Alice,
I have been away from home this past week or I would have
sent an e-mail sooner.

Congratulations on the successful completion of the Al-o-Tron
Mark 1 landfill datalogger!!!

>From your e-mail it sounds like you have been very busy
(enthusiastically busy, which is the best kind of busy-ness there
is!!).

I was pleasantly suprised to see my name amongst the list of persons
you extended special thanks to. Thanks for the thanks :)  It always
makes my day when I discover that my posts have been helpful to
someone.

If I can ever be of further assistance in any way, please do not
hesitate to ask.

Now that you have the project finally running you get to have the
joy of "modifying" it! The company LINEAR makes a number of decent
switching power supply ICs, as does MAXIM. In fact, your greatest
difficulty will probably not be in finding adequate ICs, but in
choosing which one to use!

Fr. Tom McGahee

----------
> From: Alice Campbell <1502amc@LO.SCSENG.COM>
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: results:  the Project that Ate my Brain
> Date: Wednesday, July 07, 1999 4:08 AM
>
Hello all,

My first pic project hits the street (well, a dump) tomorrow or the
next day.  I owe it all to you guys.

For the record, it took about 1 year from concept to the
Al-o-Tron Mark 1 landfill datalogger.  Armed only with enthusiasm and
a ham radio license, i learned to program the 16c84 in assembly,
including watchdog timeouts, using reset as interrupt, and
designed the circuit, including 8-bit adc 0831, memory 93c56, figured
out how to make the 33khz crystals work, wrote a 300-baud serial
interface, hooked in a 15 psi sensym pressure sensor, learned to
create a temperature compensation circuit for it, built my first
instrumentation amplifier, built an infrared link that doesnt work
too well yet, produced my first circuit board, and put in a s81350hc
ldo regulator.  i plan to upgrade the adc to 12 bits when i locate an
8-pin one.  It runs off 9volts because thats all i know how to do
yet, but when i figure out switchers i will change it to 2AAs.

This has been an incredible experience.  I couldnt have done it
without you.  Special thanks to

David Tait
Dave Johnson
Don Mckenzie
Glenn Torr
Jose Maria Goni
Paul Webster
Peter Peres
Regulus Berdin
Russel McMahon
Sean Breheny
Thomas Mcgahee
Tony Nixon
Wagner Lipnharski

its been an honor to eavesdrop on all you swells.
                clrwdt
hooray  its working
                 its working
                 its working
                 its working
                goto    hooray

end
alice