[time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Mon Jul 7 01:51:07 EDT 2008


> A very minimal controller might be an AVR Butterfly.  It only has a 6
> character display and joyswitch.  Rather not up to the task,  but dirt
> cheap (around 20 bucks).  It could display a minimal go/nogo type of
> indication. 

Do you actually need a display?

How about a LED or 3.  My straw man is:
  off - no power
  on - OK
  blink - trouble

You can convey a few bits of information with only one LED.  Just encode a 
small integer in the number of blinks.  Code 3 would go:
  blink, blink, blink, pause
  bling, blink, blink, ...


Yes, it's fun to show more information, but if you really want to see more, 
you probably want to collect that data so you can track things over weeks or 
months, and you probably have a PC already doing that.


-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.






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