Well, I just checked out as I have a long drive in the morning. I think I might swing by to see who went the distance all night before leaving Rocklin though!
This expo was a lot of fun. Highly recommended.
I don't have a lot of other pictures to share --spent two much time talking to everybody and watching all the cool projects. Once the tables cleared out, I also fired up the HYBRID board to show some project work and tinker with the others.
The people at Parallax were first class. We had food and lots to do, see, and talk about. People were in the soldering stations on an off building stuff up, off and on throughout the day.
All of the presentations were great. People are doing lots of interesting and creative stuff on the Propeller. Great new hardware products are in development too. I'll leave that to some of the others, who will hopefully share the details when they've had some sleep.
I highly recommend you all do this! There is some great stuff to share with everyone here, and it's worth doing it sooner rather than later, while the energy of showing it off is still fresh in your mind. The vendors have great products. All of them! I wanted to load up a bag of goodies, but will have to wait and pace it over a time. (wife would kill me, so... gotta prioritize!) This is a wonderful problem to have. To those vendors that don't have good web setups yet, just toss up a page, or post it up here. It's good stuff, show it all off!
After dinner, many visitors left for their various destinations. I met and spoke with many people I've known well from the forum here and it was great to just match up faces to the names and see how and what everybody is doing! Learned a ton from that alone.
Chip, Ken and Andy stayed with us until very late. We talked about how to do stuff, wrote some code, showed off projects and talked about future plans. Most split off into little groups of common interest, with a few, including myself, bouncing a bit between the groups to check it all out.
I find everyone just easy to talk to, smart and felt the spark of just having fun catching and spreading among the several new to propeller users who showed up to check out the scene in person. It was fun to look back and think many of us were those new people, and from what I can see, they will be doing the very same thing in a short time. The Propeller scene is growing bit by bit, and if this is how it grows, we are all going to make out just fine.
Special tanks to Jeff Ledger (OBC), in addition to the Parallax people, who put in some long and fun time over the weekend to make this happen for the rest of us. I can't state clearly enough how welcome I was, how good of company I had, and the energy that comes from seeing everybody just into it, having fun and really interested in sharing that and learning what others are doing.
The crowd of people surrounding the Propeller is just a good one, and that's worth a lot when doing this stuff. I feel lucky to be a part of it, and to get time to just talk and get to know people, and that's attendees and Parallax staff both! So many great conversations --so little time.
If possible, I will absolutely do this again.
[noparse][[/noparse]goes off to pack and figure out how to get back to the airport!]
I just had a chance to upload my photos of the expo (here). It was a lot of fun meeting everyone, checking out everyone's projects and watching the presentations!
Nick, Potatohead, SLRM and others have given their impression of UPEW and
I wanted to add mine.
It was indeed an all night affair yesterday. Some of those I spoke with
this morning were moving slowly, and with good reason. The discussions
at Parallax tapered off toward 5:30 AM this morning.
The speaker for today's session was Rick Galinson who designs special
effects for movies and TV. His credits include Babylon 5, Spider Man 2,
Men in Black and others too numerous to mention. To see a full list of his
activities see:
Rick began his talk with an apology for only using the Basic Stamp
and no Propellers in his special effects. However, the robots and
special effects he achieved with the Basic Stamp are truly incredible.
A lot of hard work went into these.
Next year I hope that Parallax can publish a list of the speakers who
will be attending. We had Chis from New Zealand talking about his
autonomous 14 ft sailboat yesterday.
Perhaps others will post their impressions about the other speakers
yesterday. I heard the attendance was roughly 160 propeller enthusiasts.
I feel lucky to live within a two hour drive of Parallax. I'm already
looking forward to the UPEW 2010 next year.
I'll post a link soon to some of the photos I took.
I had a great time at the expo yesterday. It's impressive (and not a little intimidating) to see the range of products that people are making with the Propeller. It was nice to see and meet some of the people whose names I've been seeing here for years.
