Hack A Day has rediscovered the BASIC Stamp
Buck Rogers
Posts: 2,185
Hello!
Here:
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/27/before-arduino-there-was-basic-stamp-a-classic-teardown/
Well written write up and friendly comments.
One fellow even showed off his first generation Stamp One.
Yes moderators this is in general because it's not really a problem or such like. Its an open discussion on the state of the company on devices.
Here:
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/27/before-arduino-there-was-basic-stamp-a-classic-teardown/
Well written write up and friendly comments.
One fellow even showed off his first generation Stamp One.
Yes moderators this is in general because it's not really a problem or such like. Its an open discussion on the state of the company on devices.
Comments
They had been using the STAMP but the problem was the STAMP was too expensive for his students. So they set about creating an alternative, which became the Arduino.
So, a billion "makers" owe their ability to do anything to Parallax. They just don't know it.
The Open Source nature of the Arduino tools and hardware certainly helped light the Arduino fire. Something that sadly Parallax did not catch onto until quite recently.
Sorry I don't have a link to the Arduino history I am talking about but I'm sure it is not hard to find.
Straight from "wiki Arduino" : Arduino started in 2005 as a project for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Ivrea, Italy. At that time program students used a "BASIC Stamp" at a cost of $100, considered expensive for students. Massimo Banzi, one of the founders, taught at Ivrea.[6] The name "Arduino" comes from a bar in Ivrea, where some of the founders of the project used to meet. The bar, in turn, has been named after Arduin of Ivrea, who was the margrave of Ivrea and king of Italy from 1002 to 1014.[7]
Please remember to deposit your tips into the appropriate jar.
Incidentally that's a Stamp-D shown in the first photo, and further down an OEM Stamp 1.
To this day I've always wondered what did happen to that style of a Stamp 1. And than you for your kind words as well Andrew. I've been trying to convince them of the importance of the BASIC Stamp practically all the time. This is the first chance........
We have on the Hack A Day page comments from Roger, and from a user who's not normally posting here. He's the fellow who also uses them with FX activities.
Ken Gracey
Okay. Now I found it. Indeed. DJ my many hats are off to you.
Interesting thought hehe.
"
The Basic Stamp was the very first microcontroller I used in my FX work on movies. I think the very first movie I used them on was “Speed”, but I went on to use them on “Money Train”, “Fifth Element”, “Men in Black”, “Broken Arrow”, and “Starship Troopers”.
I used a bunch of them on “Star Trek First Contact”; they were in the Borg suits and the space helmets. The Queen Borg costume was the first time I used a Basic Stamp 2; I needed the faster processor to do PWM to crossfade the lights (original Basic Stamp looked stutter-y when two or three outputs were PWM’ing simultaneously).
"
A lot used behind the scenes.
I used many with animatronics up until four years ago, when I started using Propeller chips.
Still, the BS2 makes sense in a lot of installations.
People think they are gone because I have so many in my robotics lab here in Louisiana (and a bunch of Propellers too! ;-)
I found some BoeBot kits the other day on clearance at Radio Shack and it took everything I had not to buy another one! Saving for an S3 though!
As did Johnny Mac on the 28th.
Still Alive and Well:
DUDE! That's my theme song!!!
"...every now and then I know it's kinda hard to tell, but I'm still alive and well!"
EFX-TEK still moves more than a few BASIC Stamp 1's in the form of the Prop-1 controller. There are hundreds of them running at Disneyland, especially during the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay of the Haunted Mansion.
True story: A few years ago I was there one day on a tech visit and a report came in that the gophers in the southwest section of Small World had stopped working. My contact at Disney handed me a Prop-1 (BS1) controller from their inventory and asked me to write a program to randomly activate three outputs. He built an new mechanical rig, installed the controller, and within and hour the gophers were doing their thing in Small World, thanks in part to the BASIC Stamp 1. And yes, it's still running today.
Love it. Here's my low-tech hardware story from ~12 years ago. My friend (and VP at work) owns a resort on Hwy 1 south of Big Sur. One of these trendy "glamping" places with yurts (tents). He's off the grid and runs several propane-powered underground turbines to generate power & hot water. He got some smokin' deal on these surplus turbines, but the electronic controller was shot, and the company wanted $4000 to replace it. I never saw it, but as John explained it to me, it was a glorified thermostat that opened & closed a water valve using a linear actuator. He handed me the actuator, and I cobbled up an LM339 comparator & relay circuit with ye olde Radio Shack little blue thermistor 271-0110 (I bet a lot of us have one in our junk drawers) sticking out on some wires. I gave it to him to install temporarily, just to get by until he found a better option. Showed him how to connect power, duct tape this blue thingie against the hot water pipe, and twirl the pot until he liked the temperature. He went away and did it. Of course it's still installed, working perfectly, with no plans to replace it. The turbine guys stop by annually to check & service the turbines and my friend takes great pleasure in showing them how my $3 pile of Radio Shack parts is still working as good as the $4000 controller they wanted to sell him.