by
Bryan
Bergeron,
Editor DEVELOPING
Developing hands-on expertise
with microcontrollers has never been
easier. I’m a fan of the Parallax
( www.Parallax.com) series of
educational kits and accompanying
books, having used an early course
featuring the BASIC Stamp. Parallax
has since updated their offerings with
Propeller Education kits, as well as an
Arduino-based Board of Education
shield. Parallax offers books for their
proprietary Propeller kits, and there’s
no end of third-party support for the
open source Arduino chip. The
learning curve for the Propeller is
steeper than that for the Arduino, but
the payback is more processing
power and flexibility.
Adafruit ( www.adafruit.com)
offers starter packs for the Arduino,
BeagleBone Black, and Raspberry Pi.
Like the Raspberry Pi, the
BeagleBone Black isn’t a typical
microcontroller with a few hundred
bytes of onboard storage. The
BeagleBone Black is a single-board
Linux computer with 4 GB of
memory. At $55, it’s about $20 more
expensive than the Raspberry Pi and
maybe double the price of an
Arduino.
Even if you don’t buy hardware
from Adafruit, you should take a look
at the example projects featured on
their website. The photos and text
are clear and easy to follow, and the
projects are fun. They also start out
very simply — as in making a
BeagleBone Black or Raspberry Pi
cause an LED to blink using Python.
Once you’ve worked through LEDs,
switches, servos, and the other
basics, you can try your hand at
driving graphic LCDs using the
Python library, or use a Wi-Fi adapter
to get a BeagleBone Black on the
Internet.
One of the most interesting
educational kits that I’ve run across
lately is the SparkFun
( www.sparkfun.com) Digital
Sandbox. This Arduino-based kit is
similar to some of the microcontroller
boards offered by Parallax in that
there are common components on
the board to facilitate
experimentation. The Digital Sandbox
offers an LED bar graph, slide switch,
temperature sensor, light sensor, RGB
LED, potentiometer, microphone, and
pushbutton. More than enough to
start experimenting — all without
having to solder anything. Not a big
deal, but convenient. The kit sells for
about $75.
Where the Digital Sandbox
shines is in the use of the optional
Ardublock graphical programming
language. If you can draw an
algorithm — as in block one feeds
block two, and so on — you can
program in Ardublock. The graphical
Ardublock language reminds me of
the free SCRATCH programming
environment from MIT
( scratch.mit.edu) in that it enables
the younger set to access computing
without having to code with IF-THEN-ELSE statements and the like.
Thanks to Ardublock, SparkFun
recommends the Digital Sandbox for
future microcontroller experts ages
eight and up. Once you’ve mastered
Ardublock, you can install the
standard IDE (integrated
development environment) and
develop more complex programs.
So, there you have it.
Microcontroller education for just
about any age or budget. If funds are
tight and you already own a few
LEDs, switches, and sensors, I’d
suggest an inexpensive Arduino
clone and information from the
pages of Nuts & Volts, Adafruit, or
other web sources. If you’re thinking
of introducing microcontrollers to a
class of eight or nine year olds, then
try the Digital Sandbox — perhaps
after an introduction to SCRATCH or
other graphical programming
environment. NV
PERSPECTIVES
Building Sandcastles
in the Digital Sandbox
September 2015 5
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