The Parallax staff was incredibly generous and accommodating. They provided breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Once again, they proved that they are first-class all the way. Jeff put together a raffle and donated all the proceeds to the American Red Cross. Partway through the ticket sales, Parallax announced that they would match the ticket sale amount with an equivalent donation. In the end, $964 of tickets were sold and Ken Gracey rounded up Parallax' donation to make an even $2000. Ken's 12-year-old son (sorry I didn't get his name) did a fine job in drawing and announcing the winning tickets. He's a natural in front of a crowd and had us all in stitches.
I really enjoyed watching Chip live during the webinar. As people asked questions about the Prop II, I could see the design changing in his head. (I guess the Prop II will be made out of wood since Chip has spent the past four months harvesting walnut trees.)
I wasn't one of the hardcore all-nighters. I had to drive home to let my dogs out and I wasn't able to go back down this morning. I stayed until after Chip's demo of his Vocal Tract object. He explained that he's been strongly interested in speech synthesis for over twenty years. During his presentation I got the strong impression that he designed the Propeller mainly to work on speech synthesis research and that a lot of the enhancements in the Prop II are to further that research.
All in all, I'd say it was a huge success. Thanks to Jeff Ledger for all his work in putting it together. I'm looking forward to next year's.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ OS-X: because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
It was nice meeting all of you that I did get a chance to meet. Due to timing I wasn’t’ available all day Saturday or Sunday or I’d have camped out myself! I know I didn’t get to meet everyone so hopefully we’ll do this again some day and I will get another chance. To that end if anyone has pictures that haven’t been posted I would encourage you to make them available if possible. It may help some of us to remember who’s who if you can notate/comment on photos and list who it is in the photo. It would be neat to compile a photo slideshow of the attendees with their names. There were a lot of awesome projects and I must say I haven’t been working on much of my own stuff lately, but this gathering has kind of re-lit the fire, so to speak. Time to start getting some stuff completed and posted. Thanks for the motivation as well.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Chris Savage Parallax Engineering
My feedback - hopefully it's helpful for the next event:
keeping speakers on a strict schedule kept everything moving. Having the schedule posted worked well, too. 30 minutes seems like the right amount of time.
having onsite food was nice. I think we lost a lot of folks after dinner during the last expo.
Parallax was a great host & didn't dominate the expo. The focus was on the community and all the cool stuff they're doing, which is where it should be.
Personally, I liked having everything in one area, but some folks might prefer having presentations in one area and projects in another.
Overall - Great Job, Great Presentations, Great meeting everyone! My best-in-show award goes to the Attopilot - that is a very cool project and a good presentation. Close second is rayman's development board - it's a steal at the price he is selling it for & he's done a lot of additional work (like to the TV driver) to make it a total package.
CounterRotatingProps said...
The webinar was good --- got some of those important questions answered!
Obvious criticism for next time (from an old sound recording engineer):
1. Have enough headsets so you don't have to pass them around. There was an inordinate amount of "microphone banging" going on. (Clunk clunk, thucnk thunk)
2. Mic the audience so we can hear the questions - many were repeated - so we heard the questioner and the repeated questions, then many were unheard - so all we had were the answers.
3. Do a 'sound check' of the whole system before you go live. Video check too.
4. Have someone other than the speakers move the camera. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
thanks
- Howard
Yeah, sorry about that part.· I had it all worked out, conference phone for on-site attendees, boom mic and separate headphones for the speakers, and did plenty of testing the day before the event... then, on the day, one thing after another failed... poor Chip lost his voice so the boom mic wouldn't pick up his voice well enough (worked great for me) so we had to switch to a single headset just before starting so everyone could hear him too.· Can't use two USB headsets on same machine.· Headset that was chosen in a hurry was a flakey one that caused lots of noise.· Conference phone caused too much feedback, etc.· Ugh... darned gremlins... we really tried to make it a great, smooth, webinar, but it just didn't work out that way.
