Stu2 - W7IY

Time and Materials

I'm not sure how much time I spent on the project. I would guess about 120 hours or so. Most of it was learning how to program in basic and learning the fundamentals. I spent about 3 hours on each controller and about another 1 hour (each) mounting them in the plastic boxes. I spent a lot of time filing and planning where to drill the holes.

I used prototype/bread boards to learn how to run the compilers and make the PICs work. This was a good idea! Of course, I made the usual mistakes, which ate up a lot of unnessary time. For example, I installed the RS-232 diode in the wrong line, which kept the controls from communicating with the master. I also made a few sloppy soldering mistakes, which shorted out connections or simply missed a connection all together. This stuff is expected.

Most of the chips were 'samples' from varios sites. I found some stuff in my junk box (or my Dad's junk box,) which really saved some money. Here's a list of parts I bought:

So I guess that's about $180. The PCB was expensive and I had to buy two, but only used 1.