FEZ Panda II

For a few weeks now I have been learning how to program the FEZ panda II microcontroller. This microcontroller uses the .NET Micro Framework (.NET MF) which allows the user to program and debug code using Microsoft’s free Visual Studio Express through the C# language. The controller consist of a 72MHz, 32-bit ARM7 processor, 512 KB Flash and 96 KB RAM. The board has several digital and analog inputs and outputs some with Pulse-width modulation and serial port capabilities among several key features (more features here).  Overall, this has been a great learning experience for me as I had never programmed microcontrollers in the past. It has been a little slow since I am not very experienced with the C# language and object oriented programming.

FezPandaII_Ruander

To continue to learn more about microcontrollers, I have recently purchase an Arduino Uno  board. One of the reasons I purchased this board is that I should be able to program it using using LabVIEW and MATLAB which are languages that I am more experienced with. Here is a link to a great resource I found about microcontroller comparison. I have been tempted several times to buy a Raspberry Pi, but this would require learning yet another programming language (Python) which I may consider in the near future. Right now, I am trying to get more experience using microcontrollers for Control Systems Engineering.

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