On the camera note... I had us both framed ahead of time but somehow we kept moving around too far apart so had to move it once it a while... something like is more than what we typically do but really needs a dedicated person to manage it.
I watched the webinar, even asked some questions and the fact that some things didn't quite work out just added to the charm.
It show Parallax are real people just like the rest of us on here and not some corporate faceless machine that couldn't care less about it's customers.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to engage with us all!
Regards,
Coley
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ PropGFX - The home of the Hybrid Development System and PropGFX Lite
Thanks OBC for organizing the event, Parallax for being such great hosts, and everyone else for sharing their work and enthusiasm! I've uploaded my notes and slides from the webinar: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=819577
Hanno
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Download a free trial of ViewPort- the premier visual debugger for the Propeller
Includes full debugger, simulated instruments, fuzzy logic, and OpenCV for computer vision. Now a Parallax Product!
CounterRotatingProps said...
The webinar was good --- got some of those important questions answered!
Obvious criticism for next time (from an old sound recording engineer):
...
Yeah, sorry about that part.· I had it all worked out, conference phone for on-site attendees, boom mic and separate headphones for the speakers, and did plenty of testing the day before the event... then, on the day, one thing after another failed... [noparse][[/noparse]...]
Jeff, no problem about the problems ;-)· Actually, I was wondering if that's what happened ... anyone who doesn't believe in 'gremlins' hasn't done a real, live gig [noparse]:)[/noparse])
Despite the critters in the works, it was a good presentation. And I know we all appreciate the effort that went into it.· RE the camera and sound - I'd bet Props to doughnuts if you ask ahead next time, you'll have more than a few volunteer stage hands, roadies, and A.V. techs --- (and maybe even some Groupies :-P )
We left yesterday between two and three in the afternoon and arrived here in Seattle at 3:30 am. Today my kids were already talking about going back next year. "Parallax is awesome" is something that I overheard one of them saying.
I have to agree... I echo the thanks that everyone else has given to Jeff and the people at Parallax. Something that really impressed me was the trust they put in all the attendees. There is a lot of neat stuff to be found in that building and few doors were locked. Even the attendees put a lot of trust in other attendees, including myself. I could put my Nikon down on a table and leave the room with no feelings that it might walk away. I have relatives that I wouldn't trust that much.
I also noted the lack of secrecy. When I asked about products that were in the works there was no hesitation to answer my questions. Which brings me to a question - I missed the webinar due to technical difficulties so I did not hear the answer to when the Prop2 is expected to come out. It did get asked right?
The Freebie table. Lots of cool stuff there. I picked up three demo boards hoping to make one working one. They had little stickers presumably pointing to the malfunction. Today I was able to get one of them up and running. There were several demo boards that had stickers pointing to the audio amp. On one of mine there was a short under the audio chip, cutting the 3.3v trace which runs under the breadboard fixed the problem - of course no audio. To restore audio I took a dremel and cut off the section containing the audio stuff off the board and replaced it with the same section of another board. I soldered four jumpers and now I have a fully functioning Propeller Demo Board! Now where's that Breakpoint demo?
We also got a fully functional BS2 off the freebie table. For this one we had to solder the legs on. It was a populated board that had been slightly mis-sawn - cosmetic problem only. It's fun fixing stuff. I heard someone snagged a USB Oscilloscope, that works!
Funniest moments;
Joe Grand's video of Gecko man being repeatedly slammed into a window.
Watching Chip make strange noises into the mic. Then realizing he used the wrong mic and had to do it again. (very interesting speech synthesis stuff - even Karen dug it)
Weirdest thing;
Found a small red lobster in the driveway with it's pincers outstretched towards the Parallax building - he almost made it.
Thanks to Parallax, OBC and the other sponsors - they all went above and beyond the call of duty... tons of goodies of both electronic and edible variety, interesting demonstrations, and excellent networking.
