Re: My Beloved Electron
I suppose it depends on what you think they need to know. I used to love tinkering with 6502 assembler on my BBC Micro, but apart from a few times when I used it to speed up some process that was taking far too long in BASIC, I stuck with BASIC.
When I started my first job I used some of my newfound wealth to buy a 6502, some static RAM, some EEPROM, address decoders, breadboard etc. and was intending to build my own computer for no reason other than I could*...
...the bits are still in a box in the attic somewhere, partly assembled.
These days my children have access to Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BBC Micro:Bit as well as more "normal" computers. I've just bought an "enviro" board for the micro:bit and using it is as easy as dragging the "Read Temperature in °C" block to the build area. I need a temperature sensor for another application on Arduino and there is a vast array of devices, all with lovely libraries which let you do something similar. When you read the data sheets, you understand why. Bit-banging the 1-wire protocol does not look like fun.
Question then - do children really need to be able to know how to communicate "raw" with a remote sensor, or is dragging the "Read Temperature" block enough, because it's the outcome of creating a temperature display that's the real goal?
I have a project of my own that needs a temperature sensor - doesn't need to be terribly accurate and doesn't need to be at all fast. I'm actually probably going to be using a device with an analogue output. It will be on the end of about 10m of cable, maybe more, and busses such as I²C can't cope with long wires.
M.
*I knew I could, because I'd spent a very happy "sandwich year" building from the ground up a series of MCS96-based electronic devices, prototyping them in wire-wrap. The development system (compiler) was way out of my domestic budget so at home I was intending to use the BBC Micro's compiler :-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
