I spent most of my free time today putting together this kit that I ordered. Its a satellite receiver, it picks up APT transmissions from weather satellites. Although the receiver is assembled, It will still be a while before I'm receiving images of the earth. The receiver needs to be calibrated first, which requires a frequency generator capable of at least 150mhz, as well as a frequency counter capable of at least 150mhz. I'll also need an antenna, but I can build one of those.

After assembling my receiver, I got back to wedging an SPI Flash EEPROM into one of the RoboPanda's cartridges. The final few steps went mostly without hitch, I managed to burn myself a few times. Hours spent using the soldering iron today, and I only burn myself in the last few minutes of using it. I haven't tested the modified cartridge yet, I'll need a programmer to program the SPI chip before I can fully test the modification, but it passes basic electrical checks (ie no shorts).

There are more images in the gallery here. Fitting it all in was a bit of a challenge, I had to remove several pieces of plastic during the process. In the end though, it all fitted in just right. There is only a tiny bit of displacement of the cartridges shell, over the wiring to the top of the new chip. It shouldn't affect the cartridges dimensions enough to keep it from fitting in the slot, and its barely noticeable to the eye, so I'm in no hurry to open it up again to shave some plastic.

Unfortunately, I noticed while perusing the datasheet, that the SPI chip requires 10ms at power up, before it starts responding to commands. This may make it totally unworkable with the RoboPanda, but I won't know until I have programmed the chip.