iRobot Roomba Winner!

Congratulations Eileen Barnett!

Eileen is the winner of Harford Hackerspace’s first ever raffle and she is the proud new owner of an iRobot Roomba. She also received Hacking Roomba book.

When we first contacted Eileen she thought we were pulling her leg. Once she overcame the initial shock and realized she had actually won, Eileen got even more excited.

We would like to send a special thanks to everyone who supported Harford Hackerspace by purchasing a raffle ticket and visiting us at RobotFest 2010 for the drawing.

New! PicKit 2 Programmer Tutorial


PicKit2 Debug Express
PicKit2 Debug Express


Paul King has created the first tutorial called “Using the PICkit2: As a Programmer” of his planned series of PICkit 2 tutorials. This one covers setting up the MPLAB software and PICkit 2 programmer to quickly compile and program the 44 Pin PICkit2 Demo Boards.

Subsequent tutorials will cover using the programmer hardware as a Debugger, Logic Analyzer, Logic Output Tool, and a UART Tool.

Be sure to read David Powell’s “Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C” as a precursor to Paul’s series.

Happy Hacking!

Using the PICkit 2 : As a Programmer

PicKit2 Debug Express
PicKit2 Debug Express

Around the space, we have been using the PICkit 2 Debug Express quite a bit lately.  This has allowed us to get pretty cozy with the functions of this handy little programmer and I thought I would share some of these features with you.

I’m sure you’ve read the previous tutorial ‘Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C‘, if you haven’t, you should go familiarize yourself with it now.  Continuing on from there, after we have a successful build of a led blinking we can use the PICkit 2 to program our chip via the ICSP header.

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Upcoming Events

It’s come to my attention that everyone may not be aware of the upcoming events.  So I thought I’d post about them.   They are however posted on the calendar to the right for future reference!  We hope to see you at the these events!

Greater Baltimore Hamboree and Computerfest

http://www.gbhc.org
Timonium, MD
Maryland State Fairgrounds
2200 York Road

March 27, 2010 – Day 1 (6am-4pm)

March 28, 2010 – Day 2 (6am-2pm)

Robot Fest / Mini Maker Faire

http://robotfest.com/
National Electronics Museum
1745 West Nursery Road
Linthicum, MD 21090

April 24 (10am-3pm)