The Serial Bit Rate Converter runs an ARM7 CPU which is complete overkill for the simple job of relaying serial data. I’ve often thought I should redesign it to run a cheaper and less powerful CPU like a PIC or AVR. I originally designed it with an ARM7 simply because I like them and enjoy [...]

Finally I have all the parts and I spent last night assembling ten boxes to fill my first order. It looks not half bad.
Next I need to set up a web page and finalize pricing so anyone can buy one.
So what is a Volume Box I hear you ask? Well, the Volume Box is a [...]

The Volume Box board is assembled and tested, the last few firmware bugs are squished and the only thing missing now is the machined end panel for the plastic case and it is ready to sell!
Here are the lessons I have learned:
1. PICs can be a mighty pain in the bum to debug, particularly the [...]

I’ve finally taken delivery of my first batch of printed circuit boards for the Volume Box. They look real nice. As usual I got them from Gold Phoenix of Shanghai – The quality of the boards is pretty good and their prices are good for very small runs.
My chips and other parts have already arrived [...]

This is a bug fix release based on some user feedback I got. There are a whole bunch of little fixes including some problems with audio sync when playing videos and an issue with the seek bar if your media file was longer than 40 minutes.
There is no public bug-tracker for this software (yet) so [...]

I was setting up some eCommerce websites recently, maybe it was a combination of not enough sleep and too much coffee but I thought to myself, I wish that whenever I got a payment through PayPal, my PC would make a Ka-ching! noise.
So then I spent a couple of hours making a Windows Tray App [...]

One of my peeves about the electronics business is the poor availability of parts. I’d found this brilliant AP1115 power regulator from Diodes Inc. which I’ve been using for months in my RS232 Rate Converter but now, you can’t get them anymore. I haven’t found a supplier who stocks this part since June and my [...]

I had a bit of a surprise when looking at the traffic logs for the new Super Transcribe website. The site has been online for a few months but until now, it only showed a blank home page. I had not announced it or promoted it in any way.
I noticed that some web crawler had [...]

I’m about to start a beta release of my newest project. It is a transcription application for Windows called Super Transcribe.
I’ve been working on this for a few months now on and off in my spare time. The website supertranscribe.com is up and I’ll have the beta release on the site real soon now.

I’ve been working on a few things to improve the RS232 Bit Rate Converter. Here’s my new revision 3 circuit board.
There are some extra capacitors to smooth out a little noise I was getting in the serial data stream and I have also outsourced the machining of the end panels.
The changes are to eliminate some [...]