chipKIT Class

Created Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:41:06 +0000 by Jacob Christ

Jacob Christ

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:41:06 +0000

I'm developing a chipKIT micro-controller class. I teach at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California and today I had the first meeting of my first chipKIT based class and this is a status report.

In the lab today I had the students install MPIDE, the computers in the classroom had neither adobe pdf reader, nor java installed. In less than an hour ever computer had java, adobe reader and MPIDE installed. I brought in a PONTECH UAV100, PONTECH Quick-240, a Max32, a Fubarino SD and an Arduino Uno. I had every students compile the blink sketch and get it working on each board I brought in. They went on to make custom blink patterns.

The students very quickly notice the difference between the USB Serial and the FTDI Serial and it was confusing to them why the serial port disappeared from the device manager after uploading. It was an easy explanation and they got over it, but if its not explained, its confusing.

There are 28 students in the class and I will be encouraging them to become active members on the chipKIT forum and in the community.

This was one of the smoothest first day's I've every had teaching a microprocessor class. MPIDE worked well on every computer (I'm not worthy).

The biggest hitches were getting the Stk500v2.inf file and the FTDI drivers installed, and that wan't too bad.

Jacob

les1943

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:09:00 +0000

Jacob Thanks for the "report" sounds like an interesting place to be , 28 students seems to be a lot to keep going, I did some technical instruction 30 years ago, and really enjoyed it . Les.

Jacob Christ

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:33:20 +0000

Les,

It is a lot. Union contract specifies we are only required to take 24 students and any above that is at our option. The class only runs once per year and minimum class size to go is 15 students. So if didn't take the extra 4, it would have bumped there graduation out a year. Its a tough call and I pointed out to the students that adding the extra 4 divides my time and reduces the time for everyone, but I usually have a few hot shots in the class and I lean on the to help the slower students.

Jacob