>> probably switch to the Propeller.
>
> Your choice, of course. But I wouldn't take a class into a new
> bleeding edge technology.
Well, it is not bleeding edge. Some of the girls opted to build a 'bot
based on the Propeller. They actually found it as approachable as the
OOPic. They had to see a bit more of what is going on because they had
to load library routines to do what appear to be intrinsic to the
language with the OOPic but they didn't have a problem with that.
> Besides, I don't think it is pin compatible
> with the existing controller board on the Mark III's.
It isn't and that is the problem.
> If you wanted
> to do something with the Mark III you would have to design a new
> board. No big deal but it takes time and effort.
Yup.
> There are probably only two chips sets that make any sense for
> introductory courses: The Basic Stamp and the Basic Atom. Both are
> very well documented with the nod going to Parallax for their support.
Parallax has been *very* supportive of us here. When we had problems
with our Scribblers (motor failures) they replaced them all with
BoeBots and then hacked code to make them work with the existing
Scribbler GUI. (I *really* like the Scribbler GUI for kids just
getting started.)
OTOH, the kids had a lot of trouble with the details of low-level
hardware control using the BS2. It was just too much too fast. The
lost sight of the forest for the trees. The object abstraction of the
OOPic was a *much* better intermediate step. They could control
devices as monolithic objects without having to delve deeply into just
exactly how it was working. That way they could focus on their own
logic to accomplish the task.
> I have a couple of Stamps but I haven't used them for anything. It's
> not a chip I am interested in.
I have about 20 BS2s. It is not a chip I am particularly interested in
either. OTOH, when I need to do some really low-level controller, it
works fine. Two of the kids programmed one to be the controller for a
hidden transmitter for T-hunting. It was quite easy to make it key the
transmitter, send morse code, and then turn it off again, repeated
over and over. When you start trying to do more than that it gets too
complicated as the chip gets in your way.
Conversely, I *really* like the propeller. I can do a polling loop in
a separate core (cog in Parallax parlance) and make it generate an
event by activating code in another cog. And everything runs nicely in
parallel. If only it had an A:D converter ...
--
Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori
brian AT gbmontessori DOT com 9330 Sierra College Blvd.
+1.916.367.2131 (voice) Roseville, CA 95661, USA
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . .
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C
PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C
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