Product Description
What’s a Microcontroller? Parts Kit Overview:
The What’s a Microcontroller Parts Kit provides all the electronic components needed to complete the activities in the What’s a Microcontroller? text on a BASIC Stamp 2 development board.
If you want to learn to make your own BASIC Stamp inventions, learn how these common components work as you go step-by-step through 40 hands-on activities in the 350-page What’s a Microcontroller? text (available for purchase or as a free download). Side-by-side schematics and wiring diagrams give you confidence in building the circuits with the Parts Kit components on a BASIC Stamp 2 development board, and each example program is followed by a detailed explanation so you learn as you go. Here’s what you will learn to do:
What’s a Microcontroller? Parts Kit Key Features:
- Build simple circuits with schematics and wiring diagrams
- Write programs in PBASIC to control the circuits
- Send signals by blinking LEDs
- Sense contact with pushbuttons
- Read a dial using a potentiometer
- Measure light with a phototransistor
- Control motion with a servo motor
- Play tunes on a piezo speaker
- Display data on a 7-segment LED
- Combine several circuits to prototype an invention
- Program with the free BASIC Stamp Editor for Windows (*see below for Chrome & Chromebook)
What’s a Microcontroller? Parts Kit Contents:
- Input components: pushbuttons, single-turn potentiometer, phototransistor
- Output devices: LEDs, 7-segment display, servo, piezo speaker
- Passive components: resistors, capacitors, jumper wires
- Integrated circuits: digital potentiometer, transistor
Required Development Board (sold separately)
- Board of Education (Serial) or (USB) and a BASIC Stamp 2 module
- BASIC Stamp HomeWork Board (Serial 10-pack) or (USB single)
Complete Kit Options:
- BASIC Stamp Activity Kit featuring the BASIC Stamp HomeWork Board
- BASIC Stamp Discovery Kit (USB only) featuring the BS2-IC Board of Education
* About Chrome & Chromebook Support:
- The BASIC Stamp programming tool Parallax IDE for Chrome has a limited lifespan. See details here.
- Looking for a long-term Chromebook compatible option? See What’s a Microcontroller with Python & micro:bit.


