BBC Micro:Bit

A new, interesting board aimed at helping kids get into programming is the BBC micro:bit.

They have setup a Foundation to support this device, and they have a lot of information on their website.

You can purchase them from several sources.  In the US, two sources are Adafruit and Sparkfun.  (see the website for a list of re-sellers worldwide)  Both sell the board at about $15, tho you can get a "kit" that includes a USB cable and a battery pack for a couple more bucks.  Both sell an edge connector for the cards, but Sparkfun has one that allows for the board to be attacked to a breadboard HERE.

Intel meets Arduino: Galileo, Edison, Curie

When I was getting into computers, we had a variety of companies making different microprocessors.  There was Intel, Zilog, Sun, IBM, Motorola, MOS Technology, National Semiconductor, TI, Acorn, HP, and several others.

It seemed that in the home market, at that time made up of Apple, Atari, and Commodore (and a few others), most chips were derived from the Motorola 6800.  (the 6502 was a derivative of the 6800).  So these were called the "6ers".  Their next generation systems were all based on the Motorola 68000 processor and successors.

In the business market, most were first based on the Zilog Z80 (the CP/M machines), later supplanted by the Intel 8088 and follow-on chips.  So these were called the "8ers".

Within the Unix workstation world, most started with the more powerful Motorola 68000 before going with a variety of RISC-based processors (Sun SPARC, HP PA-RISC, IBM PowerRISC, etc).

Eventually things shook out, and Intel and Intel-based processors came to dominate pretty much all of the desktop and laptop market and most of the server market (for Windows Servers and Linux Servers).  Intel has won out.  (please note this is a very simplified version of history)

New in the Internet of Things

While I await my CHIP to arrive, I thought I'd note some of the other new items that have popped up in the last few months in terms of new boards for IoT.  I think most should be aware of these, but some may not be aware of all of these.

Resources for the Internet of Things Security

At the HackMiami Conference  on May 16, 2015, I did a presentation on an Introduction to Internet of Things Security.  The presentation is now up on YouTube.  I have the link below.

As a tie-in to the presentation, I am providing here links to the various resources that I covered in the presentation, along with others I didn't have the time to.  If you come across other items of interest, please add them to the comments.