Fortunately you can't see my bad soldering...
i've been playing around building the next prototype for capturing the data from the network. I started playing with the 1 wire libraries that are available for the Arduino, but wasn't getting very far with them, and I'm still somewhat wary of the bit banging approach this takes. If my electronics/physics wasn't quite so rusty I may be more confident.
To that end I've taken on board a different challenging task. I soldered one of the very small surface mount packaged DS2482-100 that Maxim sent me as a sample onto a mounting board from eP board. The soldering is not a task for the feint hearted, and I hope it works. The trouble is that I'm not sure whether it's my dodgy soldering, or something else, which is preventing me from talking to the chip.
I guess I'll just have to carry on getting my head round the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I²C
I²C and one-wire protocols, in the hope that I can be sure it's one thing. An interesting and challenging task.
The reason I've opted for this route is that I can use the Arduino to control start/stop signals, light a status LED, and collect and send data to our MacBook. Finally I intend to swap out the DS2482-100 for a DS2482-800 in the final build to allow up to 8 one-wire networks, for better contextualising the data we gather.
