Question about Microcontrollers

Maxx2310

I have a layout for a circuit board I want to create and the program to go along with it, the question is can I somehow program the microcontroller with the stamp module or do I need to buy some sort of EPROM to create the microcontroller chip?

The circuit board will be part of a score board that uses LED Displays and buttons, I need a microcontroller to keep tally of the scores.

allanlane5

This really depends heavily on the "microcontroller" you choose.

The BS2 is a very easy to program (with a BOE board and a serial port) platform based on the 16C57 PIC chip. So, you could use that. And Parallax does sell an OEM BS2 for $35 that you could use for this purpose. However, the one thing that Parallax does keep proprietary is exactly what code is loaded into the PIC chip to make it a BS2. So you could buy an "OEM" PIC chip from Parallax with their code in it, and add your separately purchased components. But an "off the shelf" 16C57 chip isn't going to become a BS2.

Now, if you want to interface to your own PIC chip, www.melabs.com sells (for $300 or so) a compiler and also sells interface boards to the PIC chip -- for onesy-twosy projects, you're better off with the BS2. If you're building 20 or more, melabs is pretty good. I personally like www.boostc.com myself, but again you're going to need an additional $100 or so of development hardware to 'burn' your code into the PIC.

Now, all the above is if you want to stay with MicroChip's PIC platform. You could also use the Atmel AVR platform, or the Rabbit single-board computers, or even relatively inexpensive single-board PC's.

Mike Green

I guess I don't understand what you're asking. You haven't provided some important details. You mention a "microcontroller". What do you mean? Stamps are microcontrollers with some other pieces included like a small voltage regulator, an EEPROM, and a programming interface to allow programming directly from a PC.

A Stamp could keep a tally of scores all by itself.

A Stamp could theoretically be used to program some other microcontroller. Whether it could actually be done depends on the details of the programming algorithm for the microcontroller. You would also need to use a Stamp with more than 2K of EEPROM, something like a BS2p or BS2px. The extra EEPROM can be used to hold the program for the other microcontroller during the programming and verification process.