What is handy board?

The Handy Board is a microcontroller board designed for educational use, primarily in robotics. It was developed in the late 1990s by Dr. Fred Martin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The board is programmed in C or a version of BASIC and uses a Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller.

The Handy Board has a range of input/output ports for sensors, motors, and other peripherals, including two motor driver chips and a host of digital and analog input/output pins. It also has an LCD display and a speaker for sound output.

The board can be programmed using the Handy Board's own graphical programming language, Handylogo, or more advanced programming languages such as C or BASIC. The board can be programmed with a variety of software tools, including the Handy Board Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The Handy Board was discontinued in the early 2000s, but its legacy lives on in other robotics platforms such as the Lego Mindstorms series, which uses a modified version of the Handy Board's microcontroller. The Handy Board remains popular among hobbyist roboticists and educators due to its reliability, simplicity, and versatility.