And here we have a box from Elector I Was clued up that this one would be coming and apparently it's uh, some sort of, uh, educational, uh kit or something. that? they've got something to that effect anyway. but uh, let's try and open this sucker up and uh, see what's inside? Here we go. Ah, it's always a bit of tape you didn't cut.

Tada Oh, here we go. Hey thanks Steven Flow code for no coding no limits For the Pck Micro. we got some Pck Micro stuff microcontroller development software easy to use graphical interface, fast and flexible. and apparently this is called the Elector Pro Pck Micro Star a kit hold but uh, hold on to your hats here.

Price: 600 us green backs Woohoo! that's uh. it's not a cheap kit at all, but it's uh, designed for the educational classroom or something like that. So let's uh, have a look what we get here. we get a power supply one one of those multi adapter things 600 bucks.

It don't want to be good for 600 bucks. but I think it's all in the uh software like I think you know the hardware is not necessarily 600 bucks in Hardware but I think there's some magic uh software as well. these um, bloody power adapter things. have they got an Aussie one? They do have an Aussie one.

There we go. Jeez, these things are, does that come? No, that doesn't come off so should. Yes, it does. It slides off.

It's one of those slidy ones. Is it? Hang on. Ah, there we go. Oh, these seem to be all the rage these days.

All these products it comes with like a custom thing. and then you get the different adapters. I'm seeing this more and more with uh gear these days is that they it. If they're welld designed like this one seems reasonably welld designed.

I guess there is a you can see the catches in there. That's not too bad and if they actually retain fairly well like that and fairly rigidly, then um I'm I'm for it because uh, it means that they don't have to supply different ones for different parts of the world. They just Supply different adapters. There's the UK one and uh as that.

European I think um so no us one. oh yes, there is there we go. weird Yankee two pin thing. So uh, there you go.

um that's just a bit in the side. that's got nothing to do with the kit. but I thought I'd uh talk about those cuz I am seeing them a lot. We've got a 16 F877 that seems to be uh, the uh goto, uh pick for a lot of stuff these days and uh USB cable and oh, we got some good looking boards in here.

We'll have to check them out one by one. and what we have here is an E blocks uh eb6 um looks like a multi programmer AP piic programmer so uh uh I I don't know, it's just a pick program at let's there's a million of these things on the market it comes from. Let's have a look: Matrix Multimedia.com and uh, that's .co.uk and that's who was on the Uh box as well. Matrix Multim Media.

So it looks like they're doing the uh E Blocks Programmer board. That's for the pick programmer and these are the three boards it comes with. It looks like we have a switch board. doesn't do much else except contain eight switches there.

another board with eight. LEDs Why they couldn't just combine those on the one board I Got no idea. Probably because the interface um for these modular blocks or E blocks as they call them E blocks. There it is is that, um, they're only using a D9 on either end.

so presumably um, you've only got ground. uh, plus your eight data lines to uh, feed back to your main controller board. So that's pretty limiting. Um, to limit your uh, uh, your development system around a D9 like that.

although I guess they you know they stack together, end on endend like this, and they plug in. That's reasonably okay. but jeez, you know. separate boards for eight leads and eight switches I Don't know.

And there's one for an LCD And interestingly, um, even though they say this is all sort of new, there it is. Um, Copyright 204 Matrix Multimedia. So I'm not sure what the new part of all of this is. Maybe it's the new Uh software that goes along with it.

but yeah, I mean here's the concept: I Guess haven't read any manual or anything like that is that you can plug these modules into your uh, this looks like it isn't just a uh, microchip, pick pick programmer board, it it actually. um, you can run your programs on there as well and you can stack your boards on like that to get your various functionality. Well, it's okay, but it's a bit I don't know. it's a bit 1990s.

There's lots of educational, uh microcontroller kits around these days and it's hard to compete. Um I'm not sure what's set in this one apart at the moment. Um, it's certainly not the hardware, but you do actually have up to five ports available, which isn't too bad I guess but yeah I don't know, it's not. uh, pushing my buttons at the moment? no pun intended.

