Assembled Homebrew BS2 on a PCB

The original intent of the Homebrew BASIC Stamp 2 was for it to be mounted on a solderless breadboard. I use this approach with my students and many other schools and hundreds of individual tinkerers have gone this way.

However, avid robot enthusiast Dennis Clark at http://www.verinet.com/~dlc has very kindly developed a printed circuit board and he has a photo on his web page.

We are now offering this as a fully assembled and tested unit for $49.00. This includes everything you see in the photo on Dennis' web page except we are not including the speaker. The speaker is a standard Radio Shack item.

Three spacers, screws and washers are also provided such that you may secure the board to a surface such as Rich Rowland's SAM Robot at http://www.smallrobot.com.

I still favor the breadboard approach for exploratory tinkering. But, in many applications, this PCB approach has a lot going for it.

On Board +5VDC Power Regulator. You supply a voltage in the range of +8VDC to +16VDC. I have never seen a 7805 burn out, but if it should, the replacement cost is about 25 cents, a lot less than a $49 BS2 IC if you burn out the regulator on the BS2..

Socketized PIC16C57 PBASIC Interpreter. From time to time, errors happen. At least I have made some and had to live with a BS2 with a number of defective IO Pins. But, with the Homebrew approach, if you do make a mistake, you need not replace a $49 BS2. Rather, send me your burned out PIC interpreter and I will replace it for $10.00.

Servo Style Connectors to Peripherals. The board includes a three-pin male (0.1 inch center) connectors for each of the 16 I/O pins plus one for connecting power. Thus, +5VDC, GRD and the I/O are available for each I/O. Mating connectors are offered separately. (See below).

Three pin female connectors for interfacing with peripherals may be purchased separately. These consist of a housing (Jameco 157382) and three female pins (Jameco 100765).

These are sold in packs of ten for $3.50. That is, ten housings and 30 female pins. Please specify this as "Connector Pack" when ordering.

If you are new to Stamps and are contemplating ordering our Basic Starter or Enhanced Starter package, I would discourage this Homebrew BS2 on a PCB. The reason is that the tutorial written for these starter packages is written for a BS2 on a solderless breadboard. I strongly recommend you go with the $49.00 BS2 IC in a 24-pin DIP.