Parallax even drove a few people around who needed it, and Ken even took Old Man Earl and Peter to Fry's!
Unfortunately I was wiped from getting Morpheus up and running for the show, so I could only stay until about 9pm on Saturday - but I stayed until about 2pm on Sunday as well.
Chip's "breathing" synthesis has to be heard to be believed... he should do sound with that f/x guy for the next big horror flick!
It was great to meet Chip, Ken, Chuck, Dave, Jeff, Beau, OBC, Earl, Jazzed, Tom Rockiki, Michael Park, and too many others for my poor old brain to remember right now - I had a total blast.
I was immensely relieved to FINALLY spill the beans about Morpheus, and I'll be answering everyone's qustions about it starting tonight - as well as posting information on my site,
My talk was very well received, everyone is excited about Largos and Morpheus.
For me one of the most interesting things from the show was mpark's Sphinx compiler - as soon as I clear off the "DO YESTERDAY" items from my todo list, I am so playing with that! I am publiclly committing to supporting it under Largos.
Now I'm off to give brief answers to the questions I noticed in other threads... but I must emphasize how great everyone was, and how helpful and great all the Parallax folks were.
And I can't resist adding that Chip's youngest daughter is INCREDIBLY cute! (not that the other young ones at the show were not cute... all were great... but she's too cute)
Edit: after re-reading this thread, I needed to add to my post:
potatohead: thanks for the nice words and concise summary!
OBC: you were great, thanks for all your help - hope I did not break your camera's lens [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Looks like you guys had a great time - I seriously considered going but work commitments put paid to that - work also ensured that i'd miss the webinar ... 'all work and no play ...' - congratulations to one and all ... A European expo, while great, couldn't compete with one at the home of Parallax !
Regards,
John Twomey
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ 'Necessity is the mother of invention'
'Those who can, do.Those who can’t, teach.' 'Convince a man against his will, he's of the same opinion still.' ·
* Michael's use of "Proppoint"
* Chip's breathing synth.
* Joe's video of slamming Chameleon man repeatedly into the wall.
* The children coming up with names for the Raffle stuff.
* Rebekah after *two* cups of that double espresso at the Thai restaurant.
* The two people who dared to pull the ALL NIGHTER, and failed.
(yes we got pics. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
ALL of the demo's (except mine, which was a setup for Michael Park [noparse]:)[/noparse]
were completely fascinating and well presented. I hated being the
"bad guy" who had to limit time for these presentations, as it was
obvious that everyone was truly invested in their projects.
I had a great time even though I was worn out of all the traveling, I drove up from Los Angeles to the computer museum in San Jose and then to Rocklin the day before...
I managed to get two demo boards and got them both to work, I'll be giving one these away during our next hardware hacking meeting here in San Antonio, hopefully we get a new Propeller fan.
Once again thanks to OBC and Parallax for making this happen...
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Living on the planet Earth might be expensive but it includes a free trip around the sun every year...
Experience level:
[noparse][[/noparse] ] Let's connect the motor to pin 1, it's a 6V motor so it should be fine.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] OK, I got my resistors hooked up with the LEDs.
[noparse][[/noparse]X] I got the Motor hooked up with the H-bridge and the 555 is supplying the PWM.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] Now, if I can only program the BOE-BOT to interface with he Flux Capacitor.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] I dream in SX28 assembler...
I'm going to do the same with one of the demo boards I've got. Fixed one this evening. Am now working on the other one. When it's up, it's gone to somebody, who will appreciate it.
I'm a bit frustrated in that I attended UPEW but missed Chip's webinar due to the technical problems and then due to the room being packed full. Later, right before leaving I overheard Chip discussing "things" that had to do with when it would become available.
Not sure if that info was sensitive I posted asking if that one-question-which-should-not-be-asked had been answered. The response I got was that it would not be released until it was ready.
However, I read somewhere - now I can't find it - that it was coming out next year. Hmmm...
