Best way to get started with programming other things than your computer? [closed]

Answer 1

Give SparkFun a shot. For me, servos are what I love to hack around with.

Answer 2

To ease yourself into embedded programming, you may want to try using XNA for either the Xbox or the Zune. You won't be doing memory management, but you'll get used to the constrained hardware if you do it on the Zune. Admittedly, it's using C#; but you could always do the programming itself using CIL.

Answer 3

You can try with BeagleBoard, though its kind of mainstream, nonetheless very impressive performance to speak off at just 149$.

Answer 4

There are a lot of programmable robots around. In fact, even some of the Roombas (automated vacuums) can be programmed. This is particularly good if you want to teach kids how to program.

Answer 5

I have personal experience and would recommend using these products to program PICs:

Programming board GCBasic (Open Source Basic)

The PICs are cheap ($2 bucks or so) and the board will cost you around $120.

Recently, I have been impressed with TIs wireless USB chips/programmers. You can get 2 chips and a programmer for $50 bucks. It also comes with a free C compiler. By default it comes with a sample remote temperature program.

TI wireless target board

Answer 6

I would also recommend AVR (8-bit) and Butterfly or DB101 kit. The main advantage is that there is a GCC compiler available and that you can program them through the Serial Port, without the need of a tool. Inexpensive programming and debugging tools are also available. There is a very strong AVR community in AVRFreaks

Another alternative is ARM7 and ARM9 microcontrollers (32bit). If you are interested in using an OS (ucLinux/FreeRTOS for ARM7, Linux for ARM9), you should go that way. There is of course a free GCC compiler. You can buy kits and tools at Olimex