---
date: "2005-07-27T20:16:05Z"
title: Hardware Extrordinaire
---

<p>
I've been thinking about building a <a href='http://gumstix.com/'>Gumstix</a> or <a href='http://www.soekris.com/'>Soekris</a>-based embedded system.  I don't have a particular reason; I'm not even sure what I want to build yet.  Anyway, here's some of the neat stuff I've stumbled across:
</p>

<ul>
<li><a href='http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/index-ser.html'>CrystalFontz <acronym title='Liquid Crystal Display'>LCDs</acronym></a>: Actually these guys aren't really for embedded stuff per-se; they're useful for desktop <acronym title='Personal Computer'>PCs</acronym as well.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=365&item=LCD-103&type=store'>Dirt cheap old-school <acronym title='Liquid Crystal Display'>LCD</acronym></a>:  THere isn't much in the way of documentation on this guy, but I did find <a href='http://www.crystalfontz.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3145&goto=nextoldest'>this post</a> which explains (roughly) how to interface with it.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.halted.com/commerce/catalog/product.jsp?product_id=17548&czuid=1118246397781'>240x320 8-bit touchscreen <acronym title='Liquid Crystal Display'>LCD</acronym> (2 for $60)</a>: I'm <em>definitely</em> going to use these guys for something.  The best part?  In addition to being dirt cheap, <a href='http://hubbard.engr.scu.edu/embedded/lcd/lfh8p4032b/lfh8p4032b.html'>this guy already has it working in Linux</a>.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.ladyada.net/resources/procurement.html'>List of places to get parts</a>: Title pretty much says it all.  Part of the really interesting <a href='http://www.ladyada.net/make/index.html'>embedded projects page on ladyada.net</a>.</li> 
</ul>

<p>
If that wasn't geeky enough, I've also been aggregating all the <a href='http://www.startrek.com/'>Star Trek</a> information I can found online into a <a href='http://www.sqlite.org/'>SQLite</a> database.  It's far from complete, but at the moment I've got a list of episodes from every <a href='http://startrek.com/'>Star Trek</a> show ever (including the oft maligned "Star Trek: The Animated Series"), a fairly expansive list of species and planets encountered or referenced in the <a href='http://startrek.com/'>Star Trek</a> universe, and a list of Trek particles defined and organized by category.
</p>

<p>
You can download the <a href='/files/trek-0.1.db.gz'>raw database file (2.4M gzipped SQLite3 database)</a>, or <a href='/files/trek-0.1.tar.gz'>the entire working directory, including extraction scripts (4.4M gzipped tarball)</a>.  As usual, there is no documentation, although you can regenerate the database by running <code>scripts/generate.sh</code> (you need <a href='http://ruby-lang.org/'>Ruby</a> installed, of course :D).
</p>
</p>