Project de jour: rocketry flight computer. I've been tossing this project around since September, but now Luka and I are actually fabbing PCBs and the project can get started in ernest. Among the layouts on the panels we're making are a nice self-bootstrapping PIC programmer and a huge array of SMT->SIP adapters for prototyping SMT parts.

I've got a nice set of parts picked out that should allow me to make a four-sensor flight data recorder with 100 datapoints per second and 12bit accuracy. Acceleration, pressure, magnetic field vector, and temperature. The whole thing should fit on a board that is 0.7"x2" and will fit inside very small model rockets. The major downside right now is the cost. There are about $100 worth of parts on the board, without taking into account the cost of rather fancy board fab required for such density.