Embedded C

[C P User 3]

Never heard of the Rabbit 4000. Anybody worked with this on a regular project ?

[Rage]

Raspberry PI: http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-a-raspberry-pi/[^] Arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/[^]

~RaGE();

I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus Entropy isn't what it used to.

[C P User 3]

Thank you for the suggestion; my answer on Arduino is no. The reason: It's so small that I honestly have great difficulty connecting alligator clips to the various pins. My thoughts at this time are running toward an embedded systems tutorial; possibly with a video presentation. I think I may want to make a "Barney Box" (named after Barney on Mission Impossible in the 1960s, who created small, hand-held, obviously useless plastic boxes with switches and LEDs, which would do insanely complicated procedures; turn cars around and stuff) At this moment I want something where the pins are accessible for alligator clips; with specific accommodation for people with fumbling EL-Spaz-O-Max fingers like myself. [Edit] Just looked at the photos of the Raspberry; ditto, too small

[Rage]

I do not know which part you want to crocodile-bite, but maybe you can plug one of these boards on a larger board with expanded crocodile-friendly biting zones. A zoomer of some sort :-D

~RaGE();

I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus Entropy isn't what it used to.

[jeron1]

We did one project with it and it turned out fine, decent debugger, and as I recall lots of example projects. The documentation was good, the parts had good amounts of RAM and Program space, they are not the fastest processors around nut they served our needs well.

[C P User 3]

Was USB involved in your projects ?

[jeron1]

No, it was serial and ethernet stuff (they had a nice TCP/IP stack).

[C P User 3]

Rage wrote:

A zoomer of some sort

Yes, that's the whole idea; my full contention. i.e.,,,,,,,, If we could make these things large enough to work with, we could create stuff on our desks, first, and make them work, and watch them in real life, and do (an awful lot of) the validation and verification ahead of time, and get the bugs out first, BEFORE we shrink them so small that they become inaccessible to human hands. That's my whole idea: itty bitty microprocessors and microcontrollers, on boards which have posts and clip-ons and access points that are large enough for bumble-thumbs like me. (Unless, of course, I'm the only one who can't access two pieces of metal when they're closer than a millimeter)

[Joe Woodbury]

You could look at the beagle board. It has support packages for many operating systems. http://beagleboard.org/[^]

[Munchies_Matt]

Device drivers are of course a good way to learn all about USB, UARTs, interrupts etc, but, you also need to learn a heck of a lot of Kernel/OS stuff too, so even though Linux is easier than Windows, kernel wtuff might be too daunting for him so I would go for a dev board with a very simple model so he can focus just on HW.

"The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s." climate-models-go-cold

[User 7946055]

Re: The reason: It's so small that I honestly have great difficulty connecting alligator clips to the various pins. Forget the alligator clips. Get a crimper and some socket and pin ends that match the connector or pins available. Crimp the pin/socket on the end of your wire and put anything you want on the other end. Use various colors of wire to make it easy. To the OP, do some googling on demo and prototype boards. If you are really serious, for less than $100 you can get a demo/prototype board for just about any type of processor. Usually way less. Edit: Get some heat shrink tubing to insulate the crimped end.