compare xgs and hydra

TheChurchoftheSilverBall

hi all.· i am a newbie.· i know this question has probably been asked many times before, but...

can you compare the two products?· i bought a hydra from Frye's in Chicago last week.· i have 2 teenage sons, and we just dove in 2 days ago.· great product!· just what i was looking for to teach them.· One asked me why we didnt get the xgs, with the "cool atari joystick ports".·· :-)

Has anyone interfaced the hydra with hardware relays?
i'd like to use the hydra to control solenoids and lamps in a custom pinball machine.
Mike

Gadgetman

Comparing them would be like comparing the SX/B and the Propeller, if I'm not mistaken...
(I believe the XGS is powered by a SX chip?)

I think the XGS was designed to teach people the HW fundamentals of a Game console, and the Hydra was designed to teach game development.

There's no reason the Hydra can't control relays, with the right driver chips.
(It can't deliver the currents to drive relays directly, and the spikes introduced when you switch off a relay can do serious damage)

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Don't visit my new website...

AndreL

As noted, they are Oranges and Tangerines, similar, but different. The HYDRA is directly targeted at software people that want to learn embedded systems in a fun way and multiprocessing. Also, the HYDRA allows hardware experiments thru the I/O card interface. And the HYDRA does have a 1 amp 5V power supply, routed to the card, so you can drive very large currents etc. right from the hydra. The propeller I/O pins are no slouches either they can source sink 40-50mA (I believe), so they can drive things directly, but using them to control the base of a transistor, fet, solid state relay is the way to go.

The XGS micro on the other hand, is very hardware oriented, more for people that want to DESIGN embedded systems and poke around the PCB. Comes with a book as well, but instead of concentrating on programming (like the hydra book does, eventhough it DOES cover each part of the hardware), the XGS book covers the design of the XGS hardware in depth, and how to design embedded systems. MOreover, the XGS is really an ASM only device, you "can" program in SX/Basic with a graphics driver, but the intention of the XGS is assembly language. The intention of the HYDRA is to use SPIN (or other High level language) and then leverage ASM objects written by others as black boxes.

So I think you made the right choice with the HYDRA, its learning curve is 10x easier than the XGS. But, if you want to learn to design a game console, then the XGS kit is more appropriate. But, then again, the HYDRA shows a game console around a single chip, so once again, very close product, with overlap.

Considering all that, they hydra can easily controll the solenoids, just drive some solid state relays or power mosfets with the I/O lines right off the expansion slot and if the solenoids don't take too much power, you can power them right from the HYDRA's 5V supply as well (which is bused to the expansion port also).

Andre'

TheChurchoftheSilverBall

Thanks for responding.· Thats exactly what i was looking for.
Mike