Anyhow, since recovering I've been working flat-out to get a series of designs worked up for the beta version of the stethoscope, which will be much different than the final version I will be working on over the summer. The beta version consists of three modules: 1, the microphone and pre-amp board (brings in sound, turns it to voltage, makes the voltage easily measurable) 2, the codec (takes the changing voltage from the microphone and turns it to digital values for processing, and visa-versa for headphones) and 3, the processor board, which does the actual data manipulation necessary for what I'm doing.
(technical jargon follows, not for the faint of heart)
If you remember from a while back, I ran into an issue with processing overhead in the chips I was planning to use. The code I made required too long to process, meaning audio data would be lost and generally bad things would happen. Well, while drifting off to sleep one night, I suddenly had the idea of linking three such chips together, and overclocking them to increase their speed 25%. So, my beta version uses three chips, each dedicated to a single task (I'm devoting one chip just for use as a division engine, which repeatedly divides a number sent to it, another will add things together, and the last chip will handle the audio data to and from the codec).
(you're safe now)
So, with good coding and some luck, I can do pretty much anything with the board. Once I look over it a little more to make sure everything is shipshape in the design, I'll send the files over to my friends at Prototron and have them build up the boards for me. To give you some idea of what they'll look like, I've attached 3D renderings of the circuit boards below.
First is the Codec board. The big grey thing is the connector that runs back to the processor board. Next is the processor board itself, the three big rectangles are for the aforementioned processors.
Cheers,
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