Anyway, the source of my frustration isn't so much knowing when it will be available, but that I don't know what was discussed during the webinar. What additional information was presented? Did you all take a vow of silence?
@Bamse...
I just had a little peek at the picture you provided here.
It didn't take more than 2 milli seconds to realize that the Swede was the one to the left in the picture [noparse]:)[/noparse] (It's easy to pick out those Swedish features among Americans )
@Jeff ledger and Bamse...
Did you show off our Datasette project ?
Btw I'm not dead just very busy.
I have practically finished my Propeller based engine monitoring system ( It's installed in a fishing boat in Marocko ), so now i will have some time to fiddle around here.
And i have got a new C64 project in the making, soon to be released. (You guys will love it)
No, I didn't have the extra room/weight in my bags to bring my C64 setup.
Not a bad idea to take it to UPENE. I should re-assemble the skateboard setup and bring it as well.
Comments
From what I heard, they were working on the system the whole morning trying to get it to work...
This expo was a lot of fun. Highly recommended.
I don't have a lot of other pictures to share --spent two much time talking to everybody and watching all the cool projects. Once the tables cleared out, I also fired up the HYBRID board to show some project work and tinker with the others.
The people at Parallax were first class. We had food and lots to do, see, and talk about. People were in the soldering stations on an off building stuff up, off and on throughout the day.
All of the presentations were great. People are doing lots of interesting and creative stuff on the Propeller. Great new hardware products are in development too. I'll leave that to some of the others, who will hopefully share the details when they've had some sleep.
I highly recommend you all do this! There is some great stuff to share with everyone here, and it's worth doing it sooner rather than later, while the energy of showing it off is still fresh in your mind. The vendors have great products. All of them! I wanted to load up a bag of goodies, but will have to wait and pace it over a time. (wife would kill me, so... gotta prioritize!) This is a wonderful problem to have. To those vendors that don't have good web setups yet, just toss up a page, or post it up here. It's good stuff, show it all off!
After dinner, many visitors left for their various destinations. I met and spoke with many people I've known well from the forum here and it was great to just match up faces to the names and see how and what everybody is doing! Learned a ton from that alone.
Chip, Ken and Andy stayed with us until very late. We talked about how to do stuff, wrote some code, showed off projects and talked about future plans. Most split off into little groups of common interest, with a few, including myself, bouncing a bit between the groups to check it all out.
I find everyone just easy to talk to, smart and felt the spark of just having fun catching and spreading among the several new to propeller users who showed up to check out the scene in person. It was fun to look back and think many of us were those new people, and from what I can see, they will be doing the very same thing in a short time. The Propeller scene is growing bit by bit, and if this is how it grows, we are all going to make out just fine.
Special tanks to Jeff Ledger (OBC), in addition to the Parallax people, who put in some long and fun time over the weekend to make this happen for the rest of us. I can't state clearly enough how welcome I was, how good of company I had, and the energy that comes from seeing everybody just into it, having fun and really interested in sharing that and learning what others are doing.
The crowd of people surrounding the Propeller is just a good one, and that's worth a lot when doing this stuff. I feel lucky to be a part of it, and to get time to just talk and get to know people, and that's attendees and Parallax staff both! So many great conversations --so little time.
If possible, I will absolutely do this again.
[noparse][[/noparse]goes off to pack and figure out how to get back to the airport!]
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Propeller Wiki: Share the coolness!
Chat in real time with other Propellerheads on IRC #propeller @ freenode.net
Safety Tip: Life is as good as YOU think it is!
Photos of the expo
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Gadget Gangster - Share your Electronic Projects - Sign up as a Designer and get a free 4-pack of Project Boards!
Post Edited (Nick McClick) : 6/28/2009 8:07:26 PM GMT
I wanted to add mine.
It was indeed an all night affair yesterday. Some of those I spoke with
this morning were moving slowly, and with good reason. The discussions
at Parallax tapered off toward 5:30 AM this morning.
