Eli5: What does it take to make an everyday object programmable? Is it inserting a CPU in it?
In: Technology
Probably back up a little bit and don’t think about something complex like a CPU, just imagine a little mystery box that can tell other things what to do.
To program something means to have a set of instructions ready to go and to have something follow those instructions.
To really break down the input output system there’s three key parts.
1. Some kind of memory to hold the instructions you want your thing to do.
2. Some kind of system to interpret these instructions.
3. Some mechanism to carry out the instructions.
This can take on a whole lot of different forms, not necessarily involving computers or electricity really but the one you’re probably familiar with is something like a robot.
This will have a memory chip and some kind of processor that pulls instructions from the memory, before telling the rest of the system what to do like “send power to right wheel for three seconds”.
Perhaps if you had some things in mind it could help to explain if what you’re thinking is right or not?
Like, how do you make a door programmable?
Well you could attach an electronic hinge and wire that to a little computer. Then you could program the computer to send power to the hinge based on certain circumstances like “open this door at 8am and close it at 4pm”
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