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A few coworkers were talking about GPS running watches a few weeks ago. Right now they are very expensive. We started talking about ways of building something much cheaper. Here is a prototype for one made out of electronics parts that I already had

The main purpose of a GPS running watch is to show you how far you’ve run or jogged. Also, it can tell you how fast you are running both in terms of speed (mph) or how long it will take you to run a mile. Since Charlie, one of my co-workers, trained for a marathon, it was evident that he wanted to be ontop of his target time. This type of info would be crucial for his type of training purposes. I’m sure more features could and should be added.

Cost. Commercial GPS watches seem to cost anywhere from $150-500. This one is probably $20 + the cost of a GPS module. Currently the cheapest GPS modules are $40. That still puts the cost in at $60 or so.

Details. The heart of this is an AVR atmega8 running at 1Mhz. It has 8k of flash which is 99% full. The LCD display is from a Nokia 3310 and are about $6 online. The GPS module was from my UAV project that I abandoned. It outputs TTL serial which it sends to the AVR. The AVR then parses the serial string and interprets the data. Since we don’t have much room for the code in flash, lots of care has to be taken to keep the code size small (no snprintf’s here). For input, I used an IR remote. I seem to be standardizing on that these days because it only takes one pin on the microcontroller and gives me lots of buttons to use. Obviously, on a real watch it would need buttons instead.

Lastly, I should mention that LCD support was provided by CC Dharmani’s LCD library. Many things to him for helping me troubleshoot as I was bringing up the LCD.

Whats next? I’ll probably put everything into a small project enclosure so that I strap it to my arm. It will probably be so big that I won’t really want to jog with it much but I can at least see if it is really usable. If that works out well, I may try to see who else might be interested and I could make a special board for it and power it with a cell phone battery to make it only 2″ x 2″ x 0.5″ so that one could actually wear it as a watch. At that point I’d actually have to spend some $$ so I may never get to that point

Thanks for watching!

A free Christmas cookie goes to the first person who comments with a decoded message from this image.

HINT: It is a barcode.

ANOTHER HINT: There is barcode software for most smartphones that uses the built in camera.

YET ANOTHER HINT: There are also software programs for PCs for those without smartphones.

Good luck!

Get the Flash Player to see this video. If you are seeing this from facebook or some other site, click on the link to watch the video on our site.

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Pictures here.

Check out this video for Rovio, a wireless robot that lets you remotely explore and interact somewhere else. I stumbled on one of these at the Mall this weekend.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1847264/meet_rovio_demo_full/

I’ve been waiting for this same type of product from iRobot, the makers of the fantastic vacuum cleaning robot Roomba, for quite a while. It looks like these folks beat them to the punch and it looks great. I’d love to be able to log in from work or while away to check on the kids.

Good: super awsome way to interact remotely

Bad: $250

Keith and I are off to Maker Faire in Austin, TX. As we are traveling, we will have a map that is being updated live as we drive. Click the link below to see our progress.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://spiceland.org/makerfaire.txt

NOTE: It may take is a little while into the trip to get it working. If it isn’t working yet, try back in a hour.

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I started skype’ing again and I’m looking for folks to video skype with. If you have a webcam and want to skype, let us know. Tru loves it! I’ve also had a good time getting to see the where several out of town friends live that I otherwise haven’t been able to see. Since it works on wireless laptops, I’ve been able to roam all over the house while video chatting. I just have to make sure I watch out and make sure I don’t accidentally catch Erin feeding Heidi

http://skype.com/download/

I know that a few family members have Mac’s. I think they have built in cameras. If you don’t have a camera, I have had really good luck with the Logitech Communicate STX which is only $37 with free shipping from newegg. It comes with a built in microphone. It also works great in Linux with a V4L and V4L2 driver.

IM or email me and I’ll give you my skype info.

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This is day 0 with our new Robomow, the robotic lawn mower. This video shows me unpacking it and then an overview from the DVD that came with it. We’ve run the permiter wire and Robomow is now charging. Tomorrow I’ll post a video of it mowing the yard.