We've spent a lot of time recently on expanding our range of E-Blocks and have quite a few new ones coming out soon - please keep an eye on our website for more details. Here's a taster of what's on the horizon...
* Bluetooth
* Voice CODEC (add voice comms to the Bluetooth board)
* MIDI
* LIN
* Motor driver
* PS2 / VGA
* SD card reader
* GPS
* MP3 decoder
* Relay
* Opto-isolator
* USB
* CODEC (for dsPIC)
* Colour graphic LCD display
These will all work with the following "upstream" E-blocks boards (some of which are also about to be released):
* PICmicro multiprogrammer
* PICmicro development board
* CPLD
* FPGA
* Atmel AVR
* ARM
* dsPIC
If you have any suggestions for new E-Blocks or would like to see other micros supported, please get in touch.
New E-Blocks for 2006
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Mark
- Posts: 209
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- Location: Bakewell, UK
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Steve,
A great selection of boards.
My interest is mainly in using a board to prove a concept, so the clearer the documentation can be made the better, as the ideal will simply be to transpose an E-board circuit and component(s) to a prototype board for further development.
On this score an I2C board with a simple (industry standard?) memory would be as useful as the SPI board, which has a FRAM memory chip that is not readily available (also not available in DIL format (?) which excludes some users) and the D/A which is a seperate unconnected function (and presumably adds cost).
A boxed programmer board with flying leads would be useful to take projects seemlessly from 488 board to prototype board.
The latter could simply be a boxed-up Lite programmer board. Talking of which I would like to see that back on the list as it provides a realistic (size/cost) option to make and use a project made from e-boards.
A board which I would like to try out (and should be popular for educational users as well) would be a speech synthesis board. The SP0256 phenome based chip seems still in vogue and a board would make a great Flowcode component.
However, one issue that comes up time and time again from people experimenting with PIC's is interfacing with a PC (there are any number of posts asking about this on the web). There is clearly a niche for a course on how to use Visual Basic (which is now free) to inteface (RS232/Bluetooth/USB etc) perhaps including pre-packaged sub-programmes to make the job easier. This should also be useful in the education field.
Since I am in full flow, I think there is scope to market a Flowcode for children. My 4 year old successfully (verbally, me typing))programmed the Buggy component and later decided we needed a program to alert nurses when a hospital ward was too hot, such as when they were asleep at night (yes, it is called a thermostat but at 4 you don't know that (or about night shifts!)). However, there is a lack of jolly graphics to keep attention.
Well thats me done, better go do some work...
Hope the boards sell.
Mark
A great selection of boards.
My interest is mainly in using a board to prove a concept, so the clearer the documentation can be made the better, as the ideal will simply be to transpose an E-board circuit and component(s) to a prototype board for further development.
On this score an I2C board with a simple (industry standard?) memory would be as useful as the SPI board, which has a FRAM memory chip that is not readily available (also not available in DIL format (?) which excludes some users) and the D/A which is a seperate unconnected function (and presumably adds cost).
A boxed programmer board with flying leads would be useful to take projects seemlessly from 488 board to prototype board.
The latter could simply be a boxed-up Lite programmer board. Talking of which I would like to see that back on the list as it provides a realistic (size/cost) option to make and use a project made from e-boards.
A board which I would like to try out (and should be popular for educational users as well) would be a speech synthesis board. The SP0256 phenome based chip seems still in vogue and a board would make a great Flowcode component.
However, one issue that comes up time and time again from people experimenting with PIC's is interfacing with a PC (there are any number of posts asking about this on the web). There is clearly a niche for a course on how to use Visual Basic (which is now free) to inteface (RS232/Bluetooth/USB etc) perhaps including pre-packaged sub-programmes to make the job easier. This should also be useful in the education field.
Since I am in full flow, I think there is scope to market a Flowcode for children. My 4 year old successfully (verbally, me typing))programmed the Buggy component and later decided we needed a program to alert nurses when a hospital ward was too hot, such as when they were asleep at night (yes, it is called a thermostat but at 4 you don't know that (or about night shifts!)). However, there is a lack of jolly graphics to keep attention.
Well thats me done, better go do some work...
Hope the boards sell.
Mark
Go with the Flow.
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Steve
- Matrix Staff
- Posts: 3433
- Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:59 pm
- Has thanked: 114 times
- Been thanked: 422 times
Thanks for the comments, Mark. Here are a couple of points I'd like to add...
http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/Learnin ... /index.php
http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/coco/index.htm
And there is a downloadable demo of the new version from here:
http://www.commotiongroup.co.uk/coco.html
We do sell Flowcode into schools in other countries, but sadly not much into Britain (but we do very well at post-16). I'll not say any more on this subject because I will start to rant about the state of education...
See the "Using Visual Basic with E-blocks" article on this page:Mark wrote: However, one issue that comes up time and time again from people experimenting with PIC's is interfacing with a PC (there are any number of posts asking about this on the web). There is clearly a niche for a course on how to use Visual Basic (which is now free) to inteface (RS232/Bluetooth/USB etc) perhaps including pre-packaged sub-programmes to make the job easier. This should also be useful in the education field.
http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/Learnin ... /index.php
Our CoCo product is more appropriate for Primary education. See here:Mark wrote: Since I am in full flow, I think there is scope to market a Flowcode for children. My 4 year old successfully (verbally, me typing))programmed the Buggy component and later decided we needed a program to alert nurses when a hospital ward was too hot, such as when they were asleep at night (yes, it is called a thermostat but at 4 you don't know that (or about night shifts!)). However, there is a lack of jolly graphics to keep attention.
http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/coco/index.htm
And there is a downloadable demo of the new version from here:
http://www.commotiongroup.co.uk/coco.html
We do sell Flowcode into schools in other countries, but sadly not much into Britain (but we do very well at post-16). I'll not say any more on this subject because I will start to rant about the state of education...