The Parallax hardware arrives

Basic Stamp (red) board
The Parallax shipment (via Visual Data) arrived two days ago and was picked up - thanks - by my landlady. Since I wasn't home yesterday, I picked up the parcel today. Aahh, Xmas! The Basic Stamp is really tiny - though it consists of four chips on an epoxy board it fits into a 25 pin DIP socket. I fired up Loihi, started the stamp editor software, and the stamp was identified right away. Tried out a small program - works. It's not always like that...

Unwrapped the LCD display (contains a Basic Stamp chip), the Ping sensor (ultrasound distance measuring; contains yet another Basic Stamp chip), the compass module (tiny 6 pin DIP epoxy board), and - tadaa! - the USB servo controller. Wired the controller to a 6V battery, attached the servos, installed some USB COM drivers and the controller software, and - it works!

Used 1mm steel wire to build the connection between servos and devices. Was very pleased to see that turning the cam turret works as designed - I wasn't sure until now that the mechanism I came up with would actually work. The next thing would be finding a place for the wires (USB, 2 servo cables, cables for LED power later).