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I happen to have some 500 old AT89C52 controllers and am looking for ideas how to use them in a project. That's an 8051-based controller with 8K Flash, so you get an idea. And no, trashing them is not a project! :-)
I remember that in the 80s Steve Ciarcia (of Circuit Cellar fame) wrote in Byte Magazine about a "supercomputer" he built with sixty-four 8048s. Nowadays a quad core Pentium will easily beat five hundred 89C52s, so maybe that's not the way to go. Instead I'm thinking of a series of separate devices, each with its own controller (where a single Pentium would be of little use).
Suggestions?

Nick T
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stevenvh
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  • Ugh, even if you use 5$ worth of components per device, isn't that a 2500$ project? – Chris H Nov 29 '10 at 17:10
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    @Chris: Yes, it was in the back of my mind. That's why I didn't abandon the supercomputer idea completely yet. There are other issues; the little bastards eat 25mA @ 12MHz, so that's a not-so-low power of 62W in toto. But at least I should get a good price for purchasing a lot of 500 LEDs. :-) – stevenvh Dec 01 '10 at 11:43
  • The C52 doesn't have SPI ISP like the S52, right? – XTL Dec 01 '10 at 16:30
  • @XTL: No, programming the C52 is certainly not as straightforward as more modern controllers. Maybe I should make it a project to build a programmer, then at least I can program all these devices :-) – stevenvh Dec 03 '10 at 17:27
  • I could probably use one of those, too :) – XTL Dec 03 '10 at 20:49
  • Building a sculpture comes to mind... – RQDQ Dec 13 '10 at 13:09

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Independent sychronising fireflies: http://tinkerlog.com/2008/07/27/synchronizing-fireflies-ng/

Toby Jaffey
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  • our school makes students mill "firefly" boards to get certified to mill, we make them etch them to get certified to etch, we make them solder them to get certified in soldering. We have about 75 now I believe. – Kortuk Nov 29 '10 at 14:58
  • We use a variant that uses a 555timer to synchronize to each other slowly. – Kortuk Nov 29 '10 at 14:58
  • Along this line, work with an engineering student society at a college to come in after hours/on a weekend and do an event to with students on creating the fireflies. It would probably fly with undergrads or students in a program that don't get much exposure to electronics. – pfyon Dec 01 '10 at 17:28
  • @kortuk, dude what school are you talking about? Sounds awesome. – Rick_2047 Dec 01 '10 at 17:31
  • @Rick_2037, okstate.edu if you ever want a tour let me know. I am one of the students that runs the "Design Commons" a large room with all the equipment you need to rapid prototype and TAs to assist you with technical issues(related to EE or fab). As a freshmen you can come do projects here, we cover cost of things like etchant, and we have programmers available for you for a couple different processors, a 3D printer to make cases, soldering stations, milling and etching stations, nice test and measurement stations, general stations, microcontroller stations. ece.okstate.edu is our department. – Kortuk Dec 01 '10 at 17:57
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If you are looking for something a bit more challenging, you could use them as a sensor mesh network.

Get a transceiver to allow objects to report their distance from some sensor event. Or just the magnitude of some sensor event. You could measure light, sound, even RF energy at a frequency.

Place your mesh network around the room at mapped locations and have them all report back to a computer what their strengths were and map the strengths in relation to points an locate the device.

You could also place them all at the same height and use a dipole antenna (due to it having equal radiation strength in all directions) and have them record RSSI of every message they receive from others and try to map their locations and then use that to map the even location. This step could easily be used to make up a thesis project for a masters, even a dissipation if you increase the complexity and develop sexy algorithms(I think algorithms can be sexy so sue me).

Kortuk
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  • Good ideas. In particular, an array of sound sensors could use ideas from [LOUD: Large acOUstic Data Array Project](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/mic-array/) – davidcary Apr 13 '11 at 03:16
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Do you really want to use them in a single project? Two things that come to mind are: Sell them or make a batch of 500 (kits?) of some '51 project. Educational SBC with Paulmon or some other monitor, some external memory and peripherals comes to mind.

XTL
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  • sell them. wait, or you could build a room full of synchronizing lights. the college student in my is giving a +1, the engineer is crying. – Kortuk Dec 01 '10 at 16:51