and cheaply

For me, the embedded world means designing a complete little product from idea to protoype, to production. Not just writing the software, and hoping the hardware guys understand what you want

1) mechnical skills,(will it fit in the box)

2)Hardware skills ( Will the input connector be electcally protected from say 12V AC on a 5V input)

2a) more hardware skills in designing the electronic stuff outside of the processog, 74HC logic, PAL/GAL logic arrays

3) software skills, writing not just the main progam but test progarms for the hardware, eg LCD drivers

4) defining what the client actually wants, not what he said!

hope this helps

martin

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