How to generate and use pre-compiled objects

That was the kicker I needed. I buzzed through with your sample, and applied it to my own library. And even though I know that libraries are created for the binary of the device, I expected troubles using it with the Arduino IDE. But I moved the *.a and header over to the Arduino folder structure, made the appropriate support files and sure enough the Arduino IDE was able to build a project using it.

Thank you for your great tutorial!