Phillip Pearson - web + electronics notes

tech notes and web hackery from a new zealander who was vaguely useful on the web back in 2002 (see: python community server, the blogging ecosystem, the new zealand coffee review, the internet topic exchange).

2004-1-5

Boats and home automation

Two questions:

1. Does anybody know if it's possible to fit an outboard motor to a little inflatable dinghy? I bought a "Discovery 300" from The Warehouse the other day, and it's fun to row around, but it would be even more fun to motor around. It's rated to carry 150 kg, but doesn't have any hard surfaces to attach anything to. Any ideas?

2. Does anyone know of a cheap supply of CPU nodes for home automation etc? I'd like to string up a bunch of little boards around the house and get them to measure / log various things. Sort of a home-brew security system. Ideally they'd be programmable, with something like an AVR or PIC micro on each, with some sort of comms bus that I can link to a PC for logging.

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