Archive for the 'Editorials' Category

WHEW - Back from UPEW 2011!

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

I just returned from the best UPEW yet!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been working crazy hours - thank goodness I have an unbelievable wife who understands - or at least puts up with - my crazy schedule. I love you wifey!

For those of you not familiar with UPEW, it stands for “Unofficial Parallax Expo West”, and takes place at Parallax’s headquarters in Rocklin, CA. Jeff, known as Obc on the Parallax forums, organizes this yearly event where Propeller developers and users gather to network, exchange information, display their latest projects - and in general have a blast. UPEW opens on Saturday morning at 10am, and lasts until about 4pm on Sunday. Yes, people do stay and work on their projects with like minded individuals over night. (Editor) 

The good news is that I am launching the “Mikronauts Modular System”, the culmination of 27 years of experience in industrial control, and about five years of experience in education.
You see, I’ve been a busy bee, and you can think of the “Mikronauts Modular System” as a “Lego”(tm) style building block approach for assembling control systems, experimentation educational computers or robotics and development systems from a coherent system of high quality microcontroller boards, prototyping boards, industrial modules, educational boards, and yes, even an advanced robot controller board and some sensors :-)

What this means for you:

  • I will be writing a large amount of documentation detailing the system, which is composed of almost 40 printed circuit boards
  • there are more on the way in my design / testing / manufacturing pipeline
  • More utilities, drivers and sample code
  • Application notes for my products
  • Customer success stories, should they wish to contribute some
  • Contests with prizes you will want to win
  • An e-commerce solution so you can easily order my products should you so desire
  • I may even add forums!

It will take a while to get all the documentation written and uploaded, but I will start by posting the announcement for my RoboProp advanced Propeller based controller board with some photo’s later today. I think you will like it - it got a great reception at UPEW from the attendees.

I welcome all your feedback. Please create an account for yourself and participate.

I promise not to sell or distribute your account information, and I also promise not to spam your inbox myself - I hate spam with a passion - at most I may produce a small bi-weekly newsletter at some point in the future to keep you updated on interesting developments.

To keep spam off the site, all comments will be moderated, as will the future forum.

Welcome to Mikronauts.com!

Saturday, December 16th, 2006

This site is dedicated to those individuals who work with, or like tinkering with, microcontrollers. After a long absence from electronics, I decided to dive back in… the capabilities of current microcontrollers significantly outpace the first micro computers!

I am currently fascinated by the Propeller - a VERY unique microcontroller from Parallax, whom many of you know as the originators of the Basic Stamp series of modules. Despite my fascination with the propeller, I am also working with a few other popular microcontroller families, and I intend to write about all the microcontrollers I end up working with.

You can expect articles on the following microcontroller families:

  • Parallax Propeller
  • Atmel ATMega series
  • PIC 16F, 18F and dsPIC series
  • ARM7 derived controllers

Please note that I welcome contributions about ANY microcontroller - not just the ones listed above!

Best Wishes,

Bill