We finally got our first production run of USB Serial data cables with the 2.5mm connector completed. We had been back ordered on the 2.5mm stereo plug cable assemblies for awhile. These cables are compatible with the Abbott FreeStyle® series of blood glucose meters including the Freedom and Lite meters.

We will be shipping these cables with all of the Windows and MAC drivers and are shifting back to the full size CDs from the Mini CDs so our Mac friends can use them in the slot-load drives.  A limited number are in stock now and we will be producing more in the next several weeks. The CoPilot® software can be downloaded directly from Abbott Diabetes Care, Inc.

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We did a proposal last year for a large, high power inverter that unfortunately fell through. Like many of these types of efforts we did an enormous amount of research and design up-front.  But to digress a moment............

As I have mentioned before, I hate companies who are stuck in the pre-internet mindset. They will put up a web site and dangle their products in front of you, but you can't get any data or pricing information without calling and talking to a sales person. This usually involves a third degree interrogation about your honorable intentions towards their product, that you will buy huge quantities and have them home by midnight. This mindset is what I found when I went searching for an off-the-shelf IGBT gate drive module. The gauntlet had been thrown down and we dug in and developed our own on paper for the proposal.

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In our continuing effort to broaden the compatibility of our USB serial cable to more blood glucose meters we recently purchased some Wavesense® Presto meters manufactured by AgaMatrix, Inc.  to evaluate.

My initial reaction after opening and examining the meter was "Wow, a company that finally gets it!" Located on the top of the meter is a small rubber flap with what appears to be a Mini USB connector underneath.  It would be too good to be true if one simply had to find an A to Mini-B cable to get this meter working with the software. I rounded up one of the aforesaid cables and ran a quick test by plugging it into my laptop USB port. With either the meter on or off, there was no detection of a USB device on the port.  Not a good sign.

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Celeritous is pleased to announce a new, expanded line of SMT assembly tool kits with 20 different offerings from basic to advanced and in lead or lead-free offerings.

Kits range from our original basic tool kit including self-closing tweezers, Vacuum Pen, Dental Picks and Pliers to our Premiere kit (shown here) which includes a hot air station, digital soldering iron and a 10X basic stereo inspection and assembly microscope.

Prices start at under $50 and the top end kit is less than $500.00  Buying in the kits saves 10-15% off the cost of buying the tools separately.

See the full line of kits on our web site.

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I have to preface this with the disclaimer that this is entirely my opinion and from the viewpoint of a small company that does not regularly have thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to throw at software development tools. In these economic times we are all struggling to keep the doors open and employees employed. Like many business owners, we sometimes have to weigh getting our own paycheck against meeting payroll for the rest of the company, that new capital acquisition or some facility repair. I think though, that I speak for a very large number of individuals, entrepreneurs and small companies that produce a vast array of products and are generally the fastest, leanest, early adopters of technology out there.

That said, when will other chip manufacturers finally get a clue from companies like Xilinx, Microchip and to a lesser extent Atmel and Altera that you will sell more chips if you offer a good, free, mostly unrestricted development tool chain that works?

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We just delivered the first Abbott Freestlye compatible USB Serial cable to a Beta tester yesterday for extended testing. We installed it on their MacBook Pro laptop which is running both OSX and Windows Vista32 under VMWare Fusion.  We first installed it under Vista and were able to read our test meter with the CoPilot software. The Vista USB drivers installed easily.  We then installed the Max OSX drivers so they can test it with Healthengage.com's upload software.

We will be doing similar beta testing with other users and platforms over the next two weeks. Expect the cable to be available about the first of May.  Introductory pricing will be $26.95 ea. This can be compared to the 32.95 (before shipping) we have see on most of the online Pharmacy sites that sell the official Freestyle USB cable.

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I know it's been a long time coming, but I just finished testing our prototype USB serial cable that is compatible with the Abbott Freestyle® series of meters. I tested the cable today with the Freestyle Lite® and  Freestyle Freedom® meters and the CoPilot® DMS software. When I tell you I pour blood (sweat & tears) into a project, in this case I literally mean it! The test data in the meters has to come from somewhere.......

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Ah yes.... we have succumbed to social networking, or Web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. We are now on twitter @celeritous as well as on the following sites:

on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/celeritous

on Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/celeritous

on facebook we are Celeritous Technical Services, Corp

on YouTube our channel is CeleritousCorp

on Vimeo our channel is Celeritous and we are user Celeritous

on Squidoo we are at http://www.squidoo.com/Celeritous

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