2004-02-09 Sampling the World http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4827 [this looks really cool!] he's going to show, in 3 hours, how to start working with microcontrollerss, sensors etc. he's sick of seeing projects that have a toaster hooked up to some pentium under the desk. [some cool shows of devices at the MIT Media Lab. one student built an interactive lamp (its head was made with a 3d printer!) which would sense you getting closer and move towards you.] ssh to 10.10.15.60 msp430/msp430 /usr/msp430 MSP430F1232 is a pretty standard microcontroller. 8K flash memory, 256 bytes RAM, 22 I/O pins. "and what good's a microcontroller without IO? a rock could be the biggest microcontroller ever, right, the planet, but we don't know how to talk to it." apparently if you clock this chip right, you can run it off a watch battery for a year or two. there's a good slide on what to look for in a microprocessor: interrupt functionality is one. low-power modes inbetween interrupts is another. [and again, the gnu toolchain stuff is a bit over my head. something I need to learn about, I think.]