Learning by Tinkering: Applications of a PC Printer Port in Mechatronics

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Any IBM clone PC having a printer port may be used to interfaced with all manner of interesting real world devices which have meaning to students. There are millions of such PC's in colleges and universities, in high schools and in the hands of individuals throughout the country. This project will develop material to show students at Morgan State University and across the nation how to use this resource to give relevance to programming and to encourage individual "tinkering" and experimenting by students. The project will develop material related to the computer control of real world peripherals for use by students throughout the nation. This will be distributed using the World Wide Web and in the form of tutorial manuals. New material will be developed to teach freshmen engineering majors programming skills in an environment of controlling lamps, solenoids, motors and measuring such parameters as infrared and temperature. Applications of these real world peripherals to such fields as manufacturing, robotics and automation will also be woven into the project. The possibility of moving this meaningful application of programming outside the University and into high schools will be explored.