Many of the most interesting electronic devices are sensors or embedded computers. Consider:

Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire devices

In the late 1990s I was introduced to Dallas Semiconductor's 1-wire product line. I've since played with these devices in my home office and have been able to employ their iButtons in a work related project. One of the may products is a digital thermometer which can be put on a long (50 m) signalling bus with thermometers and other sensors.
You can check my log of temperatures seen in my office.

Dallas Semiconductor TINI

In 2005 I acquired a TINI board which executes 8051 machine code or interprets Java byte code. It has built-in firmware to support process scheduling of native code as well as the ability to interprete Java byte code.
You can check out a simple TINI based web page service by direct access (when it's running, campus access only) or a copy (which may be out of date).
play.html was last edited by Randolph Bentson, on 2009/09/15T17:04:52-07:00