I have been very fortunate in that I have been able to have three somewhat overlapping and very interesting careers. I began my working life as a math teacher, returned to school to become a psychologist, and ultimately returned to the field of education as a microcomputer teacher and consultant. Now that I am retired, I am even more fortunate - I finally have the time to pursue some of my personal interests and hobbies! I have been tinkering with electronics and microcomputers for the past 35 years, and when I retired, one of the first things I did was to enroll in the local Community College as an Electrical Engineering Technology major. It took me five years (part-time) to complete the program, but I learned a tremendous amount that is helping me to design and construct bigger and better playthings.
I have been interested in electronics and computer programming since I was a kid. Back in the dark ages (before the Apple IIe), I built my first "personal computer" from a kit and learned to program it in machine language. If you don't know what that is, you're lucky - it involves coding each computer instruction as a hexadecimal number and entering it into the computer's memory (all 2k of it) by hand - tedious, to say the least!
A few years ago, I discovered the PICAXE line of microcontrollers. They are much less expensive and easier to program than all the other microcontrollers I have come across. They are very popular in England and other parts of the world, but still relatively unknown here in the United States. Now that I have the time to do so, I am making it my mission to "spread the word" about these amazing processors.
Of course, this site is one means of doing so, but I have also been writing PICAXE-related magazine articles for the past couple of years. Currently, I'm doing a regular Bi-monthly column (the PICAXE Primer) for Nuts and Volts Magazine. If you find PICAXE programming as fascinating as I do, you may want to subscribe to Nuts and Volts - I'm just beginning to explore the capabilities of the new (and very powerful) PICAXE-28X1 in a series of installments that will focus on interfacing it (or any PICAXE processor) with various I/O peripherals. The following is a list of my articles that have been published thusfar:
PICAXE-Related Publications
- Robot's Little Helper. SERVO Magazine, October 2006.
- Getting Started with PICAXE Microcontrollers, Part I. Nuts and Volts Magazine, January 2007.
- Getting Started with PICAXE Microcontrollers, Part II. Nuts and Volts Magazine, February 2007.
- Getting Started with PICAXE Microcontrollers, Part III. Nuts and Volts Magazine, March 2007.
- M-Bot, Part I. SERVO Magazine, September 2007.
- M-Bot, Part II. SERVO Magazine, October 2007.
- PICAXE Primer: Introduction to the PICAXE-08M. Nuts and Volts Magazine, December 2007.
- PICAXE Primer: Playing Music on the 08M. Nuts and Volts Magazine, February 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Introduction to Stripboards. Nuts and Volts Magazine, April 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: "Faux" PC Boards. Nuts and Volts Magazine, June 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Build the PICAXE IR Multi-Board. Nuts and Volts Magazine, August 2008.
- Meet the SERVO TankBot. SERVO Magazine, September 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Programming the PICAXE IR Multi-Board. Nuts and Volts Magazine, October 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Experimenting with the IR Multi-Board. Nuts and Volts Magazine, December 2008.
- Taking Control of your SERVO TankBot. SERVO Magazine, December 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Implementing a Serial Data Link with the IR Multi-Board. Nuts and Volts Magazine, February 2009.
- Emancipating your SERVO TankBot. SERVO Magazine, March 2009.
- PICAXE Primer: Taming Unruly LCDs, Part I. Nuts and Volts Magazine, April 2009.
- Emancipating your SERVO TankBot, Redux. SERVO Magazine, May 2009.
- PICAXE Primer: Taming Unruly LCDs, Part II. Nuts and Volts Magazine, June 2009.
- Adding "Sonar" Capabilities to your SERVO Tankbot. SERVO Magazine, July 2008.
- PICAXE Primer: Programming Your Serialized LCD Display. Nuts and Volts Magazine, August 2009.
- Adding an LCD to your SERVO TankBot. SERVO Magazine, September 2009.
- PICAXE Primer: Using the AXE027 USB Programming Adapter. Nuts and Volts Magazine, October 2009.
- LCD Software for your SERVO TankBot, Redux. SERVO Magazine, November 2009.
- PICAXE Primer: Interfaceing 7-Segment LED Displays, December 2009.