Software, The major holdup Options

[Da_Blitz]

Well as some of you may have noticed there hasent been much work as off late.

this is mainly due to the software issue, ie what pcb tools will i use. well i had a look at the "pcb" program on sf.net and it seems it now includes an autorouter, i dont know how good it is but ill give it a try. its still lacking features i "want" but i belive at thius point in time that i could do the project with the software in its current state

so basically it looks like gEDA and pcb forthe pcb and scehmatic software, this is probbelly a better thing than what i wanted to use as most peopel who are want to take a look wouldnt need to buy expensive software, but those people probelly wouldnt mind the pictures

i will give it a spin in the next couple of weeks, i have some free time coming up again so i think its time for the feature freze and some diagarms, at the least i will have the power supply up which should be "fault tollirent" unlike whatever they put in my Z , it should also be able to exceed 0.5A on the usb socket, not recomeneded of course but those who need a bit of surge power to jump start a usb drive will apreciate this.

i will try and design it for 0.7A @ 5v normally and 2A surge (basically using caps for the surge, if you dont need this feature then drop the caps but considering how they are less than a cent anyway i dont see the point)

if i get a chance i will knock up some of the pelimanary usb to iMX3 stuff and some of the support circitry (ie clocks and passives) as these always need to be double checked (you always forget somthing). this is somthing that a non technical person can do, just look at the page numbers i provide as refrence and double check the wiring looks the same in thier examples asit is in the pics i provide, and check the svalues are the same except where stated.

i will have to look at a couple of IO things as well, did anyone want a rs232 level serial port (12v to -12v) or ttl (5v to 0v), is an SPI header somthing that people want (ie add user sensors) and do you want i2c, if so a dedicated connection (ie no devices on the bus) or a shared one (cheaper for me, you only have to be careful that when you add a device you dont use an exsisting device)

some other features others may not have cconsidered, besides the gyroscope/accereometer would you like features like a compus? or teamprature?, i was thinking that a temp sensor on the cpu and an ambient one would be nice, easy to do with I2C. perhaps one near the battery and power supply would be advisable as well.

well thoughts and input people, this week is out but next week the holidays begin (much to my relief)

[Duncanla]

Wow, the archos 605 seems to be almost just what I want. I wouldn't hesitate for a second if there was open software for it. I really want something that I can hack around with and it would also be nice to have an open OS running on it so that I could play any media types that I want.