Robots and the Altium Nanoboard 3000

Written by Brian Bailey April 08, 2010 Hits: 537 Favorites

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I have often see people talk about the need to make engineering look more attractive to our younger generation, or that it would be better to have engineers and scientists as role models rather than athletes or Hollywood stars. One way that this has been done for many years is with robotics competitions. These are both local and national events and are often open for all ages. This gets young people to use their minds in fun, constructive ways and also allows them the thrill of competition. They promote team work and problem solving. These are all characteristics that we look for in successful engineers. Here is a link to one of these competitions that is well worth getting behind.

Nanoboard It is also nice to see that the hi-tech industry is supporting this, although not too many EDA companies in the crowd. One that is there and one of the top level sponsors is Altium. Now I personally owe an apology to Altium. Back earlier in the year they provided me with one of the Nanoboard 3000 systems, a really interesting prototyping board that contains loads of interfaces, pre-built functionality such as sound, midi, video, DtoA, and AtoDs, lots of configurability, and a Xilinx Spartan-3AN FPGA. It also comes with a software package that not only allows systems to be created easily but also contains a library of functions that can be used in the system. All I have to do is think of the application that I want to program the board to do, and hey presto, it is there. The problem is that I have not had the time to play with it. Every morning, I start my day – seeing it sitting on my desk and sigh when I consider how much I have to get accomplished and the likelihood that it will get turned on today. When is amazing about this system as well, is the price. They are selling this for just $395!! Can you believe it? This makes prototyping available to everyone. I so want to play with this puppy and son I will – then I will provide a full report, but until then, if it looks like something that would be useful to you, then I really do suggest that you check it out.

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Brian Bailey – keeping you covered

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Written by :

Brian Bailey