Re: First post: best place for this?

Anthony:

Thank you for giving a decent response. While I once fancied myself a
"designer", and even pursued an AAS from CIE, I'm now just a poor guy
stuckk in the past wondering what that fourth lead is doing on a
transistor case! I used to be able to sling solder with the best of
them, but when they started making resistors small enough to fit in
the eye of a needle I gave up!

I've just got a few things I thought might make life easier for me,
and for anyone else of like mind. Unfortunately, there seem to be
rather a few "different" minds lurking here. I appreciate the help,
and I'll look at those controllers and such.

Cheers!
Ed

On Apr 13, 10:37 am, "Anthony Fremont" <spam-...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ed wrote:
Many moons ago, I was an electronics repairman in the military. Most
tubes had been replaced by then with solid state, which of course was
gaining wide use in the commercial world! I was a dabbler in
circuitry, and devoured the TTL Cookbook I bought at Radio shack along
with any component I wanted.

25 years later, Radio Shack is something different and so is
electronics. I'm sure E=IR still works, but I'm not sure what they do
with it any more! The most I get to do with "electronics" is change a
ballast in a flourescent light! Everything seems to be programmed -
well, I dabble in VB6 and VBA macros, but that's it. But I've got a
couple of things I'd like to see if I can cobble together, and I'm
wondering if this is a good place for me to start.

Two projects right now:

Project 1: A digital metronome of sorts. A footswitch that would
count the time intervals between successive taps of my toe, average
the times, and flash a light at that interval. That would connect to
a unit by my hand that would have buttons to increase and decrease the
time interval counts. I also want a number pad for direct entry of a
number that would set a "beat time".

I'm figuring I would need a stable frequency generator of some kind
into a pulse counter. A tap on the foot button would zero the counter
and open a gate for about 10 seconds - within that time, every
successive tap would capture the number of pulses between taps and
increment a tap counter, add the count to the previous one and divide
by the number of taps to get the average. The average is fed into a
counter that flashes a light after this many pulses.

So far, not bad. I did things of that sort with 555s and TTL up/down
counters. But adding and averaging weren't included. And now I want
buttons that will increment that count by a plus or minus, and I want
to directly enter a count. Which means I also need a display, and I
need a circuit to convert whatever the actual pulse count is into
something meaningful in my world, and convert my entered number into a
pulse count the unit can deal with.

Am I out of my league yet?

Project 2: A comparative thermostatic controller for an attic fan. I
live in the Arizona desert and want a fan in my attic to cool things
down up there. If I set it for say 120 degrees, the thing will run
day and night for months! So I'd lke to compare the attic temp to the
ambient temp, trigger it on when the attic raises maybe 20 degrees
above and shut off when the temps are even.

I have looked up temperature chips on the internet, but I've never
worked with any. I imagine there would be voltage comparators and
flip-flops (do they still use those?) to control the on/off.

So how are we doing? Should I be here for help with these? Or over
in the "wishful thinking" group?

Although it's debatable, maybe you should have asked this in
sci.electronics.basics. That aside, it doesn't bother me any at all. :-)
Sounds like you have a decent understanding of programming so you might be
interested in learning to use microcontrollers. I haven't used one, but the
Picaxe is a popular item with people starting out in the microcontroller
world. I primarily use assembler and "regular" PIC chips.

http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/www.microchip.comis the maker of the PIC line of microcontrollers

You might also be interested in the BASIC stamp. http://www.parallax.com/
But, I suspect with your past experience that you will quickly exceed it's
capabilities and want something faster. I'm not knocking it, but it's kind
of an expensive way to go if you dedicate the processor to a project. PIC
chips can be had for under $2 in singles, much cheaper.

These are not one-time-use devices. They can be reprogrammed many thousands
of times.

There are tons of other microcontrollers besides PICs, but that is what I
use, so that is what I tend to recommend.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


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