Any electronics nerds interested in Arduino/Atmel?

[davepl]

I would like to build a little "automotive helper" board that does some common features that I always seem to need:

- Three relays for controlling dual fans in parallel or serial modes
- Interior light dimming, theater mode, etc.
- Fuel pump control (reduced pump speed at low engine rpm)
- Tach signal conversions (8 to 6 to 4, etc)

Stuff like that, likely other stuff I haven't thought of but could be easily added.

I can do that software side in my sleep but I am pretty poor with hardware. I can solder and breadboard but not design very well. For example, to trigger a relay I know in software I need to command an I/O line to go low. But you can't just drive a relay off a chip's I/O line, you need to actually excite a transistor which then fires the relay.

But that's above my pay grade. I couldn't breadboard it safely for you, because I only know the general principles and ideas.

I thought if there was someone out there that mastered their "300 in One" Radio Shack kit as a kid, perhaps we could do something together!

Let me know if you're interested. Not trying to get rich, just needed some circuits and thought it'd be an interesting way to learn something new!