How does one communicate with the MicroStamp11?

You will need to load a program into the $\mu$Stamp11's EEPROM before it can do anything. To load such a program, raises an obvious question; how do you communicate with the $\mu$Stamp11? Unlike your personal computer, the $\mu$Stamp11 does not have a keyboard or terminal associated with it. The $\mu$Stamp11 is an embedded system that is designed to talk to other electronic circuits. It wasn't designed to talk directly to a human user. If you wish to talk to the $\mu$Stamp11, it must therefore be done through an intermediary. That intermediary is your personal computer.

Your personal computer communicates with the $\mu$Stamp11 through its serial port. The human user communicates with the serial port through a terminal program such as HYPERTERM. You can identify the serial port on the back of your PC by its distinctive 9-pin D-shaped connector (a so-called DB9 connector). There should be a null modem cable connected to this connector. The other end of that cable will be connected to the $\mu$Stamp11's docking module. The connection between the $\mu$Stamp11, the breadboard, and the personal computer is shown in figure 4. In your lab kit there should be a 20-pin socket that you can plug into the breadboard. The ribbon cable of the docking module plugs into this socket. The ribbon cable maps the pins of the MicroStamp11 directly to the pins on the 20-pin socket, so that the top-down pin out shown in figure 2 corresponds to the top down view of the socket.

Figure 4: Communication connections for $\mu$Stamp11