[sdiy] Bucket Brigades...

[GothGeek Sysadmin]

I've been pondering an idea for a few weeks now and figured I'd throw it
into the list and see how badly it gets torn up...

Since Matsushita has quit making dedicated analog shift registers in favor
of digital devices, and since I dont like the sound of digital devices
( my complaint is they are too predictable ) I've been looking at some
other devices that are still available and one that comes to mind are
Fax machine optical pickups.

It seems there are two kinds of optical pickups that I've looked at in
schematics.  The first kind is a non-shuttered pickup.   This is an
8" long optical sensor that when you hit the sample input it immediatly
drops the input of the 3000 or so image points into a bucket brigade where
it can be shifted out and stuffed thru an A/D for faxing.  This one
isnt too interesting.  The other kind is the shuttered one.  With the
shuttered one you open the shutter, take the image, close the shutter,
and then step out the analog values as in the non-shuttered kind except
that the image cells themselves are the BBDs.

My idea is to use one of the shuttered style without a shutter, paint most
of it black, and input analog signal to the far end with an LED.  The hard
part really seems to be finding enough data on these devices thats in
English to see if a design is really feasible.  The thought occured to me
that CCDs for cameras might also be something worth looking into but I 
worry that they might become obsolete very quickly.  The CCD devices
in fax machines go back quite a few years.  I've found one unit by
sharp in use since the early 1990s.

It doesnt look like BBDs are a dead product at all, they've just moved into
other markets.  

Here's to hoping this idea wasnt already talked to death in a prior thread
and I just havent found it in the archive yet...


  ... off to play with his Ibanez AD230 that may or may not be picking up
      the local AM religious station right now...

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