I work with high schoolers and their teachers, and I often come across questions about how to get started with physical computing. This post is meant to compare some of the most well-known platforms. To begin, understand that the space is broadly separated into microcontrollers and single-board computers, with different strengths and weaknesses. Microcontrollers (MCUs) Microcontrollers are basic, general-purpose processors with limited capabilities compared to single board computers (SBCs). They offer slower processing speeds, smaller storage capacity, and fewer communication options. Unlike SBCs, which run full operating systems, microcontrollers typically execute only one program at a time. Despite these limitations, microcontrollers have several advantages. They are generally more affordable than SBCs, and their simpler architecture makes it easier to understand and control their behavior. Additionally, microcontrollers can begin executing their programs almost immediately after pow...
I've been mulling it over for weeks, and I decided that a new laptop really would help my endeavors this semester. My old laptop is a bit slow at this point, but I could live with the dated technology. What really prompted me were the bulk and weight of the machine, and the fact that it has a 2 minute battery life. It's impractical to try and use that laptop very often, since I'm forced to sit near an outlet and take a few extra minutes for setup and tear-down. So today I finally took the plunge. Armed with some leftover student loan money, I headed to Best Buy. I had already shopped around and picked out the machine, so the transaction was fairly quick. I am the proud new owner of an HP Pavilion dv2415nr . It's fairly small and light, and looks great with their Wave pinstripe design. It's got Windows Vista, an AMD Turion dual-core processor, comes with 1GB of RAM (I'll probably upgrade that posthaste), and built-in NVIDIA GeForce graphics! Not to mention the in...
I'm just going to mention that this morning has been, by all accounts, pretty crappy. I decided to drive to the Park-n-Ride instead of taking my bike on the local route, but that's not one of the crappy things. I was an intersection away from the PnR when I hit a red light, with a pickup truck in front of me. We all stopped, but then the pickup rolled backward and hit me! We got out real quick, and the lady seemed pretty worried about what had happened, like I was going to be really angry. We both drove into the PnR, since she was also taking the bus, and we examined the damage. Her truck was fine, but my car has a nice new dent on the front of the hood. Now for those of you who have seen my car, a small dent on the hood is a drop in the bucket. I told her I wasn't worried about it, that my car needed a lot of work anyway and I wasn't upset about a small dent. If I had a nice new car, that might've been different, but with my old Civic in the condition that it is, i...
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