[Coco] CoCo Ethernet for $25-$30...

[Frank Pittel]

On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 07:17:26PM -0500, Allen Huffman wrote:
> On Apr 8, 2013, at 5:42 PM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Most of these products will work fine with Arduino as well as Parallax micros. The Xbee stuff is interesting
> > since it allows for wireless serial at 115K!! There's an adaptor that allows one to be connected to a PC via
> > usb. Connect one to your computer via usb and another to the bitbanger on a coco!
> 
> I have a set of Xbees, which I bought from RadioShack of all places! They are very neat, and a local place I do some work for (Renaissance festival, Halloween haunted houses, etc.) has a setup of outdoor laser tag equipment that is all based on the Xbees but using ones with the 1.5 mile range instead of the small ones I have from the Shack.

There are a number of diferent models of the Xbee. Unfotunately there are at least of a couple of different protocols and they're of course incompatable with
each other. Figure out what you want and pick you poison based on that. I don't think we need 1.5 miles worth of range for a coco. :-)
 
> > PS - I know I'm strongly in the Parallax camp but there's something about a micro available as a 40pin DIP
> > with 32 IO pins that has 8 independent cores (they call them cogs) each running at 80MHZ that I like.
> 
> I have done much work with BASIC Stamp (www.efx-tek.com Halloween prop controllers) which is what got me in to this years ago. I wish I had stayed with it all this time.
> 
> Have you done any interfacing with the CoCo?

I haven't done anything with trying to get the Xbee to work with a coco but am happy to try. I've got a couple of them I can bring to the fest if
there's interest in trying to get it to work with a coco! I probably got the same kit you did which means one has a usb mini port on the adaptor to connect
easily to a computer and another has an adaptor to allow it to be used with 5 volt serial that we can connect to the coco via the bit banger port.
I will need a plug or "spare" cable we can putz with.

The Other Frank