Proto board or Education Kit?

Spencers

Hello,

I'm a high school student interested in electronics and programming. After seeing what the Hydra can do, and reading a little on the Propeller, I recently purchased a USB proto board for experimentation. Unfortunately, I confused the board with the demo board when I bought it, not knowing its contacts are meant to be soldered (I purchased it at a DIY fair, and couldn't see what was inside the non-descript, opaque packaging).

I know little about working with the propeller and don't want to solder anything, so I'm asking anyone willing to answer for input. Should I:

- Put the protoboard aside for now and get a demo board or DIP plus kit, or
- attempt to solder 10-pin sockets to the I/O pin slots on the proto board to avoid the cost of buying a new kit.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Mike Green

If you can afford it, I'd get a Demo Board. It comes with the ability to do TV and VGA output, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, stereo audio out and mono audio in (from a microphone). There's still 8 I/O pins unused and a little breadboard area to work on. You can add an SD card for mass storage and that would leave 4 I/O pins free for experimentation. That's a lot of experimentation.

W9GFO

I would recommend the Propeller Education Kit if you are interested in electronics AND programming. You will learn a lot from the labs. If you would rather just get to the programming and not have to wire things up first then I would go with the Demo Board.

If you get the DIP Plus Kit you'll also need to get a Prop Plug to program it. The most economical route I think is to put those sockets on your USB ProtoBoard and use those to connect to a breadboard. You wouldn't have to spend much and you could easily follow the PE Kit labs without much soldering.

Rich H

SRLM

I like this kit. Also, don't forget one of these. [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Cluso99

Find a friend to solder the resistors and connectors and play with what you have for now. You will then be able to make a better decision later as to what you want to do and then can buy something to fit that purpose. Did you get the VGA/PS2 connector with the board?

There are plenty of demonstration software and tutorials for the board you have.

Just for starters, without the connectors, you could just buy 2 ultrabright LEDs and put them carefully into the board holes (without soldering) and you can write some programs to flash them. Otherwise, buy a few 1K resistors and LEDs and have someone solder them into your board for you. Then you can make these flash a sequence. Great for initial learning.

If you are not sure about anything, just ask here on the forum.

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBladeProp, SixBladeProp, website (Multiple propeller pcbs)
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: Micros eg Altair, and Terminals eg VT100 (Index)
· Search the Propeller forums (via Google)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm

Spencers

Thanks for the quick responses.

I'm now split between the educational kit and modding my proto board. The educational kit looks nice, although I already have access to all the components that come with the kit, except for the book. My school has an electronics program which, due to downsizing, is now overflowing with every generic component in that kit; they're practically giving away spare resistors and capacitors from the supply room. Is the book the same thing as the "Fundamentals" PDF on the downloads page? If it is, I can replicate all the labs without spending the extra $100. If the printed book in the educational kit is different, I'm leaning towards buying that.

Rayman

I'd recommend buying the "Accessory Kit" (I think it's called) for your board that will give you a VGA, keyboard, and mouse connectors.· You can do a lot with just that.· If you have somebody who can solder for you and if you have a VGA monitor you can plug into...·

It's also pretty easy to add 3 resistors and a RCA jack to get video output.· Add another couple resistors and maybe a capacitor to get audio output.

You can also buy one of those mini breadboards with the sticky back and stick it to the protoboard...· With a couple wires, you can then do breadboard work on top of the protoboard...



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My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm

hinv

If you are going to keep your interest in electronics, you will have to learn to solder. Once you have tried it, you'll find out that it isn't that hard to produce good results. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube that are quite helpful.
The protoboard USB is a great tool for learning, plus you can use it as a PropPlug. Anybody have instructions handy on this?

If you want to get into programming the propeller quickly, get the Demo Board if you can afford it. It has almost everything you need to get started. Here is the schematic:
www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/prop/PropDemoDschem.pdf
Like mike said you can add an SDcard. I would recommed:
www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=544

I find the PEKit very educational, especially the counter lab. If you can put together one of those from the parts you have available, that is great. You can also "borrow" power from the regulators on your protoboard, but then again, you would have to solder.

Post Edited (hinv) : 6/3/2009 1:48:16 PM GMT

W9GFO

Spencers said...
Is the book the same thing as the "Fundamentals" PDF on the downloads page?

