PIC like a microntroller? sounds a little over-the-top, I don't know. my digital electronics ain't that great. this doesn't sound that complicated though. maybe find a good book on electronics from Radio-shack or something. you just want a flag sent to your computer over the serial port?
oh wait... you want a digital rep of the actual voltage ? like umm.. 1001 for 9 degrees? then yeah, maybe a pic would be good...
haha I don't really know, but now I think I'd like to figure it out now. I've got too many geek interests... I just picked up a book on Python.
haha yeah man its one geek hobby to another kinda frustrating though i have so many unfished projects
PIC, programmable IC, small little guy I can flash with some assembler
I've done embedded work, but nothing quite this small of a footprint
Ill keep ya updated of progress
First tep would be to look for some ICs designed to measure voltage. or find an old digital multimeter and hack it. I'm all about the hardware hacks.
Ok yeah. I kind of have the idea already....
I'm taking the input of a piezo (measures velocity, 'how hard' it's been touched/hit) so that is in voltage
Take that line of voltage, sample with an A->D chip. Then that value needs to be pumped into the rs232 line by the PIC with some event messages, like start of text, end of text, the command, the value
Again what makes this easy is its a one shot.
I got all these other extended features I want too, but I gotta get this at least work first