What Micro-Controller Would You Use to Teach With?

Rukie asks: "I'm looking into starting some sort of robotics class for my high school, which severely lacks any sort of technological classes. I am now wondering what micro-controllers are best for an educational environment. I definitely want something more advanced than the Legos, but something that won't fly over people's heads. Are there cheap, scaleable micro-controllers for learning in a classroom or at home? I'm curious how my fellow readers have hacked up toys to make their own robotics at minimal cost."

Comments

Parallax and the Basic Stamp

[JimMcc]

Check out http://www.parallax.com/ and their Basic Stamp series. They have a wide range or processors and great educational programs based on them. The also have robots and robotics based programs based upon the Basic Stamp.

Re:Parallax and the Basic Stamp

[WndrBr3d]

I've also used the Parallax boards and I have to agree that they are the best for simple robotics and teaching low level computing in the classroom.

Personally, I would suggest using their Java based Stamp, only because your students would not only be learning robotics and electronics, but also a standard language in use everywhere today.

Their other controllers use a language much like BASIC but is unique to the Parallax hardware, not much value there.

Cheers!

options

[drrrl]

I like the Brainstem from Acroname. I haven't done any big projects with one, but I've played with a couple and they definitely hit the spot in terms of easeability, powerfulity and economicalness. I've used the SV203 from Pontech in the past and it's a solid & simple board. Great if you're keeping the board tethered to a computer and not doing any actual processing on board. Brainstem gives you a little/lot more high level power.

Re:options

[IceCreamGuy]

I love the Brainstem, it's got 5 digital I/O ports, 5 analog I/O ports, 4 servo outs, GP2D02 port, RS232 port and an IIC bus. All of the functionality you could need, such as sonar, IR, servo, text-to-speech, even pyroelectric (human heat-signature sensor), and many more are implemented in pre-built, extensive libraries. You can run 4 VMs at once and swap them out among 11 different 1MB programs, with 1MB of shared scratch space. You can also program low level "reflexes" to run independently of the VMs. They're programmed with the TEA, or Tiny Embedded Application, language (you "steep" .tea files into .cup files, which are the binaries :-D), which is a stripped-down, easy to use, C-syntax language that's really easy to learn and program with. The compiler is just a tiny little console that can be downloaded for free and even runs on PalmOS. Did I mention they're really easy to interface with Palm Pilots? They're great for post-intro robotics classes when you want more functionality and would like to really get down into nuts and bolts construction. As well as being cheap and easy to use, there are a ton of kits and libraries for platforms that specifically use the Brainstem. After doing research at my university's robotics lab with several different platforms for over 3 years now, I'd recommend these over anything else, of course, that's just my personal opinion and there's a ton of other great controllers out there, especially the BASIC, JAVA and other Stamp controllers. Here's the link http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/S1-GP-BRD.h tml -Julius

Freescale/Motorola 6808

[StarWreck]

The 6808 micro-controller (long version of the name is M9S08GB60) would be excellent for teaching a class on robotics. As its been around since the dawn of time, there's a lot of support readily available for it. Complete, detailed reference manuals are freely available, Freescale will even ship printed copies to you for free. Compilers are available that allow you to program in your choice of assembly, C, or C+. The "M68DEMO908GB60" demo board is available from many online retailers for around $50 which makes it easier to use the microcontroller for prototyping as well as experimentation and class labs.

What lends the 6808 microcontroller is its Pulse-Width-Modulation components (it has 2 modules, one with 5 channels and the other with 3 channels and all channels can be set up for either incoming our outgoing). In addition to all that it runs up to 40MHz without cooling and includes 4K of RAM and 60K of ROM all on-die, so no extra chips for those. It has more power than you could ever hope to use in a class-room.

A good example project is available here: http://home.comcast.net/~starwreck/FinalReport.pdf

Atmel AVRs

[lordlod]

I'd go with Atmel AVRs.
They are widely used, well documented and well supported.
There are a large range of chips with a consistent instruction set, so they can learn on a simple eight pin 1-Kbyte chip and then apply that knowledge the next day on a large 32-pin 16-Kbyte device.
They are extensively used in industry so students can feel like they are learning something practical.