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Why no Basic Stamp talk ?

I am new to micros and have what may be a dumb question.

Why in a group like this does no one talk about Basic Stamps from Parallax? They seem very popular and easy to use. I am trying to get educated and inherited a HC11 from New Micros, an HC705, and a Basic Stamp 2. So far the Basic Stamp is the only one that makes sense. Is the Basic Stamp a beginner toy and not serious enough for doing any real work ? I don't claim to be a programming expert but know VB well, some Java, enough C to be dangerous, and zero about assembly.

The typical projects I am interested in are: -temperature and pressure monitoring -strain gauge monitoring -incremental quadrature encoder interfacing (with LS7166) -maybe stepper motor interfacing. To date these things have been done in VB, but a micro seems like a much better solution in many cases. Then if I need the info on a PC a simple RS232 connection would suit me.

You insight would get helpful.

Thank you very much.

Reply to
WP
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They do, on occasion. Perhaps more over in comp.robotics.misc. Another to look at is sci.electronics.basic. And discuss it, if you want.

There are lots of reasons to use them and to not use them. I think of them as a tool more for education or hobbyist work. They might be used in some professional products where price isn't an overriding worry (volumes are low.)

Of course, they can do real work -- even what might otherwise be considered pretty fancy footwork. A lot will depend on the details, though. For example, I'd imagine they could be used quite well to write a closed-loop PID controller for a chicken hatchery, where controlling the water temperature isn't such a fast process. But they might make a rather lousy quadrature decoder for a computer mouse.

Depending on speed and features you need, these may work just fine. I don't know if the right features exist for managing the Dallas one-wire temperature sensors, for example. Maybe so.

Depends on rate, I think.

Depends on the controller you use. Would be perfectly fine talking to a complete controller with RS-232, for example. Probably not so fine with low-level ICs where feedback must be monitored on sub-millisecond time scales.

Go for it.

Jon

Reply to
Jonathan Kirwan

There is a special forum supported by Parallax. Go to the Parallax website and subscribe there.

Claus

"WP" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:E4kVa.574606$ snipped-for-privacy@news1.calgary.shaw.ca...

Reply to
Claus Kühnel

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