Over the summer of 2003, my dad and I built an automated, computerized candle dipping machine. My dad was running a fairly successful candle business, making very unique and high-quality candles. He was buying blank white tapers from a supplier, but they required tweaking before he could use them in his business. We built this machine so that we can have more control over the process. He did most of the hardware and I did the most of the software. I used an 8051 Development Board as an interface between an old Palm V and the equipment.
After getting quite familiar with the Palm/8051 combination, I decided to pretty much drop the Palm. We put all of the logic on the 80521 but still used the palm to download the applications. I developed the entire thing in 8051 assembly, but it was easy enough for my dad to tweak the code, compile it, load it on the Palm, and flash it to the 8051.
