Technical Tuesday Workshop – 14 August 2012 – Launching Into Embedded Hobbies

Posted by on Aug 14, 2012 in Events Archive | No Comments

Our world is increasingly embedded — from smart phones to smart appliances to toys with features more amazing every year.

The good news is that our world is also increasingly hobby friendly! From MakerFaire to SparkFun to Jameco to Hacker Spaces there is a growing community of hobbyists building and inspiring. Inexpensive, quality parts are increasingly available for the latest technologies such as a 2-degrees of freedom joystick with a 3-axis accelerometer and two buttons already packaged in a hand-friendly plastic housing for less than $20. Or build your own location aware device by embedding a GPS receiver, then pair it with a cellular device to text your phone.

However, getting started can be daunting. Even simple Arudino projects require soldering and sometimes expensive components.

This cybergamut Technical Tuesday event helps launch you into your own amazing gadget hobby project.

This event is ideal for the non-technical, for the young (including the young at heart) (this really is a good one for kids…I’ve heard from several folks planning to bring kids as young as ten years old), for the Java software engineer who has never touched an embedded development board, or for the cyber professional who knows it all comes down to hardware somewhere but has never been there.

During this event, you receive a Texas Instruments MSP430 LaunchPad development board (with a spare microprocessor in case you break the first one), a solderless breadboard, one LED, and two jumper wires. We walk you through what’s in the box, introduce you to the free IAR Embedded Workbench development tool (Windows XP, Vista, or 7 only), and by the end of the event you have your board blinking the LED.

The event covers: how to safely use your board (it’s 3.3 volts so a short will only be a mild tingle); how to use a solderless breadboard (hint – it’s not water proof so don’t build that evil robot submarine just yet); where to find other parts (like a joystick/accelerometer); and how to power your projects (during the event we only use a USB port).

A copy of the slides and the instructors notes is at  http://hcoop.net/~t0rch/LaunchPad.