Slashdot Mirror

Does this mean that Jean-Michel Jarre won't be doing any more laser lightshows for fear of being bombed by the US military?

He's French, so they'll probably find an excuse to bomb him anyway.

For most microcontrollers, a dev board is not necessary. PICs are in-circuit programmable, and the only external part they require to run is a ceramic resonator. You can make a programmer for PICs for about $5 (see here). I would just make a board with the programmer, a PIC, and a jumper to switch it to programming mode. Route all the I/O pins to a header and put all sensors and electronics onto that board.

Basic stamps are basically toys. They are waaaay overpriced and programming in basic is pretty much like programming in assembly with less-scary names for instructions. Not to mention you can't use any of the advanced features like interrupts, timers, and so on.

I suggest you start with a PIC, MPLAB (yeah, yeah, it's for windows -- so what?), and a JDM programmer with ICProg. It's a nice, easy-to-use solution.

The 8051 platform is also very nice, since it is very commonly encountered. For instance, the Cypress USB microcontrollers have 8051 cores. This platform also has a few free C compilers.

I haven't tried the AVRs yet, but I heard they are nice too. I would choose them if you want to program in C.

They want us to donate for a lousy job?! I want my $1.50 back.

A good friend of mine, Russ, has a great and interesting and THOROUGH page detailing everything you could ever want to know about Mindstorms.

His page, at http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/, discusses the internals in great detail. You really won't believe how ADVANCED his knowledge is, so you've gotta check it out for yourself.

The page contains EVERYTHING about these amazing toys. I can't believe they're being discontinued. It's probably due to kids having too many activities (to beef-up their resumes) and videogames/television/radio taking up their time. No one sits down anymore to spend quality time with their family and build toys like these Mindstorms. We all have our own schedules and stuff, and it's probably NOT good for America in the long term.

Anyway, sorry to jade off a bit there, but here are some other links from my friend's page:
1) Create a Spider Robot
2) LEGO MINDSTORMS Group official SDK

Enjoy these links and much more on Russ's page! I helped him with the HTML code ;-)

Remember this? Two lights: one for for yes, one for no!

Couldn't find a larger version.

Jaba MUD Client is a great client - fast, flexible, and pretty much all you could want for just about any kind of MUD, including PK.

Shameless plug time:
Everwar is quite simply the best PK mud out there. Check it out if you like alignment-based playerkilling with an emphasis on teamwork. Immortal staff is friendly and helpful, and usually online. And it works great with Jaba. See for yourself.