Anyone want to build a Picaxe tower?

[ArnieW]

I came across a great educational tool just now that originates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have a variety of small pic based boards and a system of connectors so you can plug boards together into a tower configuration depending on your needs. They use it as a rapid development tool for students.

There is extensive documentation on the system here: http://cba.mit.edu/projects/fablab/tools.html#electronics

It seems like a great idea for someone with the time and patience to put together a picaxe based system. A project for a rainy day perhaps?

cheers, Arnie

 

[hippy]

That looks nice. There's a similar, slightly easier and probably cheaper system any home users can get to grips with -

With 0.1" 1row x 20pin Molex sockets one can build a backplane on strip-board, and then plug in strip-boards with right-angle Molex plugs at the edge. Connect a backplane on both ends of the boards and it becomes a tower. The tower itself can plug into a main board the same way if needed.

The hard part is working out what signals are on the backplane and how multiple boards can be connected without shorting I/O lines through the shared bus.