Newbie

[rpulley]

Hey everyone,

I want to get into embedded development, mainly for a hobby but it would be nice to do it professionally as well. Right now I work as a software developer and have 8+ years experience programming in C and various other languages.

What I'm wondering is where/how I should start. I would like to work on small things right now just to learn how to work with these embedded systems. It would be nice to get into programming small robots some time in the future.

Anyway, any help from you guys (or girls) would be greatly apprecitated.

Thanks!

[Dave]

Perhaps a good starting place would be to get some type of development kit. We offer our IsoPod(TM) here as well as many other systems, but with the Development kit, you have an embedded controller with quite a number of peripherals, a prototyping area, an easy method of powering, and interactive serial programming. With some systems you might be required to go through a cycle of writing a program, compiling that program, then loading it if there were no errors. Using IsoMax with the MaxForth on board, words are compiled as they are entered, while you are writing to the processor and it responding back to you. If you want a C environment, that too can be used by adding a JTAG to the kit, to go through the above mentioned cycle. There's quite a bit of information concerning the IsoPod at http://www.newmicros.com/store/product_details/download.html including example Forth code, IsoMax state machine structure for a form of multitasking, and even a free custom terminal program to "talk" to your board. Hope this helps.