Hi pic heads, While I've been subscribed for about 2 months, and even commented here=20 and there, I haven't given anyone an idea what I'm about. I am=20 currently a GoL or Gentleman of Leisure. I spent the last 15 years=20 working for a startup, FitSense, which hasn't quite started up. In=20 fact, it merged with another slightly larger startup, FitLinxx. =20 FitLinxx ended up having some vacancies to fill, and I got one of them. =20 Unfortunately, the vacancy was not engineering related, and I bailed out=20 of the company. Some said I was foolish to do so, telling me we all had=20 to do things we didn't want to. But you can't put a square peg in a=20 round hole, and I hated being treated like a peg of any shape. FitSense used PIC processors almost exclusively, due to low power and=20 adequate performance. Flash either wasn't available, or was too=20 expensive, so the development process involved using an ICE for bench=20 work, and UV erasable EPROM versions for testing that needed to be done=20 off the bench. No ICD back then, pull the chip, stick it in the UV box,=20 then the programmer, then the target board socket. We used a 44 pin C=20 series PIC in a PLC package for a some low volume projects. Firmware=20 upgrades (bug fixes) meant carefully snipping the pins, sweeping up the=20 remains with solder wick, and soldering the new version on. FitSense developed a first to market, shoe mounted speed/distance=20 monitor for runners, the FitSense FS-1. They turn up on on ebay.once=20 in a while. It included a wristwatch designed and built by FitSense. =20 It wasn't a huge seller, but it and a steady stream of contract jobs=20 kept the company afloat. Then, we sold the technology to Nike, and the=20 Nike+ iPod product was the result. The licensing was such that Nike=20 would stick to the performance market for runners, and FitSense was able=20 to still use the technology for health and wellness markets, and the=20 result is the Actiped. While the FS-1 was event oriented, where you=20 needed to push buttons on the watch to log an event, then push more to=20 get the data from the watch to the PC which transferred it to a web=20 database, the Actiped is an all-day logger. When it comes in RF contact=20 with a PC running the Actihealth client, the data is automagically=20 offloaded and posted to the ActiHealth web site. I designed hardware, wrote firmware and PC software to set up devices=20 and offload them, and even designed a baseboard for an ARM processor,=20 and used Linux to test the proof of concept before it was turned over to=20 FitLinxx software dept, which used WinCE for the final product, the=20 FitLinxx Training partner. I worked on most of the products at=20 . I even did business=20 with Olin's company, when I specified a budget programmer=20 for production. I chose it=20 because we needed a serial number embedded in the product and with the=20 programming specification available, I wrote the software to program the=20 firmware and serial number. I didn't use the Embed Inc software=20 libraries, as it was quicker to just write the app I needed for the one=20 task at hand than learn the (probably excellent) Embed dev But the topic line is Kit DSOs. I still have an old Tektronix 453 with=20 phosphor "storage", and it works, but sure takes up bench space and is=20 not easily portable. So, after I left FitLinxx, I bought a DSO kit=20 from SparkFun and assembled it. I didn't know it at the time, but I was=20 in a gradual mental / physical meltdown that led to 5 hospitalizations=20 for diabetic ketoacidosis and a lot of bad decisions. I had a hard time=20 assembling some simple box furniture due to some cognitive problems. I=20 replaced 2 laptop screens due to dragging them off the table by tripping=20 on the cords. And I messed up the DSO kit assembly. Now it's about a year after the meltdown and I'm picking up the pieces=20 and a few days ago, I pulled the LCD off the kit DSO=20 and re-soldered the=20 20 pin connector to the right holes. And found where I had left out=20 some components and added some of them (still need a high voltage non=20 polarized 0.1 uF cap for AC mode). The short of the long is, the jytech scope looks useable, though there=20 are better ones available now, as seen here in recent threads. I used=20 it to check out some RS-232 traffic which I'm generating with Visual C++=20 Express. My former windows programming environment was Borland Builder,=20 and it's old, the system it's installed on is old, and I don't have a=20 key to put it on another machine. That was long winded, and it really was a short version. I've got=20 projects I want to work on, but need to just about start at ground zero=20 with respect to tools, techniques, vendors, etc. --=20 Joe Wronski Stillwater Embedded Engineering www.stillwatereng.net --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .