Safety / Emissions Compliance

Generally speaking, all electronics products have to meet EMC/EMI (emissions and emmunity) tests for sale. In addition, products with any "high voltage" components are required to meet safety tests.

In the US, the "UL" or equivalent mark is required.
For Europe, testing to meet the CE requirements is needed.

Medical DeviceLink has a nice summary of the key international standards:
http://www.devicelink.com/mem/emc.html

For North America, the FCC Part 47 and UL standards apply. Specifically, there is no immunity requiremens for NorAm.

Cortex M3 bringup

When bringing up the Cortex M3 (the Luminary chip on the board), we'll need a compiler/linker toolchain. IAR's is nice, but expensive. It turns out that CodeSourcery has G++ products, including a lite version -- the following blog mentions the process nicely:
http://repstrap-cerberus.blogspot.com/2009/05/bringing-up-baby-new-to-me-cortex-m3.html

Creepage

http://www.ce-mag.com/ce-mag.com/archive/01/03/ProductSafety.html

A plastics design/production firm

http://www.pro-des.com/product.htm

Belts and gears

Here are some resources for belts and gears and other "drive" items:

http://www.sdp-si.com/ - they have an extensive online catalog and technical education material section.
http://www.econobelt.com/
http://www.drillspot.com/



BTW, the info first came from chiefdelphi.com - a robotics related forum.

Goertzel algorithm for tone detection

Came across an interesting algorithm today - the Goeretzel algorithm - which is used to detect specific frequencies in a sample. For example, detecting DTMF presses on the phone. There is a write up in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goertzel_algorithm

A SDCC dev list member pointed out that for some applications, it is sufficient to use quadrature square waves to detect/demodulate specific frequencies. I need to look into this more (see sdcc user request list 2009-May-14 from Scott Dattalo). So far, I've come across:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detector_(radio)
http://www.commsdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192200456

Administrative / Business Resources

Project Management Resources:

• http://www.projectconnections.com/ - Premium membership includes templates/forms that are useful for gathering requirements, doing statement of work, proposals, et cetra.