When I was at Disney I did a ton of this sort of thing. I primarily develop
using MBasic from BasicMicro, but also have done quite a bit of work with the
Basic Stamp line. I've interfaced to both via RB apps. If I can be of any help,
don't hesitate to contact me off-list.
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: William Squires <wsquires at satx dot rr dot com>
Subj: PIC/Basic-stamp microcontrollers from RB on Mac?
Date: Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:51 pm
Size: 2K
To: REALbasic NUG <realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Hi!
Although there are lots of programs out there to let you do PIC/Basic
Stamp programming from a PC, are there any RB users out there who have
successfully used one of the RS232 programmer boards in combination
with a USB->RS232 converter (from KeySpan) from RB (5.0+ or RB2005) on
MacOS X using the serial class?
That is to say, has anyone found the protocol so you can talk to the
board? (both to program it, as well as to read back signals sent from
the board - through the micro-controller - for the Basic-Stamp/BS2,
this is the DEBUG instruction)
I received a Boe-bot kit for Christmas, and it - in addition to being
a neat robot kit - has great potential for animatronics for model
railroads, but would be useful for other hobbies as well :) A potential
which is in part wasted on Mac users, as most programmer boards are
either Centronics Parallel, or only have Win-32 software drivers/IDEs
(or both).
For those unfortunate enough not to have one, the kit contains:
* Win-32 software
* Properly wired (straight-through, not crossover) RS232 cable
* All the parts to build the robot:
* Wheels (x2) and CR (Continuous-Rotation) servos (x2)
* Servo horns (x2)
* BOE board (Rev C)
* 6v battery pack (4 AA)
* Fasteners & other hardware
* Robot chassis
* Kit of components for experimentation:
* several 1/8 W carbon-composition resistors
* 2 IR LEDs
* 2 IR sensors (like the kind used in consumer electronics to sense
IR remotes) w/built-in
IR filters (and an on-board FET amplifier/37 kHz filter)
* several red LEDs
* several capacitors (mylar and electrolytic)
* piezo buzzer
* stripped, solid wire (for breadboarding)
* Basic Stamp 2 micro-controller
* 'whisker' wires for tactile sensing
* 3-pin headers (x2)
* 2 CdS resistors
* Nifty manual which shows how to build and test the robot in stages,
as well as having fun experiments to try (though some require large,
open spaces)
Note that the board can control normal (non-CR) RC plane/car/boat
servos, too - though the programming is different - as long as they're
the same kind (3-wire, utilizing a 1.5 ms 'centering' pulse)
electrically.
Anyway, I hope everyone had a happy holiday season this year - Here's
to RB 2006... :)
William H Squires Jr
4400 Horizon Hill #4006
San Antonio, TX 78229
wsquires at satx dot rr dot com dot nospam <- remove the .nospam
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