The speaker for today's session was Rick Galinson who designs special
effects for movies and TV. His credits include Babylon 5, Spider Man 2,
Men in Black and others too numerous to mention. To see a full list of his
activities see:
remotelyinteresting.com/resume%20page.htm
And be sure to visit his home page:
remotelyinteresting.com
Rick began his talk with an apology for only using the Basic Stamp
and no Propellers in his special effects. However, the robots and
special effects he achieved with the Basic Stamp are truly incredible.
A lot of hard work went into these.
Next year I hope that Parallax can publish a list of the speakers who
will be attending. We had Chis from New Zealand talking about his
autonomous 14 ft sailboat yesterday.
Perhaps others will post their impressions about the other speakers
yesterday. I heard the attendance was roughly 160 propeller enthusiasts.
I feel lucky to live within a two hour drive of Parallax. I'm already
looking forward to the UPEW 2010 next year.
I'll post a link soon to some of the photos I took.
phil kenny
The Parallax staff was incredibly generous and accommodating. They provided breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Once again, they proved that they are first-class all the way. Jeff put together a raffle and donated all the proceeds to the American Red Cross. Partway through the ticket sales, Parallax announced that they would match the ticket sale amount with an equivalent donation. In the end, $964 of tickets were sold and Ken Gracey rounded up Parallax' donation to make an even $2000. Ken's 12-year-old son (sorry I didn't get his name) did a fine job in drawing and announcing the winning tickets. He's a natural in front of a crowd and had us all in stitches.
I really enjoyed watching Chip live during the webinar. As people asked questions about the Prop II, I could see the design changing in his head. (I guess the Prop II will be made out of wood since Chip has spent the past four months harvesting walnut trees.)
I wasn't one of the hardcore all-nighters. I had to drive home to let my dogs out and I wasn't able to go back down this morning. I stayed until after Chip's demo of his Vocal Tract object. He explained that he's been strongly interested in speech synthesis for over twenty years. During his presentation I got the strong impression that he designed the Propeller mainly to work on speech synthesis research and that a lot of the enhancements in the Prop II are to further that research.
All in all, I'd say it was a huge success. Thanks to Jeff Ledger for all his work in putting it together. I'm looking forward to next year's.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
OS-X: because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
links:
My band's website
Our album on the iTunes Music Store
It was nice meeting all of you that I did get a chance to meet. Due to timing I wasn’t’ available all day Saturday or Sunday or I’d have camped out myself! I know I didn’t get to meet everyone so hopefully we’ll do this again some day and I will get another chance. To that end if anyone has pictures that haven’t been posted I would encourage you to make them available if possible. It may help some of us to remember who’s who if you can notate/comment on photos and list who it is in the photo. It would be neat to compile a photo slideshow of the attendees with their names. There were a lot of awesome projects and I must say I haven’t been working on much of my own stuff lately, but this gathering has kind of re-lit the fire, so to speak. Time to start getting some stuff completed and posted. Thanks for the motivation as well.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering
- keeping speakers on a strict schedule kept everything moving. Having the schedule posted worked well, too. 30 minutes seems like the right amount of time.
- having onsite food was nice. I think we lost a lot of folks after dinner during the last expo.
- Parallax was a great host & didn't dominate the expo. The focus was on the community and all the cool stuff they're doing, which is where it should be.
- Personally, I liked having everything in one area, but some folks might prefer having presentations in one area and projects in another.
Overall - Great Job, Great Presentations, Great meeting everyone! My best-in-show award goes to the Attopilot - that is a very cool project and a good presentation. Close second is rayman's development board - it's a steal at the price he is selling it for & he's done a lot of additional work (like to the TV driver) to make it a total package.▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Gadget Gangster - Share your Electronic Projects - Sign up as a Designer and get a free pack of Project Boards!
100,000th post, for one thread only.
