I have had some requests from people wanting to control their 1st Gen LivingColors via RS232. The current solution is just a shield on an Arduino and it would not make sense to build something on an other platform.
Of course, i could make it all mote complicated by combining the CC2500 shield with a serial shield but that would require some hacking.
The first versions of the Arduino used a serial port to communicate with the PC via RS232. Pieter Floris still had a couple of these boards in store. Instead of making the solution more complicated i could then make the solution quite simple.
The serial Arduino
I assembled the board myself so I cannot blame the people from Arduino for all the hacking needed, the crystal could have been a lower model. The 7805 on the BOM is in a TO220 however. Without rasing the connectors the shield is never going to fit.
Side view of the serial arduino plus CC2500 shield
It seems the whole “shields” concept did not exist when the first Arduinos were built.
With some compromises the shield fits..
A serial LivingColors controller.
And works.
I have tested it and I can now control the LivingColors via RS232. No changes in de software or the shield are needed.
Generating 3D views of Cadsoft Eagle projects can be done with Eagle3D. Eagle3D generates POV-Ray scrips from Eagle PCB’s. The board and parts can then be rendered in POV-Ray. I have done this to make pretty pictures of the Arduino CC2500 shields.
The problem with Eagle3D is that it only generates images. The 3D design cannot be edited and the data can not be used for manufacturing.
A logical solution is to generate a 3D CAD file that can be edited and can be used for manufacturing. The popular choice for product design in the “maker scene” is Google Sketchup. It is extendable in Ruby, and there are are extensions available to export to 3D printers (see Shapeways and Ponoko) and lasercutters via Inkscape and the Faces-to-SVG plugin (see Ponoko).
Gumstix
The people behind the Gumstix have done some work on Eagle – Sketchup integration. Documentation is a bit sketchy and the latest projectfiles are from 2009.
There are a couple of problems with the Eagle – Sketchup integration.
Precision.
Google Sketchup uses inches as 64 bit floats, precise enough for product design, but has an internal fixed 1 mil (0.0254 mm) tolerance. Faces and lines cannot have points that are closer to each other than this 1 mil tolerance. It is not really in the manual but I found a confirmation here : http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=25175&p=219030&hilit=precision#p218989
To avoid this issue the EagleUp author scales the design x 1000. That will not matter for the pictures but it could complicate manufacturing and combining parts.
Parts.
Eagle3D has a huge amount of parts available, Matthias Weißer made it possible to make a part parametric and uses one model for say, all pin headers with 4 up to 50 pins. EagleUp parts are Sketchup models and there are only a few available.
(This is a rewrite of an older (2006) post that still seems to getting some traffic. If you are looking for a camera module there are probably better or easier to use alternatives now.)
The module is intended for the Samsung E700 but as the module is cheap (or can be removed from a cheap second hand E700) and the specs are available it is a great module to connect to a microcontroller. David Carne has written a manual, the original is gone.
