Fred

Hi. UK here too. Welcome to a very friendly and helpful forum.

Whilst I'm here, I had an unusual day today. UK comedian Ross Noble dropped round to my house with a TV crew to ask me about my NFC implant! He did a series a while ago called Freewheeling where he was led to random things by Twitter. Well worth checking out. Anyway, series 2 will be on in December / January. I'll have to wait until then to see if I made the cut. He left my place to go find a taxidermist who stuffs mice into positions doing things like reading newspapers.

Thanks. I was starting to worry that the only awards I had were ones that nobody else did. I now feel in good company.

These are just guesses, I'd have thought the XY position would be OK if there's one mask for the whole wafer (with a repeated and almost identical section for each IC). Maybe there's a second overlaid mask for the wafer ID.

I'm working on a reflow oven project. I wanted to keep all the mains voltage safely contained, so the triac/PSU part of it sits inside the oven casing. Whilst testing just this bit I set the oven on and just let it go, partly to see if the temperature inside the oven case (which can reach about 50C) would cause any trouble. Anyway, this is what 280C does to a PCB that the thermocouple was attached to. It's only a little bit over reflow temperature, so I want expecting all the smoke and black gunk dripping out! The PCB was one of the daughter boards that came with RobG's nanopad. Sorry, Rob

Suggested donations seem like the easiest way to get some benefit from jobs on 43oh, especially if there aren't many anyway. However, we should all consider what we get out of this site whether it's as obvious as some paid work or not. Have a think about how you personally have benefited. How does the help you've got here for free compare to (for instance) a copy of MSP430 Microcontroller Basics? And then there the contests, giveaways, etc. There's a donate button. It may not get pushed at you, but maybe we should all think about giving it a click. Actually - I know there was a donate button

Smart meters are there entirely to suit the company that supplies them. The idea that consumers benefit is just marketing fluff. They save money on sending or someone to read the meter and they can cut off the supply remotely of you don't pay the bill.

@ReiVilo @@adrianF I get what Arduino/Energia is and what it does. (I even tried Energia recently.) I understand the benefits and I'm all for making life and coding easier. For instance I find Grace a real timesaver and I'm not ashamed to admit getting some help setting up my peripherals. I always say "of course, that's obvious" when I see the Grace code but know I'd spend a while frustrated if I did it all from scratch myself. However for Arduino I just think that the benefits are outweighed by the drawbacks. Breakpoints and debugging are so useful that it's too much of a loss. Also if y

That sounds really useful. I've always been confused as to why Arduino/Energia was so popular with an essential feature like debugging completely missing.

Just got this from TI. Nice to see they're looking after people who are keen on their kits.

I like Grace - it's a real time saver when you jump to a device and want to get peripherals set up quickly. However, once it has done its work, you have C code that you can do what you like with. Why not take the relevant code that Grace has generated and move it to wherever suits you? This will mean a manual step if you run Grace again, but I find it's not something you need to do once you're done with the initial configuration work. The other alternative is to put custom code in the Grace-generated files between the "your code goes here" comments. This may or may not be able to do what

There's also TI's generous sample policy which can cut costs considerably if you only want 1 or 2.

I'm getting an error at www.43oh.com. I'm sure it just means that @@bluehash is in the middle of updating something, but thought I should mention it. ForbiddenYou don't have permission to access /index.php on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

As it looks like Microsoft's version of the Galileo comes with Windows Embedded, standard windows drivers should work.

Ah - so it is more windows embedded than microframework.

The .NET framework definitely doesn't suit things where you need real time control. Your C# code gets compiled to IL and is interpreted (with garbage collection). It's more than capable of handling your "average" Arduino-level project though. I've had a Netduino Plus managing the lighting and door in my garage without missing a beat for 3 years. It's running a small webserver, serving up simple pages and responding to REST URLs, so it's providing its own UI. The big plus is it is comfortable for someone like me (a C# developer - and there are a lot of us around) to get into microcontrolle

As far as numbers go, found this on Twitter by stevetex. (Not sure how to link to a tweet when I can't use Twitter at work. Can't even be sure the image link works either.) (Link fixed by cubeberg two posts down) | | V

I been doing some digging but not getting too much info. Apparently the hardware is a standard Galileo - so I'd have thought you could put it back to Linux/Arduino settings if you wanted. I wasn't sure whether to expect this to have .NET microframework on it or Windows Embedded, but have now seen some strong hints that it'll be .NET microframework.

If there are small vias on both sides, could you run a fine wire (maybe a single strand from some multicore wire) through both, twist it together and then solder over the top? It would add more strength against pulling the segments apart and less against flexing them, but should work OK. If you really want strength, maybe do this and the straight header pin.

Clock? I thought that was a tie. ;-) Now you won't be able to unsee it.

Mathieu Stephan over at Hackaday has also just got one. We are taking over the world!

Awesome! Although you realize this now means that I have to assimilate you all.

(Tried to quote @@jpnorair. Anyone else have problems with quote?) The .NET framework for Linux is Mono. I remember it as being someone's hobby project, but a colleague tells me that Microsoft are now actively supporting this. The .NET microframework is significantly cutdown compared to the full .NET framework (but still has a lot). Strangely the microframework is interpreted compared to the full framework which is JIT compiled. You'd really think that this would be the case where full native compilation would make sense. I also found it odd that when asked what dev boards you had e

I signed up and it does look like they're sending out boards. I'm a C# developer by trade so I actually got started on the Netduino before shifting over to MSP430, etc. I had heard they're were planning a new push on the .NET microframework. I'm planning to do a session on microcontrollers for my fellow C# coders soon. (They've seen my F5529 based Darth Vader build monitor at work.) If they can get some freebies to get them started in a familiar environment it might be useful.

If anyone's interested, the booster pack can just about read the implanted glass tag if it's pressed right against the PCB antenna track. In the centre of the coil doesn't work at all. I have found a cheap eBay reader that has a slightly better range. I wonder whether a smaller antenna might actually work better with the small tag. I mighty try some antenna designs if I get a chance but I guess it isn't basic stuff for a PCB newbie like me.