Edit
Yeah , I was looking at the wrong column. Back to sleep
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Post Edited (Toby Seckshund) : 6/29/2009 8:32:16 PM GMT
On the camera note... I had us both framed ahead of time but somehow we kept moving around too far apart so had to move it once it a while... something like is more than what we typically do but really needs a dedicated person to manage it.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
--Jeff Martin
· Sr. Software Engineer
· Parallax, Inc.
I watched the webinar, even asked some questions and the fact that some things didn't quite work out just added to the charm.
It show Parallax are real people just like the rest of us on here and not some corporate faceless machine that couldn't care less about it's customers.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to engage with us all!
Regards,
Coley
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
PropGFX - The home of the Hybrid Development System and PropGFX Lite
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=819577
Hanno
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Download a free trial of ViewPort- the premier visual debugger for the Propeller
Includes full debugger, simulated instruments, fuzzy logic, and OpenCV for computer vision. Now a Parallax Product!
Despite the critters in the works, it was a good presentation. And I know we all appreciate the effort that went into it.· RE the camera and sound - I'd bet Props to doughnuts if you ask ahead next time, you'll have more than a few volunteer stage hands, roadies, and A.V. techs --- (and maybe even some Groupies :-P )
cheers
- Howard
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
I have to agree... I echo the thanks that everyone else has given to Jeff and the people at Parallax. Something that really impressed me was the trust they put in all the attendees. There is a lot of neat stuff to be found in that building and few doors were locked. Even the attendees put a lot of trust in other attendees, including myself. I could put my Nikon down on a table and leave the room with no feelings that it might walk away. I have relatives that I wouldn't trust that much.
I also noted the lack of secrecy. When I asked about products that were in the works there was no hesitation to answer my questions. Which brings me to a question - I missed the webinar due to technical difficulties so I did not hear the answer to when the Prop2 is expected to come out. It did get asked right?
The Freebie table. Lots of cool stuff there. I picked up three demo boards hoping to make one working one. They had little stickers presumably pointing to the malfunction. Today I was able to get one of them up and running. There were several demo boards that had stickers pointing to the audio amp. On one of mine there was a short under the audio chip, cutting the 3.3v trace which runs under the breadboard fixed the problem - of course no audio. To restore audio I took a dremel and cut off the section containing the audio stuff off the board and replaced it with the same section of another board. I soldered four jumpers and now I have a fully functioning Propeller Demo Board! Now where's that Breakpoint demo?
We also got a fully functional BS2 off the freebie table. For this one we had to solder the legs on. It was a populated board that had been slightly mis-sawn - cosmetic problem only. It's fun fixing stuff. I heard someone snagged a USB Oscilloscope, that works!
Funniest moments;
Joe Grand's video of Gecko man being repeatedly slammed into a window.
Watching Chip make strange noises into the mic. Then realizing he used the wrong mic and had to do it again. (very interesting speech synthesis stuff - even Karen dug it)
Weirdest thing;
Found a small red lobster in the driveway with it's pincers outstretched towards the Parallax building - he almost made it.
Rich H
Post Edited (W9GFO) : 6/30/2009 5:16:34 AM GMT
Thanks to Parallax, OBC and the other sponsors - they all went above and beyond the call of duty... tons of goodies of both electronic and edible variety, interesting demonstrations, and excellent networking.
Parallax even drove a few people around who needed it, and Ken even took Old Man Earl and Peter to Fry's!
Unfortunately I was wiped from getting Morpheus up and running for the show, so I could only stay until about 9pm on Saturday - but I stayed until about 2pm on Sunday as well.
Chip's "breathing" synthesis has to be heard to be believed... he should do sound with that f/x guy for the next big horror flick!
It was great to meet Chip, Ken, Chuck, Dave, Jeff, Beau, OBC, Earl, Jazzed, Tom Rockiki, Michael Park, and too many others for my poor old brain to remember right now - I had a total blast.
I was immensely relieved to FINALLY spill the beans about Morpheus, and I'll be answering everyone's qustions about it starting tonight - as well as posting information on my site,
My talk was very well received, everyone is excited about Largos and Morpheus.
