A few questions about capabilities of stamps
batchfile
Posts: 7
hey guys, I've been programming visual basic.Net for a while now and took a look at the basic code and looks really easy,
I also did some parallel port stuff before (an LCD) so i got a little experience.
I couldn't help but to get one of the kits today so it'll get here soon.
Here's what I'd like to know...
From looking at Basic Stamp2's it looks like they have somewhat limited IO's wich is okay for now.
I want to know how hard it is to talk between them using serial and how many pin's that takes...
I'm basically gonna want to build all kinds of supernatural abilities for my car.
I built a special PC for it before, but its biggish and not so much of a challenge.
What i'd like to do is get a main stamp controller to send instructions to other controllers, sort of like using functions and subs.
So I would have a main controller handle my user input buttons, menus , display realtime data on multiple LCD's and control other controllers.
The secondary controllers would do things such as generate visual data for my LCD based on sensors.
One of these would be some sort of distance sensor like sonar, but hopefully laser. to create realtime images.
Images get fed back to the main controller for display via serial.
I'd imagine this would take quite a bit of code to make a birds eye view bitmap like image and a few sensors.
The next secondary controller is more of a challenge i think....
I want this one to play MP3, and read data to play from a USB external hard drive. Memory sticks wont do.
Possibly even file system functions to give it the ability to send filenames back to the main controller.
(this isnt·as important since I can make a dock for a usb mp3 player that goes directly to my car amps)
Questions:
Are stamp controllers fast enough·and have enough memory for this kidna stuff?
Are there other chips better suited for this and cheap?
How can i protect my pins during development until i learn electronics much better [noparse]:)[/noparse]
does·my idea of multiple controllers seem like overkill for this kind of parallel programming situation?
I realize this is a bit of a complex project to tackle but it will keep my interest.
I also did some parallel port stuff before (an LCD) so i got a little experience.
I couldn't help but to get one of the kits today so it'll get here soon.
Here's what I'd like to know...
From looking at Basic Stamp2's it looks like they have somewhat limited IO's wich is okay for now.
I want to know how hard it is to talk between them using serial and how many pin's that takes...
I'm basically gonna want to build all kinds of supernatural abilities for my car.
I built a special PC for it before, but its biggish and not so much of a challenge.
What i'd like to do is get a main stamp controller to send instructions to other controllers, sort of like using functions and subs.
So I would have a main controller handle my user input buttons, menus , display realtime data on multiple LCD's and control other controllers.
The secondary controllers would do things such as generate visual data for my LCD based on sensors.
One of these would be some sort of distance sensor like sonar, but hopefully laser. to create realtime images.
Images get fed back to the main controller for display via serial.
I'd imagine this would take quite a bit of code to make a birds eye view bitmap like image and a few sensors.
The next secondary controller is more of a challenge i think....
I want this one to play MP3, and read data to play from a USB external hard drive. Memory sticks wont do.
Possibly even file system functions to give it the ability to send filenames back to the main controller.
(this isnt·as important since I can make a dock for a usb mp3 player that goes directly to my car amps)
Questions:
Are stamp controllers fast enough·and have enough memory for this kidna stuff?
Are there other chips better suited for this and cheap?
How can i protect my pins during development until i learn electronics much better [noparse]:)[/noparse]
does·my idea of multiple controllers seem like overkill for this kind of parallel programming situation?
I realize this is a bit of a complex project to tackle but it will keep my interest.
Comments
The Propeller is marginally fast enough and has barely adequate memory to do some image processing. It may be possible to do
MP3 decoding, but I don't think anyone has gotten an MP3 decoder finished. There have been some impressive speech processing
and sound processing programs, but not MP3 decoding yet. Some people have been working with USB for HID devices like keyboards
and mice, but not high speed devices. The Propeller is not fast enough for that.
It sounds like you need an embedded PC, maybe with some Stamps to handle the sensors. For the kind of "laser" sensors you're talking about, you probably need something like the Propeller since there's a lot of high speed processing you're talking about. I'm not sure what you'd use to move the mirrors involved, but it's probably some kind of solenoid or other fast linear activator.
Post Edited (Mike Green) : 2/15/2008 11:24:10 PM GMT
maybe 128x1 or so.
I was thinking about a little stepper motor mounted sensor. It would move left to right, creating 1 line of imagery
something like this:
|
| ## |
|#### |
|#### |
the top most Y co-ordiante would be the object range from the sensor at a particular motor step, then every pixel below that would be automatically black
and it would update from left to right, then right to left...
column parts of the image would be updated selectively when the motor hits a particular step
the resulting image would be as detailed as the pic could handle... maybe 128x128 little 1's and 0's representing a black and white image
but at the end of each step it would have to send data back to the main PIC (the whole image)
it would look almost like a radar fishing image [noparse]:)[/noparse]
but I'm not sure what would be involved in that....