Electronic Name Badges.

[John Van Ostrand]

On Sun, 2007-02-18 at 15:02 -0500, Colin McGregor wrote:
> - Is this a project that would be of general interest?
> - If this were to happen, each person would likely 
>   have to pay for his/her own badge (likely too 
>   expensive for GTALug to pay for), are people ok 
>   with this?

I'd be glad to pay for mine.

> - If so, is there a more cost effective LOW end 
>   controller option than the BASIC stamp

How about an existing finished product:

http://www.x-tremegeek.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?productID=11493
http://www.digibadge.com/DigiBadge_products.asp
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7c54/
http://www.alibaba.com/productsearch/Name_Badge.html

Or does it get cooler that this:

http://createdigitalmotion.com/2006/09/13/wearable-visuals-phillips-lumalive-led-embedded-fabrics-give-whiter-whites-and-brighter-colours/

But you can buy this:

http://www.tbuckles.com/index_files/Page435.htm


> The specs./prices on the stamp can be seen here:
> 
>   http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27100
> 
> There are a number of nice things going for the stamp,
> namely:
> 
> - fairly low cost
> - programmable in a high level language, BASIC
> - 8 I/O lines
> - On board 9v battery clips/voltage regulator
> - Low power consumption
> - Software development tools available for Linux 
>   (which I have not tried, the only tools avail     able 
>   when I did this were for MS-DOS...).
> 
> There are also some very real limitations:
> 
> - 256 bytes (NOT K bytes, bytes) of program storage,in
> 
>   EEPROM which must cover code and messages (the
> driver
>   program plus messages of up to about 170 character
>   can be stored in that space...).
> - The size of a 9v battery, which while not large is
>   bigger than ideal for this application.
> 
> In other words the ideal controller would have the
> same pluses (though cheaper would be nice), much more
> EEPROM space, and smaller. Also, while the 8 I/O lines
> is enough (I could feed data out to the LCD screen 4
> bits at a time, thus allowing for the control lines),
> 11 I/O lines could make the code simpler...
> 
> Ideas folks?

Building one sounds like a fun project but some may simply want to
purchase the finished product.

However, this could be pretty cool if you could do it:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/feature/exclusive-sew-smart-diy-led-shirt-209601.php


-- 
John Van Ostrand                     Net Direct Inc.
CTO, co-CEO                 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12
                                Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6
john-Da48MpWaEp0CzWx7n4ubxQ at public.gmane.org                   ph: 518-883-1172 x5102
Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware      fx: 519-883-8533

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists