Questions of the limitations of Basic Stamp.

redrocker

Hello I am on my first ever project so I am a little lost. I guess I am too green to know what the limitation of MCU's are in general. I started with the Basic stamp 2. It is easy and it helped me to understand the basics, so I am happy with it. However I really would like an expert opinion on what chip I should use move up to, or If I need to move up at all.

1. Is it possible to communicate with a USB device? Or do I need to load some type of driver? 32 bit system with plenty of memory? I really do not know the first thing about this.
2. In the long run I would like wireless network capability. The transfer rates do not need to be fast at all. I will be sending/ receiving word-length numbers every few seconds is all. Line of sight communication is out of the question though. 300 feet or more (outside) will be the range needed so Ethernet may be nice. Any ideas/suggestions?

Any suggestions on what platform Basic Stamp, SX, Propeller, I need? I want to do the following:

1. Drive motor (this is the only thing I have done so far).
2. Simple LCD display.
3. 4-5 button key pad
4. Wireless network
5. Interface with a high resolution digital compass. SPI.
6. USB interfacing?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Mike Green

I suggest you look at the Propeller. None of the Parallax microcontrollers will directly talk to a USB device in a reasonable way. There is sample code to have a Propeller pretend to be a USB HID device, but it's only a partial implementation and takes a lot of code to do it (and it's not all that fast). It's much better to use external USB interface hardware. The other stuff you want to do is all reasonable. You'd probably use Bluetooth or and xBee transceiver for the wireless stuff.

The Parallax memory stick datalogger will do USB host I/O for you for memory sticks, mice, keyboard, and some printers and can be used with any of Parallax's microcontrollers.

CassLan

Hi,

When you say communicate with a USB device, do you mean hook up to a PC via USB or use a peripheral like a USB mouse or WebCam?

As for the wireless network...your talking about WiFi? or any kind of wireless communication that can go that distance?

If you want to do all ove the above at the same time, I would suggest the Propeller. I know the SX is fast enough, and I haven's used it that much but I'm looking at the # of i/o's on the largest one you get 36 i/os but only 262 bytes of ram!!

There are objects already written in the obex for SPI, and Xbee communication, as well as wired ethernet solutions, not to mention the TV, VGA, Keyboard & Mouse routines.

Rick

Bill Chennault

redrocker--

What kind of programmer are you? If you are a BASIC-only person, the Propeller, as powerful as it is, may not be for you. However, you might easily learn its language, Spin, or its native assembler. Just be sure you take a look at the language(s) before making the decision to move to the Propeller.

--Bill

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You are what you write.

SRLM

By communicate with USB, Mike is talking about hooking the wires directly to the microcontroller (maybe a few passives, but no ICs). All the USB devices that parallax sells uses an interface chip to do the dirty work.

ZigBee is different than WiFi. It's more embedded oriented, as opposed to internet oriented.

stamptrol

With all due respect, this is a lot of things to be trying to consider for a "first ever project".

With the information provided, everything you want to do can be done with the BS2, except the direct application of USB. But, if the target device has the processing power to run a serial-to-USB converter, then that's not a big problem either.

I'd suggest getting going with the individual parts of your project, working through each challenge as it comes up.

Maybe if you outlined the whole project for us, we could give some more concrete comments.

Cheers,

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Tom Sisk

http://www.siskconsult.com
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redrocker

First I would like to thank you all for your reply, you guys are awesome.

Mike, Can you give me an example of the "external usb hardware"? Is there a particular chip you would go with?

Rick, thank you. I will need more than 232 Bytes of ram and with the obex listings have sole me on the Propeller.

Bill, I have done some Assembly about 10 years ago but other than that I have only done high level stuff such as Matlab and MS basic. I think I will take the time to learn to program the Propeller. Thank you.

Tom, yes I am a little nervous about my first ever project. I think that is some good advice, just take on one step at a time. Thank you.

Thanks again

Adam

Mike Green

The Vinculum chip from FTDI is a USB host controller. It's designed primarily for use with USB mass storage devices like "thumb drives", but it will also talk to HID (human interface devices - keyboards and mice mostly), some simple printers, and FTDIs own USB to serial adapters. Vinculum sells their own packaged versions (VMusic2, VDrive2), but Parallax also sells and supports the Memory Stick Datalogger which is functionally the same as Vinculums VDrive2.

FTDI also makes USB client controllers for use as USB to serial adapters. Parallax uses these in its products to make them look like they have a serial port to the attached PC or other host.

There are other host interfaces. The MAX3420E comes to mind. Look at Maxim's datasheet on this device for details. It takes over some of the low and medium level host processing for USB.

Leon

There are several PIC USB OTG chips available, which can act as a (limited) USB host.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

Chris Savage

This being a Parallax Support forum, we should try and stick to products we can support the customer on. Constantly directing forum members to unsupported products could be seen as pushing them away, and we don't want to do that. There are options available as posted.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering