Electronic Projects

Decades of professional system/software engineering and lots of real-time/embedded work have provided great background to various personal projects over the years.

Now, armed with the Eagle schematic/layout tool and with some really cheap printed circuit board fabricators, I'm executing projects in etch rather than wirewrap. The navigation links to the left go to various categories of projects, some of which have the design files posted for use by others.

For the Eagle software: http://www.cadsoft.de (operates on Windows, Linux, and Mac). There is a Light, Standard, and Professional edition. The Light edition is available in freeware, non-profit, and registered versions.

For small size, small quantity printed circuit board fabricators (2 layers with silk screen both sides):

http://batchpcb.com ($10 fee plus $2.50/square inch, plus shipping/mailing)
http://iteadstudio.com/store/ (current special $13.90 delivered for qty 10 5cmx5cm boards)

To view the Gerber design files before sending off to a fabricator, I use ViewPlot, a free viewer for Windows.

Embedded microprocessor tools:

for Atmel 89C series (8051): AT89LP Developer Studio
for 8051: MetaLink ASM51 assember, used with Visual Studio projects on Windows Vista (uses NMAKE files to apply the ancient ASM51 DOS assembler)
for PIC: Microchip MPLAB v8.70 and PICkit 2.61 (PICkit2 h/w)
a very old Xeltek Superpro/L EPROM/device programmer (DOS software) with a Win98 machine host

(and some other old tools that require Win98 or DOS)

U.S. parts vendors for personal projects: (web presence, good technical info, will take small orders from individuals, regular industrial distributorships)

Mouser Electronics (HQ in Mansfield, TX)
Newark/Element 14 (HQ in Chicago, IL)
Digi-Key (HQ in Thief River Falls, MN)