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.