Re: Embedded Control for a newbie
Another vote for the Arduino. If you buy the Arduino mini you can get the version with built in USB for a few pounds in the UK and half of that from China but you will hear many warnings about the degree of risk if you buy direct.
Interfacing the Arduino to an AD9850 was one of my first projects and you rapidly find that the real problem is that you want to be able to set the frequency very precisely, maybe 1Hz in 10MHz which is seven digits of precision. If you use a potentiometer to set the frequency you probably want a multi-turn pot and then you find that the Arduino analogue to digital converter is only 10 bits (one part in 1024, so three digits of precision. So you probably want the Arduino to drive an LCD display (also straightforward and another useful thing to learn) and a more complicated input mechanism such as coarse and fine controls or a mixture of digital and analogue input. The you get to the 'human interface' and what pleases one person will be anathema to another but you will learn a lot on the way.
Definitely a fun project.
Roger
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