Texas Instruments supplies handy USB evaluation sticks with related software for its low-cost MSP430 controllers. Unfortunately the I/O facilities are somewhat limited. These can be substantially enhanced with the help of the experimenter’s board described here. This combination forms the hardware basis for a mini-course ‘Starting with embedded C’, which can be found elsewhere in this issue.

Sometimes several initiatives converge at just the right time to create a new concept. For some time Rotterdam University had been looking for a low-cost development system for its students in Automotive and Electronic Engineering, which could be put to use in microcontroller tuition. In addition, for logistical reasons Elektor was looking for a more practical replacement for the very popular E-blocks for its Embedded C Programming workshops. So both Rotterdam University and Elektor were effectively looking for the same thing, although for different reasons.