All right. I Got to the bottom of the box and there is a nice looking uh user guide for this thing. So let's go in and check it out. and uh I think we might be a little bit more impressed by this and uh, looks like they do have other different types of modules available, but uh, here we go.

Let's get the Spiel for it. Congratulations You have just bought into the world's most flexible range of electronic system development kits. That's pretty big call. The E blocks range is made up more than 150 individual products Wow that allow you to learn, uh, how electronic systems work and to rapidly develop electronic systems of your own.

There you go. It's uh, there are two kinds of Um Hardware E blocks. There's the Upstream boards is uh, Computing term indicates that this is a board that controls the flow of information. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Usually device programmers of some kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. contains intelligence? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it holds the micro. we've seen that.

And the downstream boards are the ones that you plug in and contain all of the various functionality. Well, um, software you use depends on the choice of Upstream uh boards We can C compilers, assemblers, and flow code. Oh okay, so it's a graphical programming tool as well. And uh, curriculum and applications? Uh, looks like you can.

yeah, do Vhdl. So they probably got a board with Fpgas or something like that. But yeah, there you go. You can actually get a splitter cable which splits, uh, two boards or daisy chain them.

As we saw before, this is reasonably comprehensive. It goes into the physical properties and how to mount them and stuff like that. It's really well put together. This user manual.

I'm actually, um, starting to be quite impressed by this. This is really quite nice. Here we go available: E blocks and accessories. And here's a list of the Uh Upstream boards we've got.

We've got that top one, The Eb6, the Pi Micr MCU programmer They've also got a Cpld board and they've got an Fpga board the E049 and I checked and that contains um a uh 6K or 3K with optional 6K logic element um Altera Cyclone device and that is a cyclone One people. um, that is pretty old hat stuff I Don't know why they're using a CYO one. This must be a really you know old uh development system. Really? You know, if you're going to do an Fpga you need a more modern um Cyclone device and that's I Don't think that really cuts it these days.

Anyway, they got an Arm microcontroller. All right. What we really need to do here is jump on The Matrix uh multimedia website and check out these uh what boards they've actually got because there seems to be a massive range here. Uh, they got terminal boards, sensor interface leads LCDs Power 7 seg uh USB micro They've got an Irda stuff SPI bus keypads Rs232 Cplds can.

oh man, they've got a breadboard prototyping board. They've got a midi interface. They got a motor controller they got a Bluetooth board excellent Lin board um MMC card reader they got a PS2 VGA they got a voice codec opto isolated. geez are you uh, getting a bit tired of this? They've got a lot.

Um, they've got a zigby routerboard RFID is they've really kept up to dat here. So I don't know? um what's going on with their Fpga module? We'll take a look at that uh in a sec. but uh Pasco is sensible a graphical display. They've got a LCD module they got GPS Board Servo Boards ISM Band RFS RS 485s Oh man, the list goes on and on.

It's extremely comprehensive. I Am uh, impressed by the uh, just the sheer amount availability of the boards. But let's check out this uh Fpga board shall we? And here we go. it uses and our Tia um, Ep1c 614 C7 and it's got an which has 3,000 logic elements optional one 6,000 logic elements and that's a cyclone one.

crazy. Anyway, that's 100 for that board. almost hundred. EUR Wow, these things aren't uh, particularly cheap.

Let's go in and take a look at how much say the uh, real simple board the PS2 VGA board is if you wanted to play with that 22. There we go. That's not bad, although I don't know what's the translation for Euros these days. 1.5 Aussie doll or something.

Uh, but uh yeah, not a particularly cheap kit, but uh, it is. Looks to be quite comprehensive with the amount of boards you can get except if you want to get into the Fpga side of things. And of course it looks like they don't just sell boards. they sell whole educational experiences in quote marks.

