So, how often have you wanted to make a short screen recording with audio?  or maybe take a snapshot of a page and mark it up to email to somebody?

Maybe you are experiencing a problem, and you are having trouble explaining it to support?  Perhaps you are support and you are having trouble explaining the solution?  Perhaps you are collaborating with people and you need a way to express your thoughts.  Well, enter Jing..  Check it out here:

http://www.jingproject.com/ 

I really would like to get into electronics, robotics, and tele-presence in a big way. But I have little skills in this regard. Lots of ideas, but little skills. No problem.. Just develop the skills.

Over the years, I have bought and collected many electronics/robotics learning kits. My plan is to go through them, develop some basic skills, and then start attempting to create a tele-presence device that will allow for me to remotely do gardening, build things, household chores, etc.

To get started, I will be going through the StampWorks manual. In the course of this, I will learn basic electronics, microprocessor programming, interacting with LCD panel, motors, and other devices.

So, let’s go over the setup:

1) StampWorks Kit from Parallax

2) USB to Serial connector from Radio Shack –ooops, no VISTA drivers… I need to find a different device…

3) HP laptop computer

I checked the Parallax site for a more recent version of the Basic Stamp IDE. There is a newer one (v.2.3.9), that can be found on the Basic Software download page.

Now to test out our setup. First program

‘ {$STAMP BS2}

DEBUG “The StampWorks lab is ready!”

– could not connect to the stamp because there is no VISTA driver for the USB-Serial device I have…. Stay tuned…