programming hobby gadgets

conceited

Hi lads I'd like to start making a few simple circuits whats the easiest cheapest and most enjoyable architecture to use.

democrates

I'm thinking this question might do better in the science/engineering forum.

um7y1h83ge06nx

What do you mean exactly by circuits and architecture?

If it's circuits featuring a microcontroller, you could try a 8051 based micro-controller.

You can play about with the various I/O interfaces using Assembly and C.

NeverSayDie

As above, not really sure what you're asking for, but if you want to work with programmable gadgets, Lego Mindstorms stuff seems to be very popular for hobby robotics and that kind of thing.
http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/New_York_dest/default.aspx

If you want to have circuits interacting with your PC, this video should provide some inspiration, chap controls a WPF display using some sensors;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5d8gik_Ww

I think the hardware he used is from this crew;
http://www.phidgets.com/

conceited

Thats what I was looking for super sonic.That video was very good .I wouldn't be into the lego robotic side of things i was just looking for an 8bit cpu which was cheap and easy to program.

Have you programmed for that cpu before?

stylers

if you want to get straight to nuts and bolts microcontrollers and programming go for the PIC microcontrollers.. use the 18F series if you want to program in C. look up "sure electronics" on ebay or the net.. they have some nice and cheap demo boards with pic18F and LCD/LED display, serial port and temp sensor etc. they also have pickit2 programmers which are the easiest way to program, or you could build your own simple cheapo programmer (bit slower for development work though)..

DublinDilbert

Yea as another poster has said above give the PIC CPUs a try....

The 16F CPUs are good for starting off, there's no shortage of progamers out there too to download you code. If your only starting off your probably best off getting a simple dev-kit from microchip and "play" with some of their examples...

I believe some of the early lego min-storm devices had 16F CPUs inside them.

Dartz

http://handyboard.com/hardware/

MIT handyboard. Something we used out in DCU for a module last year. Idea was to build and program a small Taxi robot. It runs a version of C called Interactive C, which includes libraries and stuff for motor controllers, or sensors. It's simple enough to build, simple enough to program for.

Managed to build a pretty decent robot, controlled by some of the best code. Got a Third place. (Should've one, but an operator failure screwed us)

conceited

I didn't realise so many people were interested in this sort of thing.
I started reading about the various pic cpus and have a few questions.
What assembler is used for them and how easy is it compared to x86 for example.Or do you mainly code in c for them?

Dartz i'd prefer to learn somerthing a little more mainstream .

Thanks .