From: "Bruce D. Wedding" 

Roger said:

> Golf clubs, huh?  Do you remember the Rodney Dangerfield's putter in
> Caddy Shack?  Going for an unfair advantage on the green, are you?  ;-)

Nah, I mounted a solidstate accellerometer on it to calculate clubhead speed and to
characterize the impulse when the ball is hit.  Neat stuff.  Look at analog devices
ADXL series.  They're really easy to work with.

> Now that is somewhere I can see myself getting started at this point in
> time.  I have looked at some D/A kits for $25 - $35.  I need to keep the
> investment low or risk serious marital problems.  (We need a new
> kitchen).

I hear you.  If you want a nice package that is easy to get started with,
try the zilog Encore series.
You can get a full blown C compiler and development board for $39 from
Digikey.  Buy that and you'll
be flashing the LED in 15 minutes.  In the embedded world, this is the
equivalent to hello world.  This is a really nice package to experiment
with.

http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?KeywordSearch?keywords=Z8F082
00100KIT&site=us

Or for a bit more bang for your buck, get the MSP430 kit from TI.  It is
$99 but if you enter this coupon code
"CMPFT430" you can get it for 1/2 price.  The compiler that comes
with this one is limited to 2k code size and
you will spend at least $300 to get an unlimited compiler.   Here is the
link:

http://www.ti-estore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MSP-FE
T430P440

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