Matt Taylor

Ahh, yeh, that was what I was kinda' expecting. Thanks for the hint for PicoTech. Even the cheaper (relatively) 2200 model seems to have a good range of functions. What model do you have? I'll keep an eye out for analog ones in my local area. I was thinking of seeing if I could pick up an old one from the university, but I suspect that they would only part with one if it was totally fubar.

Cool, I'll check those out.

We are gradualy putting bits for the film up. All the indoors scenes will be filmed infront of an audience at a local theater, and we will ahve some demponstrations/workshops showing off things like editing and makeup effects.

Here's a rough edit of what we shot last weekend as a trailer,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s1CoDm9HDg

Unfortunately we did not shoot any pyrotechnics, as we were filming on public land.

You can follow the project on our website.

Hi All, Apologies that this project has gone quiet, I've been really busy with other work, and only this morning had a few hours to get back to this. I've simulated the circuit you sent over Mario, I'm happy with how it's working. I need to order in some components, and I'll prototype it and test it with a few squibs. I've attached a screenshot of the simulation. What is a good open-source simulator? for little projects, I've always used Yenka (was previously called Crocodile Clips) that I still have a student licence for from school .. 10 years ago. If there's an open source sim that anyone would recommend I check out,that would be great. As you can see, there's only 0.2 micro volts across the squib when the key switch is closed, and 9v when the netduino DIO goes high.

Cool, thanks for your help. I'll simulate it and breadboard it out later this evening and share how it goes. I finally got the raw footage of the single squib test back from the camera guy and uploaded it to youtube. I think that I need to work on the positioning a little bit, and also my own timing, I think I was way too quick on the draw.

Hi Matt,

You'll probably want to use a USB 2.0 port (although the Netduino itself runs at USB 1.1 speeds).

OK. My first thought after re-installing the drivers was that the board required USB2, and that my netbook did not have that. Although the device manager says that it does.

Does your Netduino get power when you plug it in?

The board powers up fine. I also tried powering it from it's own power supply, thinking that the USB may not be provideing adiquate power to the board.

what happens if you select "refresh" in Device Manager?

Let me try that and get back to you.

Nope, no change. Should there be a 'Netduino' entry in the device manager if it is working correctly?

Looking at the hidden devices though, I notice that I have yellow warning !'s on my 'Serial' and 'Kernal Mode Driver Framework Service' entries.

Both have the error

This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24)

Thanks!