[BLOG] Smoking & Electronics....
The wife and I have quit smoking... We tried everything under the sun to quit before and failed, this time we took the Champix medication and we are 7 weeks smoke free so far.
It's still a daily struggle, not one of those I'm gonna kill something struggle, but you are constantly aware of all the smoking triggers... 30 years of habit is a hard thing to break... Smokes and I have been through and seen a lot during our time together, but the fork in the road has finally arrived and it's time to part ways.
When a buddy heard of the Quest to Quit, he brought over an Arduino Diecimila compatible board for me to tinker with. The board came from seeed_studio and looked like this when I got it.
So I dug out the old Weller WTCPL soldering iron and got to work, an hour later all assembled and ready to test.
Years ago if you wanted to play with a microcontroller you had to write your logic code for the circuit, put the microcontroller in a programmer and send your code to it, back and forth from board to programmer if things didn't go right.
Arduino's on the other hand are jumpered to your breadboard project, plug it in USB and send code right from the editor. You can tell in an instant if things are working or not. If not, adjust your code and send it again, makes testing real easy.
Now I just need a project to tinker away with... Maybe a BlueTooth jammer as the kid in the apartment upstairs has a Wii and plays it robustly...
It's still a daily struggle, not one of those I'm gonna kill something struggle, but you are constantly aware of all the smoking triggers... 30 years of habit is a hard thing to break... Smokes and I have been through and seen a lot during our time together, but the fork in the road has finally arrived and it's time to part ways.
When a buddy heard of the Quest to Quit, he brought over an Arduino Diecimila compatible board for me to tinker with. The board came from seeed_studio and looked like this when I got it.
So I dug out the old Weller WTCPL soldering iron and got to work, an hour later all assembled and ready to test.
Years ago if you wanted to play with a microcontroller you had to write your logic code for the circuit, put the microcontroller in a programmer and send your code to it, back and forth from board to programmer if things didn't go right.
Arduino's on the other hand are jumpered to your breadboard project, plug it in USB and send code right from the editor. You can tell in an instant if things are working or not. If not, adjust your code and send it again, makes testing real easy.
Now I just need a project to tinker away with... Maybe a BlueTooth jammer as the kid in the apartment upstairs has a Wii and plays it robustly...
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Comments
@Komete
Cold Turkey is really tough, ask your Dr. about Champix, really takes that nasty edge off.
-drasnor