Rich man EFIE

[TheOne]

Does the board come with the chip or you need to solder the chip on it, or clip it?

Sound like a good processor to use, If I understand correctly you can plug the USB directly in the board and program the chip directly without the need of a external device like I use for my PIC chip?

Do you have good info about how to use the PWM for accurate voltage, I find some info but not enough to understand and control the voltage that I need.

Sylvain

[Yucca]

The board comes with a chip programmed with bootlader already in a DIL socket.

You just plug the board into your PC with standard USB cable and program, compile and download using the free IDE. I have worked in industry as an embedded system engineer, with 68HC11, PIC, ATMEGA etc, it was always quite involved setting up IDE and programmers etc. especially for 68HC11, it was all command line stuff. but with Arduino you just plug it in and go, it really is easy!

I just use as fast PWM as I can generate, I get 8 bit resolution at about 100KHz PWM, then just use that PWM to charge up a ceramic cap that you leak to ground, depending on the impedance of your load you have to tweak R&C. If you have a scope itÂÃ,´s just a matter of experimenting with R&C. Then if you want only 0 to 1 v range just use a potential divider, so two leak resistors instead of one or use a trimpot with the cap leaking across the whole track.

[infringer]

I read on www.hackaday.com a while back that errr I forget his name but he does tons of hacks on hardware and all good ones...

He what you seek to achive with an atmel mcu dont recall which one it was most likely one of the more common ones used in robotics or something...

I make no promises as I am no EE but just giving a possible direction.

-infringer-

[TheOne]

24$(LCD) + 28$(Freeduino) + 11$(ProtoShield) + 24$ (shipping) = 87$, its quite high just for making a EFIE in my opinion!

Hum not sure if its that so good, its cost so much, my cheap pic proto did not cost that much!

[Yucca]

24$(LCD) + 28$(Freeduino) + 11$(ProtoShield) + 24$ (shipping) = 87$, its quite high just for making a EFIE in my opinion!

Hum not sure if its that so good, its cost so much, my cheap pic proto did not cost that much!

Yep it's fairly expensive in dollars, more like a rich mans efie!

You would get good volume discount off the board makers and they do free international delivery on orders over $600 so I think each unit would cost more like $50 ... 60$. I think you would have no problem getting $100 for each device, especially now the dollar is so weak on the international markets. Also bear in mind that the freeduino route would enable all device owners to upgrade their firmware just by using a USB printer cable on their PCs, a definite plus point, it makes the device very attractive.

Any way best of luck with it if you do decide to take your device to market.

Fraser.

P.S.
Stefans idea of flow rate transducer and realtime MPG display would make the device a real big seller I'm sure.