Alright.

Seems that our Minty Mp3 player project will happen afterall. Currently, we have all the ‘raw materials’ including the PCBs and all the ICs and components. We just need some good soldering tools (which I hope to buy) and some good debugging tools like multimeter and oscilloscope (which I hope I wont have to buy.).

Oh and the most important, the PIC programmer. We actually built a Pic-Key. But I am not so sure if it works. Plus, we dont have any extra PICs to burn.:p Whats worst Microchip has stopped sampling many PICs. So there is no way to get the PICs other than buying. :”(

Anyway, just the other day I found this. PIC-PG1. Its by sparkfun, and its only US$ 11 + shipping. Seems a better alternative to our Pic-Key.

And I also found Eagle3D. Eagle is a really great circuit CAD tool that I have been using since I took EE3208. Really good for all student projects. It can produce gerber files so that you can fab the PCB at any fab. I am pretty sure it will work in the NUS PCB fab as well. It takes a little time to learn, but once you get it, its really cool. Its free and you can create your own device if the libraries don’t have the one you want. And do check their libraries, cos they have many many user submissions.

Eagle3D is like a macro for Eagle that allows you convert your Eagle Board layout into a 3D rendering capable file format, through a Eagle ULP. Really cool stuff. The generated file can be viewed through POV-Ray. I did a quick rendeing for Minty, and here are the results.

This is the board layout of Minty.

And this is the 3D version. Cool huh?

Now only if I had more time…