A year or so ago I asked this group if anybody knew of a local 
proto-board maker. I was playing with 8 bit Atmel-AVR microcontrollers, 
assembly language, freepascal on linux, and the RS232 port. There was 
one or two suggestions.

Then the Raspberry-Pi showed up about 10 steps more advanced with bells 
and whistles, using linux.

Now I'm playing with crummy timers (when used below 1 msec) and the 
wonderful XForms windowing library on linux. They (XForms) have a nice 
stripchart demo, and could be a great display signal-analyzer, but linux 
on a big motherboard has a timing mind of its own.

I'm still looking for cheap, slave, real time terminal proto-boards to 
control from a $100 p4 linux box. I don't know if the Raspberry Pi can 
run open-DOS?

But maybe I should instead consider hooking a Raspberry-Pi to a 
wheelchair so I can zone out watching 1960s TV shows and summon help at 
a nursing home.

Lots of fun seeing new people enjoy this great new hobby kit. A real winner.

Ubu Sumner wrote:
> Would you care to share your ideas for RPi projects?
>
> An idea I had was a garden weather station with responsive irrigation control.
>
> Seems as if the market's already there. Here's a very real list of gadgets for the garden written with a bit of tongue in cheek (everything from drones to scare away raccoons to e-pollinators to replace bees):
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/technology/personaltech/calling-on-gadgetry-to-keep-the-garden-growing.html
>
>
> (I am now wondering what automation would do to my interest in the gardening process!)
>
> And in an area I have even less experience, I've imagined a RPi controlled popcorn popper to custom roast coffee beans, heat sensor based and programmable.
>
> What's your nutty, or not so nutty project?
>
>
>
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