Frequently Asked Questions

How much will it cost for you to do my university assignment?

We get a surprisingly large number of enquiries from students who are struggling with a project or expecting to miss a deadline.

As a rule, we don't take on homework assignments.

If you have a specific question, we don't mind answering a few emails to help you on your way.

Do you stock Atmel components or development boards?

We offer engineering services, not physical hardware. As such, we do have small quantities of a few parts on-hand for our development, but we don't make a point of stocking them for resale. Do feel free to ask, though - you might get lucky!

Do you sell gumstix hardware? Where can I get some from?

Again, we don't stock any hardware apart from what we use for development.

We have considered doing a run of Mini-DIN serial cables as people seem to forget to order them (we did!) and FedEx shipping from the US is expensive - but we haven't done so yet.

We order all of our gear directly from gumstix.com. We're not aware of anyone in Australia who stocks it.

How do I write software for the gumstix boards under Windows?

We've never tried it. Supposedly, some people have had success using Cygwin - but we wouldn't recommend it for a first-timer.

If you're just getting started, your best bet is probably to download Ubuntu and set up the development environment there. The gumstix boards run Linux anyway, so you'll need to be comfortable with the command line eventually.

Can you recommend an Atmel development board?

Not really - we've never used any Atmel development boards! The 'development boards' that we use on a daily basis are usually past projects or whipped up on Veroboard.

One of the nice things about most Atmel microcontrollers is that they have an on-board clock and loose power requirements, so there's really no need for anything complicated in most instances.

If you're just getting started, the Arduino series reportedly offer USB connectivity and a nice Windows IDE for development.

Also take a look at the following suppliers. We have no connection with them - we just like their stuff: