Putting 15V at 1A through a linear regulator to get 3.3V makes mother nature cry.

And you can probably use the regulator in place of a power LED

I hope this isn't too off-topic even for Bar Sport but I hope I can get some advice.

A friend of mine wants to set up a video surveillance system at their business.  They're looking into the normal commercial options -- a digital recording box, 4-8 cameras that plug into the box, and a monitor.  But they're looking at $4-6000 for such a set up.  

I want to suggest a more DIY and cost-effective solution.  A nice quality 1600x1200 web-cam goes for $150 now, so even 8 of those are only $1200.  But my problem is finding suitable software to run the system.  There is a ton of freeware to $50 shareware out there, but all they seem to do is give motion detection and then snap images to store locally or via ftp.

Does anyone know of software the gives the same functionality as a commercial system...basically record the 8 video streams whenever something is happening, give good playback and search controls (the main thing that's missing on what I've seen), and allow remote monitoring via the internet.

Also I imagine with 1 TB hard drives under $100, I should have no trouble storing 8 cameras worth of data for a month, but if anything does happen, I want it to be very easy to package up the relevant video and burn a record to DVD.

Thanks.

I'm not sure why having to look at a serial port in 2009 would bother someone; even if it is outdated, to be actively bothered by it seems surprising to me.  

It is like tracing one roots. If that were bad, why would we have museums?

Hi Seeedstudio.  I meant I didn't know how you made a profit at 1 (or 3) boards for $10 which I assume is why you discontinued it.  But your current options are still fantastic.

I don't understand how the open source option can work though.  Even if I want to take that option, when I submit my board order, I don't have pretty documentation explaining how it works, how to assemble it, or what the firmware should look like.  So it seems like there would be a very limited market for a "mystery board" even with the schematic posted.

And there's always little mistakes on a "first draft", so my board might require cutting a few traces here, soldering a few jumpers there, etc.  If it's my design, it's my hardship which is fine, but that must make it a lot harder to sell it to someone else.

Aha, just looked at Seeedstudio - it's not that simple - seems to be a $250 initial outlay for new designs doh

I've used Seeedstudio a few times.  It is $50 for 10 boards...no other initial outlay.  And you can get away with $30 for 5 boards if you give them permission to try and resell the other 5.  Considering those options I really can't understand why one would be $30 for a single board from batchPCB.  It's always good to have a spare anyway in case you screw up the assembly too bad and even if you have a few traces wrong you can patch it.

Originally they had a 1 board for $10 deal (and they actually sent me 3 which I thought was very nice of them) but I just dont' see how it's possible for them to make a profit on a deal like that, so I'm happy enough with the 10 for $50 offering.

fwiw, the boards fromt them are very high quality, comparable to the Arduino Diecimillas I've got except green instead of blue.

Seeedstudio's propaganda service.  10 boards for $50 up to 4x4 inches, double sided with double sided silk screen and solder mask.  

I placed my order and there was a lot of things out of stock.  I'm not going to remember everything, but...
the RGB light strips, the ATmege328, and the Wii nunchuck adapter come to mind right away.   There were other things I wanted too.

You are welcome to take the complete Arduino plans and make and sell it.  What you can't do is use the name Arduino on it which this person has done.

It is not an authorized copy, it's someone ripping it off.

Just in case it wasn't clear.  It's a copycat made from the publicly available Arduino Mega referrence files, not a genuine board that they bought wholesale.

Of course there's nothing wrong with doing it that way since it is open source, except that they shouldn't be using the Arduino name.

You'd have the actual program in one file, and you'd have a separate little short file that contained the commands needed to compiler the program (sort of like a .BAT file.)

Oh yes, the joys of makefiles.  I made it through 4 years with a makefile I copied from someone in first year, just making minimal changes for each assignment.

It does remind me of the time after a 36 hour coding session, 2 hours before an assignment was due, I was cleaning up the directory to get it ready for submission.  When I typed "rm *.bak" to erase my backup files, I managed to hit enter before the period so I executed "rm *" and had ".bak" on the next line.  

To relate to the OP, I usually use 1-pin pieces of male header connectors to make test points on my prototyping board and I have a bad habbit of not labelling them.  On one board I hadn't touched for 6 months, I went to power it and applied power to the +5V pin after my regulator rather than the Vin pin before my regulator.  I put 9 volts on everything that was supposed to get 5 volts.  Luckily the only casualty was the ATmega which was socketed.  So what could have been a 15 hour mistake was just a $4 mistake

I ordered it in kit form thinking it might make a nice intro-to-smt kit.  I really bit off more than I can chew.  I spent about 5 minutes staring at it and decided not even to attempt it.  I put it all back in the shipping bag where it's been sitting for a couple of months.  It did come with everything the assembled one does like the front and back panels.

It's still in perfect condition exactly as it was shipped.  Think I'd have any luck trying to resell it?

Edit:  Also, about the picture, did you use a light tent?  I've had pretty decent results without (using an off-camera speedlight bouncing off the background), but I do sometimes have trouble with the shadow.

Does anyone know where I can get a thermal fuse in small (single unit?) quantities at decent shipping prices?

The blown fuse is marked 216 degrees C, 10 Amp, 250V.  And it has the part numbers "SF214E" and "C0655".  

Digikey has one that matches the temperature, current, and voltage, and it's only 34 cents, but you have to buy 1000.

Thanks.

A spot of market research then, if you don't mind...

One simple project I have finished on a breadboard right now I'm looking to finish nicely is a wireless trivial buzzer receiver.  Hardwarewise, it's an IR receiver, an RGB LED, a piezo beeper, and batteries.   When it receives an IR code, it lights the RGB a colour depending on the code, sounds the buzzer for a second, delays several more seconds and then turns off the LED and waits for a new IR code.  

For the enclosure I want as small a form factor as possble, somewhere to mount the IR receiver with as wide a viewing angle as possible, and somewhere to mount the LED with a diffuser.  At the moment I'm looking at a very over-sized project box which makes the LED look dinky and I still don't know what to do about the IR receiver.

As far as paying, I am prepared to, but it is a one-off project so I wouldn't want something with lots of upfront fees and that really limits the budget.

My bigger issue is enclosure aesthetics.  I can't get my finished projects to look good.

I would love for the arduino core to be more welcoming for different hardware.

What would be the benefit of that?  

Arduino is quite streamlined, every board has pretty much the same CPU, same basic functionality, etc.  If you start supporting different hardware, you open a huge can of worms.  For example, which libraries work with which cores?  And you can't expect an open source contributor to test their libraries with every permutation it should work with.  Add to that extra bloat in the environment and maybe the bootloader, and you have a much less efficient platform.

It's like the difference between Mac and PC.  PC's support a huge selection of hardware and software including a ton of legacy support, but that contributes a lot of bloat and system overhead.  Macs have a very small selection of compatible hardware and software, but not having to support so much makes it a much more streamlined environment.