GUP

What's a GUP? A GUP is a Great Unfinished Project. The criteria for a GUP is slightly variable, but generally it's any project you've invested mental or financial resources in, then never did anything with. Below is a list of my personal GUPs. And this GUP list is a GUP unto itself, actually...

Started And Never Finished

• ELSI

ELSI is the (E)thernet (L)ight (S)witch (I)nterface device. ELSI consists of an 8031 microprocessor, 256K FLASH, 32K RAM, a 10base-T ethernet interface, 2 serial ports, and assorted digital I/O. The idea was a fairly inexpensive ethernet appliance that could be deployed for mundane tasks, such as interface to light switches, temperature sensors, A/Ds, D/As, etc. I had boards made, and parts for 100 boards, and it runs. The only problem is I haven't had the impetus to implement the TCP/IP stack (in assembly). UDP, ICMP, and IP all work fine, and it'll move data back and forth for days on end with no problems. But without TCP/IP, it's not that useful. And it hasn't helped to get me motivated that Dallas has finally released their TINI board (although ELSI has been running for over a year!).

• FishCam

FishCam is the simple concept of taking an inexpensive camera and putting it in a waterproof container. I built the container over a year ago, submerged it to 85 feet for 4 weeks with no leaks, and then set it in the dock box. The ultimate idea was to take the video from FishCam, run it into a video capture card, and put live (or semi-live) video showing the denizens of Lake Sidney Lanier on the net. Since I haven't gotten that going, I offer you instead MojoCam. Totally useless, and totally cool.

• Combined Wind Direction & Anemometer

I saw this really neat idea on an Austrailian web site. By putting a flag on one of the cups and measuring the leading and lagging period of that cup, wind direction can be determined. A friend of mine (Pat) and I were going to build our own version, using an 8031 derivative instead of a PIC micro. We never could get the math figured out how to implement it. Here's a link to the original.

Conceived And Never Started

• 900 Mhz Caller ID Display For Cordless Phones

This project was to display caller ID on a cordless phone. Rather than being forced to buy a new phone, this would be a little LCD display, about the size of 5 sticks of gum stacked on top of each other, that would attach to the handset. The base unit is a small spread spectrum transmitter that plugs between the base unit and the wall jack, and transmits the caller ID to the handset.