Mike Hord wrote:
> My initial thought is something like Olin's Quickproto
> and Easy prog, but at ~$140 per setup, it might shy
> away a few people.

That's the single quantity price for a QuickProto-01 ($40) and a fully
assembled EasyProg ($100).  This would certainly not be the price for a
class.  Even for 3 at a time the QuickProto-01 price goes down to $33.

I'll be the first to admit the fully assembled version of the EasyProg is
not a good value.  I'm really interested in selling kits, but some people
asked for assembled units.  These are all built one-off by hand here in the
US, so there is no way to make them cheaply, but the volumes are so low it's
not worth getting them built elsewhere.  In fact I give the manufacturer the
same kits you buy and have them build up just 5 at a time.  If you don't
want students to have to build their tools first, I don't think I have a
good programmer solution for you at this time.  When will this course start?

You should also think about how the students are going to debug their code.
Do you want them to have a debugger, or are they going to test on the
simulator and wiggle pins for final hardware debugging?

My recommendation is each student gets a QuickProto-01, a 18F2520, and some
sort of programmer.  Maybe Wouter has something?  As I've said before, I'm
willing to give an educational discount if everything for a class is bought
at one time.  I do believe the QuickProto-01 at $33 is a good value, and I'm
thinking $30 each for a class of 10 or more, or something like that.


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