What happened to the assembled AVRcam?

[Guest]

Hello All,
I wanted to post a quick note to let everyone know that I have removed the option of purchasing an assembled AVRcam system from the website for now. This is mainly due to the fact that I had been assembling them myself when I found the time, and it ended up eating up more time than I wanted. So, if you ordered the assembled version before I took it down, I'll obviously still be putting those together and sending them off ASAP. For those of you who only wanted to purchase the system already assembled, it may be time to dust off your soldering iron .

I am tangentially pursuing the possibility of having the system manufactured professionally, but I don't know if going through that hassle is going to be worth it (especially when it seems that everyone points to Asia as some manufacturing mecca because their prices are so low...I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel so good about having some person working in a factory, being paid $0.50/hour to build the systems...anyway...I digress).

So, for now, the only way to purchase the AVRcam will be as a kit. I hope this doesn't deter too many people from playing with the system. Half the fun of playing with a system like this is digging into both the software AND the hardware to understand whats going on.

Feel free to throw other ideas out there if you have any.

[techcare]

I was assembling the AVRcam kit yesterday, and had some trouble with the serial cable before I realized that the ribbon cable sent with the kit was 10 conductor instead of 9, unfortunately it still sort of fits into the DB9 IDC connector, and some of the pins can get shorted during the crimp.

The solutiion is to count the number of wires on the ribbon cable before you crimp the connector on, if it is 10 as mine was , simply tear off the extra wire from the non-red striped side of the cable before you assemble it.

Nice kit otherwise, good work John.

TechCare

[Guest]

One point of note here:

Techcare points out that your serial ribbon cable may have 10 strands to it, in which case removing the furthest one from the red strip is necessary. Make sure you check that your serial cable has 10 strands before you do this. I believe only a handful of kits went out with the 10 strands (I meant to cut them down before I sent them off, but it seemed to slip past my crack production staff....i.e., me). Anyway, the majority of the kits should have 9 strands on the serial cable, and thus don't require the removal of the last strand.

Good catch though...