AVR-Chat

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 03:10:24PM -0000, Eric Engler wrote:
> 
> I love the idea of a module like this but what I really want to see if
> enough peripherals to make this a good educational platform. For
> example, maybe some I2C ports like RTC or Temperature, and some A/D
> peripherals such as a POT. Since my idea is to use this for
> educational purposes the specifics of the peripherals aren't critical
> but they need to be stardard so each board will have the same stuff.
> 
> I try to help college students occasionally and the biggest problem
> with designing demo programs for them is that there are not well
> defined standard hardware boards that common peripherals and also ICD.

Would be an interesting program if one term the students designed, layed
out, and built their own boards. Maybe program them the next term.

Low volume PCBs are very reasonable these days, double sided, plated
holes, soldermask, and silkscreen.

If the students are going to do embedded work for a living, these are
things they are going to have to know.

> But they'd also have to be avalable in a pre-assembled format to be
> useful to most college students because they usually don't have enough
> time in their schedule to assemble their own boards. They will have
> some classes that teach that skill but their MCU class is normally not
> structured to allow lab time for this purpose.

Clearly there is room for improvement in school curricula.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@HiWAAY.net
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.