Fantastic!

I just wanted to say a huge thank-you to everybody that made and continues to improve the Arduino platform. After struggling with other hobbyist development boards, I never believed microcontrollers could be made so easy and accessible. And I bet there are plenty of professionals for whom Arduino is the quickest way to get work done.

I love the ease of writing code in a powerful language I know well, and watching GCC squash it down to a few kilobytes. In the week since I got my first Uno board I have built

  • a laser-gated automatic camera trigger
  • a GPS clock and speedometer
  • and innumerable LED flashers with increasingly esoteric algorithms

So "thanks", everybody. For the first time in years, electronics is fun again!

Ha ha ha, you're showing of your programming skills. You plan on keeping the fun to yourself? Now where are the videos??? ]:slight_smile:

Showing off? I doubt the grizzled and scarred programmers of PIC-assembler will be impressed by anything I can do with my Arduino board. However they might be jealous that a soft-skinned C-programmer like me can tread on their toes.

But since I'm showing off, here's a picture of the GPS-clock. Above 1kph it switches to display speed, but you'll have to take my word for it. As you can see, right now the mobility is rather limited. Testing involves waving the GPS around on the end of its cable.

The little bit of electronics in the background is to convert RS232 to TTL logic levels, and to switch the GPS on if no data is detected.

Here's a bigger picture:

nice project - you should post the details. It's amazing what you can put together and get great results.

i can remember when i learned about ttl ics in the early 70s - it was a great leap forward. The arduino has been similar.