Please complete the checklist items below before you come to a hands-on course that makes use of Stamps in Class materials and BASIC Stamp education platforms from Parallax Inc.  

NOTE: If you have any questions or get stuck at any point, please contact Parallax Technical Support for assistance

Email: support@parallax.com
Phone: 916-624-8333.

Laptop Checklist

• Bring a laptop you own so that you have administrator account privileges during the course.  (Unless you are sure you have a full administrator account on your school computer or your IT is coming with you!) 
• Bring your laptop’s power cable for plugging into an electrical outlet. 
• Make sure your laptop has at least one available USB 2.0 A port (like the port below the arrow in the picture).

• Make sure the computer you’re bringing has one of these operating systems:

• Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10
• Mac OSX 10.7…10.10 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or Yosemite)
• Chrome OS (Google Chromebook)

• DO NOT bring any of these:

• Tablet or computer with Windows RT
• iPad with IOS
• Tablet or computer with an Android OS

Software Install Checklist

• Follow the installation for your OS below.

Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10

If your computer has a Windows OS, the BASIC Stamp Editor will be your first choice.

• Find and download “BS-Setup-Stamp-Editor-v2.5.3-(r2).exe” from this page: BASIC Stamp Editor Software.
• Follow steps 1 and 2 on that page, making sure to accept all the defaults when you run the installer.
• If you have Windows 10, download and install Win-USB-Serial-Driver_v2.02.06.

Mac & Chromebook

Parallax IDE runs within Google Chrome, and can be run on Mac, Chromebook, and Windows.  It also runs on Ubuntu and some other Linux variants. 

• If your computer’s OS is in this list, click the USB driver link to download it.  Then, double-click the download to run it, and follow the prompts to install the driver.
  • Mac OSX 10.7, 10.8 (Lion, Mountain Lion) Mac-USB-Serial-Driver_v2_2_18.dmg. (Restart after installing.)
  • Mac OSX 10.9, 10.10 (Mavericks, Yosemite) Mac-SB-Serial-Driver_v2_3.dmg. (Restart after installing.)
  • Windows Win-USB-Serial-Driver_v2.02.06 (Skip if you already installed the BASIC Stamp Editor.)
• Make sure your computer has a Google Chrome web browser installed.
• Go to the Parallax IDE app in the Chrome Web Store.
• Click the + Add to Chrome button.  It looks like this:

 

Mac Alternative

MacBS2 is included here as a second option in case Parallax IDE doesn’t work on certain Mac systems.

• Make sure you are running Mac OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or newer.
• Follow the instructions for downloading and installing the driver for your Mac’s OS in the Mac, Chromebook, Linux, Windows 10 section.
• Download MacBS2…zip.
• Safari will automatically unzip MacBS2 and leave it in your downloads folder.  Other browsers will leave MacBS2…zip in the downloads folder, and you will have to double-click the file to unzip.
• Use Finder to move the MacBS2 application from the Downloads folder to your Applications Folder.