PEA [Romanian for Pachetul Educațional Ale; Ale Educational Package, in English] is, like its name says, a complete and free educational package meant to teach anyone who desires (even high school pupils) the art of working with these marvelous feat of electrical engineering called microcontrollers. When I say free I truly mean it! You have no virutally restriction in using these materials (in parts or as a whole) for personal and non-commercial purposes. I only require that you acknowledge and maintain the informations regarding the true intellectual author of this project. Please check further down for a proper license association.
It's a package since it is composed of 3 important and interdependent elements:
- a board -called pAle- onto which the learner can practice what he has learned
- a book that teaches the reader how to use the board through carefully selected, easy to follow examples
- a custom application -called psAle- through which the user applications can be transmited to the board
PEA was brought together, presented to you and motivated by the author's desire to prove his belief that this wonderful domain isn't as hard as it seems. This is true; either if you are a hobbyist, member of an electronics community or singing in a choir in a church. It does not matter! As long as the reader has the curiosity and is willing to make that extra step, PEA is for you!
Here are a couple of real-world images that might help in a better understanding of what we are working on here. Take it as a sort of eye-candy, if you will. Be advised that, because of the continuous improvements carried out, these images may not fully reflect the project's current state! Nevertheless, they are a good aproximation of it ...
If you plan to build this package as a DIY challenge, note there are 3 elements that can be brought to life:
- you can print the book (cca. 230 pages, as of this writing) for a traditional, easy-to-read, experience. Or you can choose not to and use the available free ebook, saving some trees in the process!
- you can build the PCB (Eagle sch and brd files can be found in the egl folder). This will require some electrical engineering knowledge as well as an initial AVR programmer for configuring the board
- you can either build psAle or download a binary version [coming soon]
Super! and I'm honored! Please write to me at admin@tuscale.ro and we will take it from there!
Main Author : Victor ADĂSCĂLIȚEI
License : [Creative Commons License] (http://creativecommons.org/) of type [BY-NC-SA] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/en/) for the book (any language) and psAle, and [OSHWA] (http://www.oshwa.org/definition/) for the board. Since PEA is also using other open source libraries/projects, their respectful licenses will be indicated and mentioned on an individual basis.
Email : admin@tuscale.ro