Yes it is. However, there are some slight differences between the single download of the labs called "Fundamentals" and the labs downloaded individually. The thing is, I can't find where to download the individual labs. I'm sure they're there somewhere...

If you can't find them I could always send them to you.

Rich H



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Post Edited (W9GFO) : 6/3/2009 3:41:18 PM GMT

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Keep the Protoboard and have a glance at the Propeller Cookbook link
on this page: www.warrantyvoid.us/tiki-index.php?page=Hardware

If you can do minimal soldering you should be in business. [noparse]:)[/noparse]

OBC

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New to the Propeller?

Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.

CassLan

You already have the protoboard, make sure you get the VGA/PS2 addition for it and definately check out the Prop Cookbook mentioned above, its all about getting the most out of the protoboard and is great for folks starting out.

Rick

hinv

And ask a lot of questions on the forum. You will be amazed at how helpful and intelligent many of the people are on here!
I know I am.

CounterRotatingProps

Hi Spencers,

Soldering is actually pretty fun ... and a very useful skill to have. Piece of cake once you get it.

I'm 52 years old now - learned how to solder when I was about 8 or 9 ... I've had the need to solder at least once a month when *not* doing electronics.

It really is a skill you'll use your whole life.

And I second hinv's suggestion: ask us a lot of questions. People here are very friendly and helpful !

-Howard in Florida
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No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Agree'd with the above whole-heartily!
The Protoboard is a great place to start out.

Add a simple soldering pencil to your toolkit, we'll all be here if
you get stuck somewhere along the way.

(Soldering goes back to being fun for me in the morning.
Having the after-cataract laser fix in the next two mornings.)

OBC

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New to the Propeller?

Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.

Spencers

Wow, great to see an active support forum!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of soldering: I just want temporary sockets in my board because I'm not prototyping, I'm using it for experiments; nothing's permanent. I'm about to order five 10pin sockets for the board: four of them for p0-p31 plus 4 for Vdd and Vss (+3.3 and ground, right?) and another one which I'll cut up and put at the top of the board where the +5V and extra Vss rails are (I'm not sure why there are capacitors right here, they aren't there in the store's picture). Finally, I'm adding a little mini-breadboard to the protoboard for...breadboarding. This should allow me to easily connect the chip to a breadboard for temporary experiments and labs.

Here's a diagram. Yellow is the sockets, green is the socket I'll have to cut into smaller pieces, and red is an approximation of the breadboard.



Suggestions? I don't really care about covering the keyboard/vga slot; I'd rather program with those things on my computer.

Cluso99

I started soldering when about 8-9. I used a gigantic 1.5V battery (ex Telecom battery which were prevalent back then) and a fine enamelled wire (fom an old radio coil) wrapped around a steel bolt filed into a point one end and screwed into a small piece of wood. Worked wonders, although I often had to rewind my burnt out wire.

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBladeProp, SixBladeProp, website (Multiple propeller pcbs)
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: Micros eg Altair, and Terminals eg VT100 (Index)
· Search the Propeller forums (via Google)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm

Rayman

Spencers: I think you're on the right track!

PS:· with the mini-breadboard, you might want to use an knife to only expose some of the sticky part...

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My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm

Post Edited (Rayman) : 6/4/2009 11:35:25 AM GMT

Steph Lindsay

Just FYI -

The Propeller Education Kit Labs: Fundamentals text is a compilation and update of the labs that were first available as individual downloads.·Version 1.1 of the compilation is bundled in the·Propeller Tool v1.2.6 as a tagged PDF, accessible from both your STart menu, and the Propeller Tool's Help menu. The example code for the PE Labs is also in there, in the Examples> PE Kit folder.· The tagged PDF and example code for the Propeller Manual v1.1 are included in the same way as well.

Have fun!

-Stephanie

localroger

Spencers, you might want to consider following the directions in the protoboard cookbook to emulate one or more of the spinstudio sockets. The spinstudio plug-in boards from ucontroller.com are in turn pretty inexpensive and that will give you a lot of versatility. You'll probably find video output to be more universally useful than VGA, since you can use it with portable DVD players that have A/V inputs as well as bulkier TV sets; VGA monitors that small are not so common.