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Preston_5564C01.fm Page 4 Friday, September 16, 2005 6:36 AM

4 CHAPTER 1 ■ A PRIMER

The Microcontroller Programmer Setup

All examples in this book are in PBASIC because it’s the most popular Microcontroller language at
the moment. You can also find many examples and sample code on the Internet and at the
Parallax site. At the back of the book, I’ve included a quick reference for PBASIC as well as a
Javelin Stamp version of the examples.
You can download the latest version of the programmer from www.parallax.com. Figure 1-4
shows a picture of a sample program loaded into the BASIC Stamp Windows editor.

Figure 1-4. The BASIC Stamp Windows editor

The Robot Setup

If you do not have a robot and would like one in a kit, several fine specimens can be found at
www.lynxmotion.com, www.parallax.com, or www.prestonresearch.com. For most of the
examples in this book, I use a differential drive robot or CubeBot (as shown in Figure 1-5).