Beginning Again

By: wbowers9000

2010-03-08 22:53:30

This is my first time EVER blogging so let's see if I'm doing this right.

I'm almost 48 years old. I started working with electronics just 7 years ago. After messing about with basic electronic circuits for a year I stumbled into programming micro controllers. Now the idea of building a robot of my own design that had been rattling around in the back of my head shot to the front. In the next 2 years I built 3 robots from kits. No new or novel additions made by me. But, alas, my ambitions of building something unique have been hindered in the last 4 to 5 years by one crisis after another. I learned what I could in the short segments of spare time that I was allotted.

But now....

Things and settled down. I finally have time to work on MY projects again!

I'm an now teaching myself how to get micro controllers to talk to each other. I picked up a Teensie board at the last DorkBot meeting. I've already got it happily blinking LED's in whatever fashion I choose. I've got many PIC boards built but I find those to be much more of a hassle to program than the ATMEL's. For the past several months I've been working with the Parallax Propeller chip. By far the most versatile and powerful chip in it's price range. My idea is to get lots of micro controllers to 'talk' to the Propeller chip. But it runs on 3.3v and the ATMEL chips on the Arduino boards run at 5v. To get two micro controllers to talk to each other they 'should' run at the same voltage level, and that indeed is the case with the Propeller chip. So while I wait for signal level converter solution to present itself, I'll get two Arduino/ATMEL boards to talk to each other.

Images to come later. Like you really expect images in MY FIRST BLOG EVER.

Onward into I2C protocol land....

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