Re: gEDA-user: Re: Soldering irons

[Karel Kulhavý <clock@twibright.com>]

On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 11:54:31AM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2004, at 10:41 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:
> >>What is the oven controller good for?
> >
> >Furnace controller.  It controls the heat and A/C throughout the
> >house.  Running central air on tilt switches is a fast path to a blown
> >compressor (I'm on my second, but this one has a 10 minute delay on
> >it, which is inefficient).  Plus my existing thermostats have a
> >hysteresis feature that works well in heating season, but it's
> >backwards in cooling season - the A/C stays on for only a few seconds
> >sometimes.  Plus, it runs the A/C even when it's cold outside.
> >
> >All in all, I needed something smarter.  The main board replaces the
> >relay board in the furnace, the little boards will go into new
> >thermostats, and I have a small PC that will connect to it all and
> >control it.
> 
>   You're doing all that work coming up with the ultimate homebrew 
> control system, then you're gonna use a PC to control it?  DJ, 
> DJ...Sigh. ;)

What if the PC gets stuck up due to some bug in CPU (closed source),
motherboard (closed source), BIOS (closed source) or SMPSU not correctly
handling power glitch (closed source)?

Now it's time to do two things:
1) increase PCB max. layer count from 8 to 256 (we could leave it on 32,
however have another problem when technology creeps up to the point when 40-layer
boards will be done).
2) start doing free technology motherboard (yes I know it's difficult, we have
to have mounting holes at the exactly same places as there are pegs in the ATX
case :-D )

I have had problems with my newly bought PC that took 2 months to resolve. I am
starting having feeling that going to shops just stopped to pay out. I admit I
won't have a motherboard design complete in two months, however, if someone
does it instead of me, it will definitely take less than two months to have it
manufactured (21 days for me) and maybe I'll make it in two months with manual
population ( now after DJ's explanations I don't fear the tiny pitch
motherboard chips anymore ;-) )

However it's interesting the guy who wrote a really good DOS GCC port I have
been using when I was younger boy (about 17-18 years old) emerged in my life
once again, talking about a ready-made home furnace controller.

I can say it used to be great fun with DJGPP - I have been writing primitive
graphics demos in it, even statistical evaluation soft for some firm, basically
programming was equal DJGPP for me in those times (prior I moved on to Linux
where I'm still).

I would like to exploit it too, however
1) don't have a house
2) don't have a furnace

Cl<
> 
>          -Dave
> 
> -- Dave McGuire             "...it's a matter of how tightly Cape Coral, FL
> you pull the zip-tie."       -Nadine Miller
>