I Guess they've got all these learning tools and development and courseware and stuff like that. So if we go in and uh, have a look at the uh, courseware here, there's some uh, funky looking young dudes with a really uh cool looking buggy there remote control probably probably autonomous or something like that. And if you go say into the let's go into the Bluetooth Communications uh courseware stuff. let's see what they got.

Hello there we go Bluetooth Communications and it's course notes there we go. You can download it. looks comprehensive, 84 pages and looks like they only give you a 10 page sample. Is it? yeah, you probably.

Well you probably have to pay to get the full cours whereare. But that I guess is the attraction of this is that it's a you know, the if you're a educator or something like that you don't have to, you know develop the courseware yourself. They've all. they've developed it all for you.

and if you you have a look at their flow code thing, it's uh there it is. flow code Software allows those with little to know programming experience to create complex electronic systems in minutes. and uh they've got introductions and uh, all sorts of stuff for uh, the pick AVR arm and DS pick by the looks of it and looks like they got an intro video. here we go not going to show the whole thing hello hello my name is John Dobson hello John doson few minutes of your time to introduce Managing Director at Matrix Flo is an award-winning piece of software Award winning 2008 Expertise in Programming to develop complex electronic systems.

Flow Code is designed to develop programs for various microcontrollers. the family of Pck Micros, Dspic, and P 24 Micros. the AVR family of microcontrollers watch all day. It's got quite a good voice Cur Learning Curve FL Curve for customers and their own use Hello World mobile phones and iPads are developed practicing engine maze following.

Robot FL is particularly strong at teaching students how many of the communication systems like Bluetooth and GSM are used by modern electronic devices. Here you can see an example of a project with a number of look at that: This project is a fully working electric V Vcle. It includes several canvas nodes and is controlled by a Bluetooth All the technology of this was provided by Flow Code and E blocks. The British Army uses Flow Code to fulfill a number of learning requirements around the digital Battlefield directive so it looks like you can just download flow code here.

our license key. There we go. So I was going to say that they're making their money from the hardware. They certainly are cuz the prices are reasonably high, but they looks like they're going to probably flog you the Uh flow code uh stuff as well because as I mentioned that uh kit is around about 600 bucks that they sent me, that's what they claim anyway in the Uh documentation.

So that was for those Uh four boards. Uh plus the Um I would I would presume a license for Uh flow code version five of the software. So there you go. it's um, it I Wasn't impressed at first, but when I uh got to see the Uh, the sheer range of number of boards and all the uh, educational material they've got that uh goes along with it I was pretty impressed in the end with these uh E blocks, they're um, it's very, it's not, you know, a very novel uh concept it seems.

uh, quite Antiquated with the D9s plugging them on and things like that, there's nothing special physically or anything like that, but like, unlike a lot of other electronics learning development uh modules these days. But uh, I'm I'm sure it backs it all up with that extensive Uh Cours wear and learning materials and stuff like that, so it's not really something for the hobbyist. It's probably out of the Uh price range of the hobbyist uh, to be sure I think but uh, for educational institutions, it uh, it looks like the bomb so well if you're interested in this sort of thing, check them out. They're at uh Matrix uh, Multimedia.com but uh, the um people who sent me the kit was Elector Electronics and they'll be selling it uh through their website.

Uh, if it's not available already, it will be available soon. So check it out and it looks like the price in that documentation is 600 bucks is a little bit wrong. It's actually on the Elector website here as $466 That's the starter kit professional for the pick and that's exactly the one I got with the USB multi program, the lead board, the switch board, and the LCD board. So that is very uh, pricey for the where you get as I've said, but uh I guess you're paying for all the uh, flow code and other stuff like that.

So uh, they do have all these things available on the Elector website, so if you're interested in these things, do check them out. So I hope you like the mailbag and uh, if you want to send me any at all I don't care whatever it is preferably electronic. uh then send it to the Eev blog at P box 7949 Borham Hills New self FES 21 53 Australia not Austria Catch you next time.