Have to get back to writing some code soon, or else I might die of mental degeneration. But I managed to work on something that is completely unrelated to java programming.
I sometimes like to work with the MSP430 Microcontroller by TI. Those are little chips that can be programmed to do certain tasks. Most people have probably heard of the Arduino, which is an open source platform based on an Atmel AVR Microcontroller. I personally prefer using the msp430 because of three reasons.
- its dirt cheap. the launchpad was 4.30$ when it was released featuring 2 included microcontrollers and a programmer
- its insanely low power. if properly programmed, those things can run off a coin cell for years
- GREAT community over at 43oh, which is helpful when confronted with problems that are beyond your grasp of electronics, which, for a person that writes programs in java, python etc, tends to happen quite often
you can see and or hear it in action in this clip
its just a microcontroller with 4 external components, a 4.7k resistor, 1 2N3904 NPN transistor to drive 1 speaker salvaged from an old laptop and a led to tell me that everything is working fine after i started it.
for anyone owning a launchpad, just grab the code, for anyone else, grab a launchpad first, they're fun :)
