Simple microcontroller, UK?

http://www.parallax.com/  ?????

to start........

enjoy

Paolo

For UK suppliers you could try:
http://www.milinst.com
Have a range of Stamp hybrid ICs and development kits that can be
programmed in Basic or Java

http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/shop/index.htm
Stock the Brain stem modules that are programmed in a C variant. and
have a couple of output modules available to plug straight in.

http://www.active-robots.com/products/controllr/
have a broad range of single board controllers including the Handy board.

I've bought stamps from Milford instruments before and found them fairly
easy to play with. If a little lacking in hardware facilities and speed
for anything but the most basic applications.

Hope this helps.
Jon.

Hi,

Have a look at an Atmel AVR experiment board (go you you next Ebay and have
a look around) or this:- http://www.chipenable.co.uk/products.htm .

Simple boards with a Mega8 or 32 can be picked up for a good price. And to
program them have a look at Bascom AVR, the demo version has a limitation
that it only compiles 4Kb code but that's alot for AVR's (my webcam
controller base only requires about 3.5Kb including the NE2000 network
driver).




Regards
Ian Dobson

Home of the Atmel based UDP mobile web cam http://www.planet-ian.com
All mails scanned with av-filter.pl (F-Prot / perl)

www.parallax.com has a wide range of controllers from the Basic Stamp 1
to the newly introduced Propeller.  They also produce excellant quality
documentation that explain everything in great details.

I would start with the Basic Stamp 2 - What's a Microcontroller
package.  It's a great value for the money.


Ken
http://www.speechchips.com

 > I am a programmer, with a somewhat rusty background in electronics. I
 > think I can find the bits to do the mechanics, but I don't know what to
 > use for the controller.

Take a look at the PICaxe in terms of bang for bucks it's an ace start.

There's a range of devices, with and without external oscillators, and
variation on numbers of I/O and capabilities. Low end you've the 8pin
device with 5 I/O at £1.35 this heads up thru' 18 and 28 pin devices to
the 40 pin device with 32 I/O at £6.90.

They are all programmed with a serial cable, with a couple of resistors
on the interface. The software is freely available and allow programming
using flow charts as well as basic.

Documentation isn't bad but the support forum is great. check out
www.picaxe.co.uk and their sales on www.tech-supplies.co.uk

Best regards,
colin

--

www.minisumo.org.uk

(Remove the "No Spam" to reply by email!)

Check out this picaxe based emulator www.electro.ology.org.uk it is
currently free, it is used in universities, colleges and schools for
training picaxe programming. It will give you some idea what sotware
skills are required to get the picaxe going and comes with plenty of
example snippets for each command.

Mike Collier (author).