[dba-Tech] Has anyone kickstarted?

[John W. Colby]

I got my start in electronics back in the 70s.  By '76 I had built my 
first ucomputer with a cassete drive for storage and a dumb terminal for 
video.  In 1982 I built my own SBC from a kit - an 80186 with 512k ram 
and a dual 8" floppy running CPM86.

In the mid 90s I was hired to build a bill paying machine down in 
Mexico, using a PC running Windows and interfacing to a bar code scanner 
for the bill data, bill acceptor and coin acceptor and a dot matrix 
printer printing on rolls of paper for the receipt.  I basically did the 
entire design, from finding and buying the pieces and parts  to writing 
the database (in Access 2.0).

After that (same company) I built a debit card vending machine which ran 
on a Z-World SBC, interfaced to a bill acceptor, and vended a phone 
debit card using a motor driving a ram plate, with LEDs to sense vend 
position.  The data was stored internally and dumped to a commercial HHC 
over RS232.  Again I speced, researched, purchased and designed it all 
and wrote the vending code in C.  The prototyping and manufacturing was 
done by the company I was working for.  But we were a tiny little company.

Both of those machines actually went into production, though I am pretty 
sure neither is still in use today.

So I have the background to do ucontroller stuff.  Today's SBCs are in 
another universe compared to what I developed on back in the 90s though 
in fact they've just shrunk the same stuff down into a smaller space.  
The debit card vendor ran on a 20 mhz z80 with 256 K ram and some EARom 
to store stuff long term, sat on a 5x5 PCB, and cost $150 in 
quantities.  Today the Beaglebone Black has all the I/O and more, plus a 
gigahertz dual core with a gbyte RAM and runs Linux, and sits on a 
credit card PCB.  Woof!  And it costs $35 in unit quantities.  Atmel 
ucontrollers which would completely handle my little widget would cost 
$3.  Software for doing the schematics is now free.  Software for doing 
the PCB is now free.  Getting the PCB made is now waaaay low cost and 
can be done in very low quantities.  CAD for physical design is free or 
low cost.  3D Printers allow prototyping the physical (plastic) 
containers and are cheap, even to buy.  So getting a start-up running is 
just so much cheaper now than even 15 years ago.

Of course doing it all myself will be a lot of work.  But if I can come 
up with a working prototype and then use KickStarter to get it off the 
ground...

We'll see.

I could use a good retirement project.  Or a project that would allow me 
to retire.  Either one!!!

John W. Colby

On 3/13/2015 2:41 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote:
> Hi John:
>
> It does sound like a fun project for sure. Doing electronics is not my strong suit but if it works it will sure be useful. (I still have a soil testing kit...I wonder if this new product could replace it?)
>
> Aside: Maker labs are all the rage out here...There one at the local college which is shared by the university, two private ones that anyone can become a member of and I have a friend that has virtually every piece of equipment (he even has a full lath that can cut hierarchical gears (used in his home made electric car), a 3D computerized boring machine and a medium size 3D printer that came in a kit) and has rented out his facilities for various projects. My friend built a new battery for my lawn mower and it has been running for 5 or 6 years...(he estimates it will recharge up to 15 years and maybe more). My lawn mower is one of the articles in his next monthly news letter.
>
> Please keep me posted on your progress.
>
> Jim
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at gmail.com>
> To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>, jwcolby at gmail.com
> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 4:29:08 AM
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Has anyone kickstarted?
>
> The spectrum analyzer is on the way. I will likely be joining one of
> those "maker space" things, though there are none local so it will be a
> drive to get there.  That will give me access to 3D printers and such.
> I need to do a good prototype and do some extensive testing.  There is a
> lot of absorption spectrometry going on now that this inexpensive widget
> is available.
>
> It "feels" like this should work.  It is something that I personally
> want and would just pay for if it already existed.
>
> I have in fact found a company doing something similar, though they only
> test for hardness and Ammonia, not PH, Nitrate or Nitrite. They do cover
> water temp. logging etc.  Slickly packaged and a slick web page. Lots of
> add-ons and consumables to drive the price up. They also do what appears
> to be a submersible camera probe (extra cost add-on) to do light
> analysis at the bottom of the aquarium.
>
> All of which gives me hope that the idea does in fact have legs.  I have
> the programming chops to do computer analysis and automation.
>
> One way or the other it will be a fun project.
>
> John W. Colby
>
> On 3/13/2015 3:07 AM, Jim Lawrence wrote:
>> Hi John:
>>
>> This looks like a Kickstarter project that has legs. It is hardly as smooth a sales video as many of the most popular supported products but it would seem that a good video production individual could put a real professional presentation together.
>>
>> Jim
>>