pbasic victory by all

kelvin james

Wihout going into a deep history of my experience with the stamp---- mega frustration, hair pulling, wanting to dismember my computer to YEAHHHH, victotry dances (that even i am ashamed of) and " Man, am i good!!" It would be great to hear of other people's experiences with the stamp. I have personally spent over a year, from the time i first started working with one, up to now, working on a vision, and finally everything is starting to fall in place. But, i am not finished yet, and sometimes it is tough to get back on the ol' keyboard, because i know i have a "challenge from hell" waiting for me.
So, hopefully, to boost my moral, i would love to hear of the accomplishments of the stamp gods or just maybe anyone that has made something work the way they wanted it to, to post their "victory".
Also, has anybody here been able to implement anything into the "real world" that we would all be able to relate to?
I guess we are all inventors at heart, and we can learn by each others experience.

kelvin


" My chair seems to be getting smaller !"

DaveG

Kelvin,

Usually my projects turn into monsters and take forever, but here's a little project that was fun to build
and only took a few days to finish.

Problem: Now that I'm retired I have trouble remembering the date.

Solution: Use a BS2 and clock chip to drive two Nixie tubes, which I mounted next to my calendar on the wall.
Each day at midnight it increments the two-digit date.

Hardware: BS2, DS1302 clock chip, NTE74141 High Voltage decoder/driver chips, 180VDC power supply,
B-5092 Nixie tubes($12 each from Sphere Research in Canada).

Dave G

kelvin james

Thanks Dave, that's pretty cool. I thought the vacuum tube thing was history, but glad to see it is still around. I was brought up around the tubes being involved in audio/music, and still think it out-rankes the digital format anytime. A 180 VDC power supply? Wow, never figured that. Your invention is a great idea that will probably last forever. Once i get through my current project. i will start on an idea with the stamp to create somewhat of an artificial intelligence to control power usage in a home. kelvin

Jon Williams

Kelvin,

I bought my first BASIC Stamp (BS1 Rev D) over 10 years ago and didn't go to bed the day it arrived I was having so much fun. I had some microcontroller experience and a lot of high-level programming experience (I was a fiend with my Timex-Sinclair computer way back when). The BASIC Stamp just made sense to me and I quickly converted lots of discrete projects to the BS1. Then the BS2 came out and things got even better. About five years ago I designed a BS2 into a commercial product (I was not working for Parallax then), and also doing consulting for others who wanted to incorporate the BS2 into their products. The product I designed was a timer-based alarm system: it could time alarm inputs and if an input duration exceed a pre-programmed limit, the device would pick up a phone line and send a numeric alarm code to a pager or cell phone. I wrote a piece of PC software (using VB) that allowed the user to program the alarm times, labels, alaram numbers and codes. All of this data was stored in the BS2 EEPROM so it was nonvolitile -- and could be reread from the device by a service guy.

You would be amazed at the array of companies -- from 1-man operations to giants in aerospace -- who regularly use the BASIC Stamp.

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax
Dallas Office

achilles03

I used the BS2 a little in my undergrad years, but didn't really use it again until I got an itch for a project. Now I'm hooked. For this project, it took over a year to figure out everything and get it working, but it ended up being able to process GPS data, determine if it needed to transmit data (which it could do from over 50km away), determine if it was ascending or decending, operate cameras based on altitude and time, detect bad/absent GPS data, and record temperature, altitude, latitude, logitude, etc. I learned A LOT.

http://www.geocities.com/achilles03/hab.htm

The 2 best pictures (I think) are these:
http://www.geocities.com/achilles03/c_86426ft_cam1.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/achilles03/cv_90546ft_cam2.jpg

Dave