For the fourth year in a row I'll be setup at MakerFaire Detroit. This year I'll be featuring my books and the Great Cow Basic CHIPINO starter kit. 

Great Cow Basic CHIPINO is one of the easiest ways to get started with programming microcontrollers (yes even easier than Arduino). It's because of the BASIC language used in the Great Cow Basic (GCB) compiler. The B in BASIC stands for Beginner. It's how most people started programming in the first place. 

Add to the simplicity of BASIC is the fact GCB creates pure assembly code. This means you aren't writing interpreted code or some hidden batch of macros, you are writing pure code. And that is what many "Getting Started with Micros" type setups fail to deliver. Even Arduino has so much hidden in the IDE that it's very difficult for a beginner to understand what is going on under the hood. And then Arduino uses C language which is not the easiest to learn or understand for a beginner. And just try to program a blank low cost Microcontroller with any of these easy to use starter kits. They force you into a custom part with preinstalled bootloader. 

GCB CHIPINO uses a pure hardware programmer so your not stuck with CHIPINO modules only. GCB can be used to program 100's of different blank low cost microcontrollers with that same hardware programmer, some you can buy for under $1. So that is why I'm excited to show the world the Great Cow Basic CHIPINO at MakerFaire Detroit this year. Past crowds at MakerFaire have told me a simpler but powerful development platform is what they want and I believe GCB CHIPINO delivers that.

Stop by our booth if you visit and let me know you are a blog reader. I'll be setup outside the Henry Ford Museum west wall on the grassy area. After all, you have to be on grass if you are promoting a Cow right?

I use ExpressPCB for a lot of projects. In fact I'll be teaching a class on ExpressPCB at Microchip's 2013 Master's Conference in August. One thing I've wanted for a while is a way to import an image into ExpressPCB so I can put a logo on my boards. Well one of the members (ljbdeshler) of the ExpressPCB Yahoo group has released a free application that does this in a clever way. 

It converts a 48 x 48 pixel bitmap image into line segments and then when you click inside your ExpressPCB board it runs a macro that draws the image like you were drawing it yourself with a mouse. The application is new and can be a little tricky to use at first but I was able to add a Great Cow Basic Cow Symbol to a Board. 

You can size the image before drawing also and below are three sizes I made of the same bitmap file. After it's drawn you highlight the whole thing and then change the width of the line segments to fill in the image. I like the 1/2 size the best.

Below is the 1/2 size logo added to a CHIPINO board layout for a possible Great Cow Basic CHIPINO custom board. You can clearly see the logo in the center of the board and it's pretty clear its the Great Cow Basic Symbol.

I'm working on a better set of logos but I thought I would share this with my readers since this has many potential applications.

It will even draw components and traces based on a .dxf file. I haven't had any luck getting that to work yet but he has a clear example and Youtube video showing the features. The download is on a CNET site that wants install a bunch of crap on your PC so I've included a clean link here to the latest copy I downloaded.