Re: Reducing Lua memory footprint - need help

["Tony Bauer" <luatony@...>]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Bogdan Marinescu
<bogdan.marinescu@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's hard to make a "Lua Stamp", but not impossible, I see more and
> more very small boards that are true wonders in terms of processing
> power, and they include off-chip memory (let's not forget, for
> example, that SST sells combined Flash/PSRAM devices that are a true
> PCB space saver, albeit quite costly). And it seems that if you want
> to head towards medium complexity embedded devices, BGA is the only
> option most of the times, and I don't know of any hobbist that was
> able to make DIY prototypes with BGAs. I did some PCBs myself at home,
> but I was never able to go beyond 0.5mm, which is true for most of my
> hobbists friends. And of course, nobody can do more than a 2 layer PCB
> at home, unless their home happens to be inside a PCB manufacturing
> facility.

IMHO doing PCB's at home is a bad idea, when there are so many good,
affordable PCB proto houses.  The RM9200 proto board we did is a
175x100 mm four layer board; the PCB cost was $51.  The board was
carefully hand soldered.  It's also possible to do reflow soldering
using a toaster oven or skillet (and at least you can manually inspect
QFP's, unlike BGA's).  There are proto assembly houses that will
assemble BGA's in small quantities, but so far I haven't found any
with reasonable prices (e.g. $50 per BGA - OK for a prototype, but not
for production).  But for doing super small boards or advanced
systems, BGA's are basically required.

SparkFun has some good tutorials on soldering here:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorials.php

I have some interest along Lua Stamp lines, but right now I'm spending
my time (and too much money) on CANOpen hardware (servo drives,
stepper drives, I/O, etc).  But, back on topic, I hope to have some
Lua code for CANOpen by the end of the year.

> Best,
> Bogdan
>
Cheers,
Tony