For me one of the most interesting things from the show was mpark's Sphinx compiler - as soon as I clear off the "DO YESTERDAY" items from my todo list, I am so playing with that! I am publiclly committing to supporting it under Largos.
Now I'm off to give brief answers to the questions I noticed in other threads... but I must emphasize how great everyone was, and how helpful and great all the Parallax folks were.
And I can't resist adding that Chip's youngest daughter is INCREDIBLY cute! (not that the other young ones at the show were not cute... all were great... but she's too cute)
Edit: after re-reading this thread, I needed to add to my post:
potatohead: thanks for the nice words and concise summary!
OBC: you were great, thanks for all your help - hope I did not break your camera's lens [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Nick: thanks for posting shots!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
my 6.250MHz custom Crystals available for running Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller (alpha version released)
Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
www.mikronauts.com - blog about microcontrollers, especially the Propeller, Morpheus and Mem+
Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 6/30/2009 5:38:31 AM GMT
Regards,
John Twomey
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
'Necessity is the mother of invention'
'Those who can, do.Those who can’t, teach.'
'Convince a man against his will, he's of the same opinion still.'
·
Some highlights for me were: (The funny stuff)
* Michael's use of "Proppoint"
* Chip's breathing synth.
* Joe's video of slamming Chameleon man repeatedly into the wall.
* The children coming up with names for the Raffle stuff.
* Rebekah after *two* cups of that double espresso at the Thai restaurant.
* The two people who dared to pull the ALL NIGHTER, and failed.
(yes we got pics. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
ALL of the demo's (except mine, which was a setup for Michael Park [noparse]:)[/noparse]
were completely fascinating and well presented. I hated being the
"bad guy" who had to limit time for these presentations, as it was
obvious that everyone was truly invested in their projects.
OBC
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
I managed to get two demo boards and got them both to work, I'll be giving one these away during our next hardware hacking meeting here in San Antonio, hopefully we get a new Propeller fan.
Once again thanks to OBC and Parallax for making this happen...
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Living on the planet Earth might be expensive but it includes a free trip around the sun every year...
Experience level:
[noparse][[/noparse] ] Let's connect the motor to pin 1, it's a 6V motor so it should be fine.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] OK, I got my resistors hooked up with the LEDs.
[noparse][[/noparse]X] I got the Motor hooked up with the H-bridge and the 555 is supplying the PWM.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] Now, if I can only program the BOE-BOT to interface with he Flux Capacitor.
[noparse][[/noparse] ] I dream in SX28 assembler...
/Bamse
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Propeller Wiki: Share the coolness!
Chat in real time with other Propellerheads on IRC #propeller @ freenode.net
Safety Tip: Life is as good as YOU think it is!
Not sure if that info was sensitive I posted asking if that one-question-which-should-not-be-asked had been answered. The response I got was that it would not be released until it was ready.
However, I read somewhere - now I can't find it - that it was coming out next year. Hmmm...
Anyway, the source of my frustration isn't so much knowing when it will be available, but that I don't know what was discussed during the webinar. What additional information was presented? Did you all take a vow of silence?
Rich H
I just had a little peek at the picture you provided here.
It didn't take more than 2 milli seconds to realize that the Swede was the one to the left in the picture [noparse]:)[/noparse] (It's easy to pick out those Swedish features among Americans )
@Jeff ledger and Bamse...
Did you show off our Datasette project ?
Btw I'm not dead just very busy.
I have practically finished my Propeller based engine monitoring system ( It's installed in a fishing boat in Marocko ), so now i will have some time to fiddle around here.
And i have got a new C64 project in the making, soon to be released. (You guys will love it)
No, I didn't have the extra room/weight in my bags to bring my C64 setup.
Not a bad idea to take it to UPENE. I should re-assemble the skateboard setup and bring it as well.
OBC
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.