Re: Open-Source Spectrometer

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 8:58 PM, John Griessen <john@industromatic.com> wrote:
> On 11/16/2011 04:58 PM, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
>>
>> Yeah the raspberry pi has come up before on my end, but
>
> A big reason to use it is it solves your want for display, GUI, and
> standard linux app running quite well without you changing it a bit,

it has no display, so not sure what you're talking about there...
linux is standard, and building GUIs is quite simple... what standard
linux app are you referring to?

> and at a fabulous price.  Don't even care how open or hackable it becomes,

I and others definitely care about it being hackable... I have a lot
of faith in TI products, can get all the info I want/need on them...
they're a huge company that also sells millions upon millions of
chips, so that Broadcom isn't open with their materials is very
discouraging (for me to invest time in their product)

> just use
> it, and connect a Teensy to it by SPI and not even use up one of it's
> fancy ports.  Selling a lab instrument with ethernet or not is just ordering
> an R-Pi model A or B.  Let the serdes functions for the CCD image chip get
> done by
> a Teensy or an Econotag and add your hardware hacks there.
> Limit yourself to linux development, scripting and the like
> on the credit card sized R-Pi board and be way ahead.
>
> In case you switch to a camera image sensor instead of a line sensor,
> R-Pi is planning a camera interface version next year. (That's not a
> daughter card,
> it's a re-spin of the board design)
>
> Designing and fabbing a board with BGA chips and linux bring up would
> probably
> sink you or me before enough money came in to pay for it.  The R-Pi folks

I and the main EE on this project both work with a company that does
this all the time, we know the costs involved. That's specifically why
I'd rather buy a beagleBone and design a daughter board for it.

> understand they need to sell cheap -- they're selling to education buyers.
> DIYbio is similar -- very cheap oriented, so your budget to sell a
> spectrometer
> is much better if you don't burn $150 on electronics bill of materials

but the competiton is still more than an order of magnitude greater
cost... still winning whether electronics are $50 or $150

> and have a decent case for your machine.  Many sales depend more on the
> look of the box than what's in it.  Many people are not comfortable
> with a box that is wood with spectrometer burned on it and rectangular --

openPCR is in wood and it looks great! Our box was a test that we
threw together in 15 minutes, its in no way representative of a final
enclosure.

> they want more industrial design like Apple sells.  The case should be 3D
> printed curvy parts -- could be done on a makerbot, which makes rough
> output,
> if smoothed up with paint.  Colorful sells also.  The kickstarter is about
> expired,
> but you can probably get approved for another one.
>

I'm all for looking nice, but a case is a case... its not part of the
function critical to the instrument function

> JG

--
Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics

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