ViewPort v4
Hanno
Posts: 1,130
V4 of ViewPort is now ready! It will change the way you develop applications for the Propeller. Get started by downloading the free 30 day trial or reading learning more about it:
Enjoy!
Comments
I'm trying to evaluate ViewPort but I'm having timeout issues. I can load the tutorial programs and use ViewPort to connect to the Propeller and see what's going on. However, when I try to load my own application (to which I've added the Quicksample and Conduit objects) I cannot connect. The program will load (either directly from PropTool or via the "Load" command in ViewPort. When I click on the connect button I get "Unable to connect. Timed Out. COM7=No Configuration Found"
I'm running this on Windows on a Mac with Parallels. I've added an additional 1Gb of memory hoping that would solve it. Is there a way to increase the timeout when attempting to connect?
Thanks,
Peter
Thanks for testing out the tutorials and letting me know that they work- that narrows things down considerably. The problem very likely lies with your spin program- please check the following:
- do you have 1 cog free for ViewPort?
- are you running with a 5Mhz crystal and 80Mhz clock, and define the clock setting constants like this:
_clkmode = xtal1 + pll16x
_xinfreq = 5_000_000
- are you making a call to vp.share?
Start with a simple program first- ideally by making small changes to a tutorial that works. Then get fancier...
If you're still having issues, feel free to share your code or private message it to me and we'll get it fixed.
Hanno
Given that you are running under a VM, I'd suggest setting the baud rate to 115kbps; I suspect it won't do 1Mbps under a VM.
Best Regards,
Bill
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Although I haven't had a chance to verify this yet, I believe I've found my problem. The application I tried to incorporate the LSA into also has a debug object that I was using to send info across to the Propeller Serial Terminal. Now that I think about it, that's probably getting in the way of what ViewPort is trying to do. I got onto thinking it was a hardware problem because I've had timout issues loading programs when I run them on Windows on top of Mac. My machine at work, which has 3Gb of RAM never suffered that problem, so I always figured it was a computing resources problem.
This explanation is consistent with why the tutorials work at 1Mbps. I don't think the 115kbps problem Bill suggested is my current problem.
Looks like this one is simply operator error. I'm looking forward to using the LSA portion of ViewPort to help debug my current application.
Thanks,
pgb
Most of what I've been up to is PASM stuff. Do you think VP will be helpfull in analysing / studying assembler, or is it primarily
SPIN orientated?
Great job diagnosing your problem. Yes, ViewPort sends data back and forth using by default pins 30 and 31. If another object (like the fullduplexserial) is using these pins then ViewPort can't read the configuration from the Propeller.
People are successfully using ViewPort at 2mbps on: winxp, winxp 64 bit, vista, win 2000, a vm on a mac, a vm under ubuntu, with the clock rate supplied by another Propeller, with a clock rate of ~100MHz, and probably others- if you have some esoteric setup let me know! The 115kbps mode should let people use wireless setups. 2mbps is a bit close to the "bleeding edge"- the cache on the USB-SERIAL FTDI chip that Parallax uses only has a receive cache of 256 bytes. Theoretically this is enough- the USB driver should request data every millisecond. In one millisecond ViewPort sends 200 bytes at 2mbps- so the buffer shouldn't fill. However, on some setups the usb driver misses one of these requests and the buffer overflows. ViewPort uses packets to send data back and forth- so this isn't a big problem, but you will have gaps in your data, and ViewPort will recommend you switch to a slower setting. By default ViewPort starts with a 1mbps setting.
ViewPort isn't particularly memory-hungry, especially given it's very graphic nature. It should use around 60megs of memory. My dad runs it on ancient hardware- 500mhz pentium, 128mb ram and it runs fine.
Don't think of ViewPort as just a LSA tool. Check out the manual and tutorials- there's a lot more to explore! Oscilloscope to view variables over time, spectrum analyzer to look at variable values in the frequency domain, changing variables with windows controls, fuzzy logic control and vision!
Kensong:
I build ViewPort to debug my vision-guided balancing robot. All of the vision, quadrature encoder, h-bridge driving code is in assembly. ViewPort lets me view and change variables in global memory that the assembly code can read/write via wrlong/rdlong.
I would never go back to interfacing with external hardware like I2C/SPI objects without being able to verify the communication protocol with the LSA. The ViewPort logo (magnifying glass over the Propeller) explains it all: ViewPort lets you look into the Propeller- its 32 I/O ports and shared global memory.
Bill- thanks for chiming in!
Hanno