EZsbc
Ran across this small computer card/chip
gizmo recently. The price
($40) was enough to induce me to buy one, especially
since it includes an embedded BASIC interpreter. I
haven't seriously programmed in BASIC since I wrote some
programs to control an airgun array from my Apple ][
computer back in ... hell, the 80's? Sometime long ago.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to mess around with.
It connects to a terminal program (Hyperterm) on my
laptop PC via the USB port. Which also powers the board,
making code testing remarkably easy and sort of
portable.
Then, of course, I had to find some
project where it would be USEFUL! I wrote some code
fragments to see if it could be used as a controller for a
TAPS or similar acoustic backscatter system. It has an SPI
port, so it would interface with the DDS, ADC, and DAC. You
can generate pulses on the several I/O pins. The internal
ADC is only 10 bits, marginally adequate for a small
echosounder but potentially usable (although the code
presently only allows one sample per call) if running an
external ADC is not feasible.
The major drawback -- just like the
original 68HC11 controllers for TAPS -- is the lack of mass
data storage. So I purchased a micro-SD card breakout card
from Adafruit to see if I
can figure out how to write files on this mass storage
device. Been busy with another project, however, and
this looks a lot harder than I was expecting, so this
application is still on the "to do" list.
My first actual project became a GPS speedometer
for my lakester. I've
described it in the RACING section under BONNEVILLE so
no need to duplicate it here. Let me just note that the
basic wiring of the GPS module and the LED display to
the EZsbc1 consisted of FOUR wires (exclusive of power
and ground)!