October 11, 2006 progress:

Microcontroller: The replacement parts have arrived from Brian but looking at how small they still are I’m a bit hesitant to try and solder them in just yet. Besides, it’s working fine without them. In truth I’m going to wait till this weekend when I have some free time at home.

As for programming, I now have quadrature encoding working flawlessly between ARVlib and my 1000PPR encoder. The nice thing about the encoder lib is that it keeps track of the position of the wheel (signed number of ticks) either forward or backward. Next step I2C to graphic LCD. That and I plan to modify my SRF04 code to be standalone from AVRLib for posting on AVRfreaks.net

Voice: I pulled the trigger and ordered a Soundgin (backordered according to the vendor I ordered it from) and the parts to build up a protoboard circuit (amplifier, low pass filter, etc…) most of the parts I found at www.hobbyengineering.com

Odds and ends: Connectors is always something in the back of my mind. Therefore I also made a order from www.action-electronics.com for some Molex KK shrouds, pins, and headers. I won’t have to worry about connectors ever again :)

Onward,
Jay