I've looked into microcontroller programming before, but decided it was too expensive for me. The NXP contest giveaway really excited me, and I'm sitting down here with my new mbed.

I'm new to this stuff. I definitely don't want magic smoke coming out of my mbed, so I have a few questions:

-What batteries should I use to power it? I'm going to go and buy a breadboard soon to mess around with it.
-What can I go buy at RadioShack that will let me have a bit of fun with it?
-I understand some basic microcontroller stuff like analog/digital inputs and outputs, but can anyone direct me to a quickie guide perhaps?
-I'm pretty good with C++ coding. What can I do with the mbed and its library?

I've already made a fun little LED dancing app with the 4 in-built LEDs, and I can send instructions to it in the code. :P

My main request is to understand the do's and don'ts with the mbed, and I'd appreciate someone helping me. :D

Timothy

Check the box, there is a USB-cable in it. So connect your mBed with the USB-cable to the PC. No batteries needed.

And the rest depends all on your own imagenation.

Have fun

Ben Zijlstra

I've already made a simple LED application and transferred it to my mbed, but I want to know what I should and shouldn't do with it and how to connect it to a power source; and how to connect components like potentiometers and stuff... I'm very new to all this, and don't want to burn anything out.

Hi

For Battery or non-usb power the mbed has the Vin pin, which takes 4.5v-9v, acording to the handbook here

The Digital IO pins output 3.3v, 40mA each, 400mA max total

However they can take up to 5v input.

As for connectiong up basic components maybe try looking at this Experimenter's Guide for Arduino's, the code will not work on the mbed, but you can have fun trying to port the examples across.

Hope this hepls

Matt

Thanks for that link, it gave me lots of information I just couldn't seem to find elsewhere.