# TeleScience

This is an expansion board for [TeleMetrum](../TeleMetrum/) intended to 
support science projects.  It provides 12 analog inputs with selectable
thermistor support, and 5 general purpose I/O pins.  This board can also
be used standalone as a USB I/O device.

## Motivation ##

Bdale's son Robert is interested in mapping the temperatures experienced
by nose cones and fins in flights beyond Mach 1, and we're working with 
our good friend Jeff Lane from 
[Shockwave Rocketry](http://www.shockwaverocketry.com/) 
to instrument one or more of his nose cones in pursuit of that goal.  And
it's easy for us to imagine other experiments that would be facilitated by 
having generic analog data inputs and a few control lines.

## Features ##

### User View ###

* Small circuit board mounted near [TeleMetrum](../TeleMetrum/)
* Requires [TeleMetrum](../TeleMetrum/) v0.2 or later, as v0.1 does not 
  have the required companion board interface
* 12 analog input channels, each of which can independently be configured
  for an NTC thermistor or generic 0-3.3 volt analog input.
* 5 general purpose I/O lines
* On-board flash memory for data logging.
* USB interface for programming and development

### Developer View ###

* Hardware Features
	* [Atmel ATmega32U4](http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?category_id=163&family_id=607&subfamily_id=760&part_id=4317) Microcontroller
		* 32k Flash
		* 2.5k + 832 bytes SRAM
		* 1k EEPROM
		* 12-channel 10-bit ADC
		* SPI target interface
		* USB interface which can be used for programming
		* In-system programming interface
	* [Winbond W25Q16](http://www.winbond.com/NR/exeres/A3D21C82-A0B6-4586-A770-2F0883A805FF.htm) serial flash memory
		* 2M x 8
		* SPI interface
* Software Features (planned)
	* programmed in C using gcc-avr
	* Runs from on-chip flash, uses on-chip RAM
* Tools Used
	* [gEDA](http://www.gpleda.org/) for schematic capture and PCB layout
* Licenses
	* The hardware is licensed under the [TAPR](http://www.tapr.org) [Open Hardware License](http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html)
	* The software is licensed [GPL version 2](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

## Artifacts ##

A schematic and PC board design exist on [git.gag.com](http://git.gag.com) 
in the project 
[hw/telescience](http://git.gag.com/?p=hw/telescience;a=summary), 
but no prototypes have been built yet.

## Future Plans ##

We currently plan to build prototypes of TeleScience in Spring 2011.