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An old product, maybe nearing the end of its life, can be given a new
lease of life with only a few pounds worth of components.
Taking the existing instrument and adding an extra small PCB, or designing
a few new parts into an existing PCB could easily give the following features:
- Micro control (good for the marketing headlines)
- Data logging
- Data transfer to a PC
- Improved user controls
- Improved display.
When the display and controls are already satisfactory, the addition
of the microcontroller, storage and transfer to PC will usually add less
than £10 to the build cost of the product. This assumes a suitable
single-level DC supply is available for the microcontroller to use.
The parts used consume very little power, usually an insignificant amount
when compared to the rest of the circuitry.
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