Yes, it's official: I got the project code yesterday, and had the kickoff meeting this afternoon (with some changes to my original concept, but I'm not having to throw out any of the work I'd done ahead of time on speculation).
And - hurrah! - the first unit isn't due until November, which means we can probably start integration in September, which means I've got June, July, and August to get a moderately ambitious hardware & firmware project done. So, I'll be comfortably busy the next three months. (No summer vacation, but the project won't be eating my weekends either, and there'll still be time for morning exercise.)
Also, the second customer with similar requirements is almost ready to sign on the dotted line, so in addition to having just about enough time to do it right, there's a bona fide business case for doing it right, incorporating plenty of flexibility, etc.
Lessee, now: I ordered an LPC2387 eval board yesterday evening (after getting the project code), so, allowing for the holiday weekend, that should be arriving Tuesday, I guess. A fair amount of the firmware work can be done on eval-board lashups. There's coding to be done in C, Verilog, and Ruby; as usual, some is on my own time and some is on the client's nickel. I need to order a couple of other eval boards for probably-useful components, now that I know the project is going. Ahhh, and there'll be lots of coördination needed to get the hardware actually built, assuming the client is going to deal with layout and fab.
So, interesting (but remunerative) times ahead.
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