Let's hope that we're not entering the Headless Chicken phase.
Direction is always good, and we have several.
One direction is describing our first application; we met last Tuesday to come up with a more complete story about how our gadget could be used.
Another direction is getting prototype hardware together and working, including support of the various components that aren't on our chosen development boards. To pursue that direction, we got together over the weekend to build prototyping boards to hold the pushbuttons, RGB LEDs, and accelerometer parts we're planning to use.
Yet another direction is enabling our volunteer programmers to help with the project. We got a software task list together and will be trying to get several programmers working on low-level peripheral support in parallel. Several members have ordered the STM32 Value Line Discovery boards ($10 boards with a 128K STM32 part and an on-board debugger); we will try to use these for developing peripheral code.
Our board construction used toner-transfer methods and kitchen etching and drilling techniques to create a couple of double-sided boards. We ended up with one board that may work fully (haven't had a chance to test it yet); there was a flaw in the accelerometer pattern that will keep the second board from being useful for that part.
Here's some pictures from Sunday's board-building project. We also are producing a video for educational purposes.
The board, pre-drilling:
The finished board, connected:
