What to microcontroller to use?

Gill987

Hi,
I need help with a project, badly.· Basically, I'm going to have two sensors that when passed through within a certain amount of time, an uotput will be sent, lighting a lightbulb.· (For example, if both sensors are broken within two seconds, the output will be sent out, lighting the lightbulb)

I'm not so worried about what sensors to use, but more on what microcontroller to use.· If anyone knows what would be good, please post.

Also, I'm being rushed, so the sooner you can post, the better.

Thanks!

Ugha

Pretty much any of Parallax's products can do what your asking.

You'll need a tiny bit of external hardware for the lightbulb though... unless you intend to use an LED.

I highly recommend the Basic Stamp 2 for this task as its the easist to use and has the most support... it also has the power to do this and much more in case you decide to
expand it later.

If you tell us what kind of sensors they will be, we can give you more details... including schematics and point you in the right direction code-wise.

allanlane5

Any microprocessor would be able to do this -- Microchip PIC, Atmel AVR, etc.

The nice thing about the Parallax Basic Stamp II (aka BS2) is that they've solved so many reliability problems for you already. On the BS2 module, you get brown-out reset, reliable eeprom program storage, reliable clock generation, even reliable power regulation. And the PBasic language enables simple prototyping like no other platform.

Combine that with an inexpensive Board Of Education board, and you've got a very nice prototyping environment.

There's always trade-offs, so for that convenience there are some limitations in speed (2000 instructions per second). And if you're making more than 20 devices for sale, the BS2 module can get pricey (though they will sell you a less expensive "OEM" version, so there's ways to reduce the cost there too.)

Any other microprocessor or microcontroller will need the same external parts as the BS2 to accomplish your goal. The big difference is the BS2 will have the shortest development cycle to a reliable solution.