CircuitGizmos provides products for sale that are designed and produced by the creative minds at CircuitGizmos, USBmicro, Amber Waves Electronics, and other fun sources of clever engineering.
Here you can purchase the USBmicro U401 and U421 USB interface that has support for SPI, LCD, 1-wire, stepper motor control, input, and output.
CircuitGizmos sells the Color Maximite 2 Computer in the form of the CG RetroMax. The Maximite runs BASIC and supports a display on VGA. A keyboard can interface to the Maximite as well as I2C, SPI, and serial devices.
The Sensor.Engine:Micro is a great way to augment a solderless breadboard and interface to things like the small boards in the 37 sensor kits. This is an easily programmed STEM controller.
CircuitGizmos also sells the unique USBPIR USB motion detection module and home automation and security software made to work with these devices.
CircuitGizmos now has a Color Maximite 2 design called the RetroMax. The RetroMax will run the same CMM2 software, but is enhanced with more features! See this link:
The Color Maximite 2 (CMM2) is a small self-contained computer inspired by the home computers of the early 80's such as the Tandy TRS-80, Commodore 64 and Apple II. It includes its own BASIC interpreter and powers up within seconds into the BASIC interpreter (there is no operating system to boot). The emphasis is on ease of use and, as a result, a first time user could enter a small program and have it running within minutes.
While the ease-of-use and built-in BASIC concept is borrowed from computers of the 80's the technology used is very much up to date. The CPU that powers the Color Maximite 2 is an ARM Cortex-M7 32-bit RISC processor running at up to 480MHz with 2MB flash memory and 1MB RAM. This processor includes its own video controller and generates a VGA output at resolutions up to 800 by 600 pixels and with up to 16-bit color.
The Color Maximite is designed to be simple and fun. The CGCMM2 version of the Color Maximite is the same as the kit version from magazine articles, except that the CGCMM2 is an assembled board. The photo with the call-outs is for reference only. The CGCMM2 does not include the case.
Some features of the CMM2:
- Extremely fast with 516KB of program memory and 5MB general purpose RAM.
- Rock solid VGA output with five resolutions from 800x600 pixels to 240x216 pixels with up to 16-bit colour (65536 colours).
- USB Keyboard (can be wireless with a USB dongle).
- Support for SD cards up to 128GB formatted in FAT16, FAT32 or exFAT.
- Extensive features for creating computer games. These include multiple video planes, support for Blits and Sprites and full support for the Nunchuk a game controller.
- Stereo audio output can play WAV, FLAC and MP3 files, computer generated music (MOD format) and robot speech and sound effects.
- Twenty eight input/output pins with 12 capable of analog input. Connector is compatible with Raspberry Pi Hats.
- Power is 5 volts at 170mA typical (ie, from an USB port or charger).
For an introduction to the Colour Maximite 2 go to: http://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewTopic.php?FID...
Right now we do not have the case for the CMM2 in this PCB layout. The case by itself can be obtained from various sources.
Jaycar HB5970 - Altronics H0472 - Newark/Element14 1526699
For example: https://www.newark.com/multicomp/g738a/enclosure-g...
If you perform a firmware upgrade, be sure to remove the battery during the upgrade. Then re-add any OPTIONS that you may have set after reinserting the CR1220 coin cell.
