Episode 102 - Build an Email Alert System with Microcontrollers [Discussion]

[serafina]

Originally Posted by scott01581

these Mac people

Wait, what? Dave, Pat and I all use Windows as our desktop machines, and we all use both on a regular basis (except Dave, who I'm pretty sure sticks to his PC). The Macbook used in this episode was Roger's.

If you want to make sure Dave hears your feedback, be sure to email - systm@revision3.com. I *think* he checks the boards sometimes, but I *know* he reads the emails.

[scott01581]

I sent it email, but if he doesn't want people thinking he is one of those Mac people he really should not stand in front of one the entire show. Also, I didn't like his comments about the "Ardiuno only being good for people who want to build boards". Oh please, I know some of the people involved in the Arduino project and they work very hard at making a great interface into the AVR. I have used more than a few Micro controllers and their development boards. I have nothing bad to say about Basic Stamps, or any others, they are all capable of working for a wide range of projects, but truly I think Dave's dislike of Arduino may be showing a little. Which is not what I would expect from systm. If he doesn't like it fine, but at least get the facts straight. "Making things talk" is not the beginner offering from Make for Arduino, "Getting started with Arduino" is, and maybe he should try reading that before becoming so critical. Just my 2 cents.

[gamerfreak]

I'm curious as to why Dave is pushing the Parallax PIC setup. An AVR setup is far cheaper and faster.
http://www.ladyada.net/library/picvsavr.html

The STAMP environment is overpriced, slow, and feature lacking compared to the open source Arduino Environment. Arduinos are dirt cheap, you could throw one together for ~$15 without skimping on anything. I'd like to know the reasoning behind portraying the Arduino/AVR chips to be inferior.

I'm also not sure where the "Ardiuno only being good for people who want to build boards" comment stemmed from. All of the extra stuff on an arduino board is for the USB reading/writing. You can pop the chip out and solder it into your project once you write code to it.

Although I don't agree with the way this episode was presented, I would like to see more electronics based systm episodes. Nice work.

[davmoo]

I must have got a special edition of this episode that was only available to me. In the episode I saw, Dave stated why he picked the Stamp...he uses it in his classes, has piles of the boards laying around, and he is *very* familiar with it.

Sounds reasonable to me. And it makes sense because you all have pointed out examples of how he's not familiar with Arduino, Picaxe, etc.

And I'll toss in another reason for one to possibly favor a Stamp. I live in a rural area right outside of a smallish city. You won't find pics for sale here. You won't find Arduinos for sale here. You won't find picaxes for sale here. Your only choice with those is to go mailorder. But even in this town, the Radio Shack has Basic Stamp kits hanging on a peg...instant gratification, and it pretty much comes with everything you'd need to do this project, even the servo.

systm@revision3.ccom

Huh , must be a new domain type I am not familliar with?

[haku]

Using what you have lying about isn't much of an excuse to go for something that on the outset looks complicated compared to a basic 08M PICAXE that would have easily done the job as kiwifrog aptly pointed out.
I learnt how to use & program a PICAXE 18X in an evening and I hadn't done anything like that before, yes I taught myself BASIC programming on the BBC Micro in the 80s and I make money from soldering, but with David's knowledge of programming & soldering I doubt he would have taken half as long as me to figure out how to use a PICAXE which didn't come with a pre-built circuitboard, he's already said he knows how to use PIC chips as he used one in the magnetic boots episode.

I also live in a rural area and the town is pathetic for electronics supplies, we used to have a Tandy (aka Radio Shack in the UK) but that company disappeared many years ago, the closest 'decent' electronics store (Maplins) is 17 miles away but their prices are somewhat extortionate so I only go there if I need something very urgent, and they don't appear to sell any sort of programmable microprocessor (well their website search is screwed right now so I can't even find out)
Online mail order is how I get most of my electronic bits, so since Tandy disappeared and very few visits to the town with Maplins I'd be stuffed in terms of electronic parts - which also means I'm not tied down to what my local store would have, I can shop around for what I want.

[lux]

Hi I think systm is on the right track with this type of content.

I believe Arduino is a better bet than other options too.
Parallax is expensive, specially if you need to get it overseas (like me).
Arduino comes from Italy and it's the same price all over the world.

Keep up the good work, and btw I loved the sumobot episode too.

I think PWM for the servo should have more explaining.
I don't think people would mind if you use more than 1 episode per project.
So more detail and it's perfect! Keep up the good work!

João

[serafina]

Originally Posted by computoman

Huh , must be a new domain type I am not familliar with?

Where do you see that?

[gamerfreak]

Originally Posted by davmoo

I must have got a special edition of this episode that was only available to me. In the episode I saw, Dave stated why he picked the Stamp...he uses it in his classes, has piles of the boards laying around, and he is *very* familiar with it.

Sounds reasonable to me. And it makes sense because you all have pointed out examples of how he's not familiar with Arduino, Picaxe, etc.

And I'll toss in another reason for one to possibly favor a Stamp. I live in a rural area right outside of a smallish city. You won't find pics for sale here. You won't find Arduinos for sale here. You won't find picaxes for sale here. Your only choice with those is to go mailorder. But even in this town, the Radio Shack has Basic Stamp kits hanging on a peg...instant gratification, and it pretty much comes with everything you'd need to do this project, even the servo.

I would agree with you if the episode was about the mailbox project, but that was hardly explained. It was more or less a brief introduction to micro controllers and what they can do.

There seems to be a confusion little confusion in this thread about what is what, so let me clear all that up:

There are two primary micro controller architectures for hobby use, PIC and AVR. Both can interpret hex instructions, and both have a multitude of compilers to allow the use of higher level languages. Both are very similar in form factor and technical capability.

Basic STAMP and PICAXE are development environments for the PIC architecture while Arduino is a development environment for the AVR architecture.

What Dave also failed to mention while he explained the cost of a PIC writer, is that AVR writers can be as low as $15 or free with a parallel port.

Overall, it felt as though the show was strongly bias towards PIC/Stamp, and didn't reflect the realities hobbyist micro controllers.

Originally Posted by Serafina

Where do you see that?

On the page for the episode. I also could not find the site mentioned called jaime.org.

<a href="mailto:systm@revision3.ccom">systm@revision3 .com</a>

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						<p>Microcontrollers form the heart of many electronics projects big and 
small. David uses them constantly for robots, and he helps you get the ball 
rolling with an introductory look at microcontroller, including Arduino and Parallax. 
<p>

How? By building a simple gmail notifier and raises a 
flag whenever a new email message arrives in your inbox.
<p>
If you don't have an electronics supply store nearby <a 
href="http://www.parallax.com/" target="_blank">Parallax</a> is Dave's 
favorite store/supplier for microcontrollers. If you simply must go the 
open source route you can check out the <a href="http://www.arduino.cc/" 
target="_blank">Arduino</a> board.
<p>
For a copy of the Python code that Dave used in the show just <a 
href="mailto:systm@revision3.ccom">systm@revision3.com</a> with "python 
code for gmail notifier" in the subject line.					</div>