Building augmented controller

[Builder1]

Hello All,
I thought about going out to buy a microcontroller from Parallax but had second thoughts when I saw its price. I like the idea of not having to worry about the unknown if something unpredictable should happen 'cause all I have to do is contact Parallax's tech support people. Also it comes with an instructional book that guides you step by step on how to set it up etc. However, I wouldl like to learn how to build one so I can better understand how microcontrollers work. I read in the tutorial section that one can use the augmented board to test out ideas and such. I would really like to take this approach to learning the microcontroller, too bad there isn't more info on this. If there are web materials or video tutorials out there on this please inform me. Thank you in advance for your response.

[pomprocker]

$50 robot tutorial will walk you through building your very own augmented micro controller!

You can even upgrade it from there!!

Thats what I'm doing and I've learned a lot!

Besides, you don't want to program in BASIC anyway! C/C++ is the way to go!

Most talk on this forum seems to be around AVR 8-bit RISC chips and C!

[ang5t]

Hey there. I just recently got into doing robotic stuff. I had bought one of the parallax boebot sets a few years ago, but it got moved to the back of closet soon after due to WoW. But I have recently shaken the WoW beast and pulled this thing out due to all my extra time. From what I read about the $50 robot (all the guides and lot of posts) I would have to say that it would be a better way to go than the parallax bot. Don't get me wrong, it's really easy to build and understand, has everything you need, but you would probably learn more and save alot of $$ on the $50 robot. Hope this helps.