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Future of the Javelin — Parallax Forums

Future of the Javelin

Istha PowronIstha Powron Posts: 74
edited 2009-07-25 20:37 in General Discussion
Hello All,

I was wondering about the future of the Javelin.

Are they still being manufactured?
Is there any plans for development? Upgrade?
New JVM updates?

It's an expensive chip, but the VPs make life easy for small control applications.

I know Parallax would like us all to move over to the propellor, but Java is such a popular language that there must be demand for a simple JVM processor.

Any ideas?

Istha

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The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood will beat the damn monster.
Adam Smith

Comments

  • Istha PowronIstha Powron Posts: 74
    edited 2009-07-15 21:39
    I guess that answers my question [noparse];)[/noparse]

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    The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood will beat the damn monster.
    Adam Smith
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2009-07-15 22:10
    My goodness, you're impatient!

    The number of people using the Javelin is much smaller than the number of people using the Basic Stamps. There are a few experts as well, but there's just not as much traffic on this forum as on the rest. The Javelin is still being made as demand has it. It's just my personal opinion and observations that I doubt that you will see an upgrade or any development other than bug fixes for the PC software. There has been some experimentation on a JVM for the Propeller that's been described and discussed on the Propeller forum. I suspect that this will be completed once the Prop II is finished since there's more main memory and higher speed cogs in the Prop II which will make a much better JVM possible.
  • Peter VerkaikPeter Verkaik Posts: 3,956
    edited 2009-07-15 22:38
    The javelin is still manufactured and I think it will stay·while the SX48
    is still used in certain basic stamps as well.
    Don't expect upgrades on·the·javelin·jvm firmware.
    That jvm is so tightly programmed in the SX48 there is no
    room for enhancements (if only the propeller had 4 sx48 cog's,
    that would be something! ).

    We are waiting for the Prop2 to complete the JVM I and·others
    wrote. Currently it executes most javelin code but only at 10% of
    the javelin speed, due to the fact that the jvm is mostly in
    spin.

    If (and that's a big if) the Prop2 allows to run a jvm
    that also directly interfaces to the Javelin IDE software,
    and at equal or greater speed than the javelin,
    then maybe the javelin·becomes more popular when
    one wants the DIP24 footprint, because I don't think
    the Prop2 will be available as SpinStamp2.

    regards peter
  • Istha PowronIstha Powron Posts: 74
    edited 2009-07-16 03:55
    Mike, Peter,

    Thank's for your input.

    The great things about the Javelin are the VPs, the memory and the higher level language. I'm back playing with Atmega16s at the moment and the amount of stuffing around you have to do to set up a UART or counter is a pain. The chips are dirt cheap however, which makes them attractive for applications. I saw that there is an Imagecraft compiler available for the propellor. I used to use ICC on the old Motorola HC11s and it worked well. I guess I could look at trying it again, how fiddly are the propellors to get........spinning? What's the learning curve like?

    I

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    The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood will beat the damn monster.
    Adam Smith
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2009-07-16 05:12
    The Propeller is much simpler than you might think, particularly if you leave the multiprocessing (using more than one cog at a time) to the library routines. The extra cogs take the place of the UARTs or the Javelin's VPs and the code that executes on them is part of the library routines. There are independent counters, but they're pretty straightforward and, for a lot of uses, there are library routines that take care of the details (like for frequency generation).
  • vrossivrossi Posts: 38
    edited 2009-07-25 20:37
    I have made several projects based on Basic Stamps and Javelin. While I consider the Basic Stamp a great product, given its ease of programming and wide library of programs, ready to be used for almost any sensor, I greatly appreciate the Javelin, which allows me to develop robotic projects using a programming language which is (almost) the same I can use in my day-to-day business activity. The Javelin offers a lot of memory, parallel processing through VPs and the possibility to write reusable code according to Object Oriented principles.

    However, the Javelin looks like the Ugly Duckling in Parallax microcontrollers landscape: in the site only a small manual can be found, while looking in the yahoo group I could find a very interesting manual explaining how to build a JavaBot, but it's a draft version, which lacks many figures and contains several errors.

    I understand that Parallax, as any company, can't invest too much in a smaller market like this, but maybe a simple "lifting" (i.e. create a new version of the manual including the errata corrige, rebuild the download zip software adding the 32 bit math library and using the fixed Terminal.java instead of the bugged one, create a final version of the Javabot manual) would require only a few days and would attract some more users.

    Java is a great language, and Parallax proved that it can be used even in hobby robot projects (there is a competitor selling boe-bots equipped with a Java robotics controller, at much higher prices). A little investment in Javelin documentation might give a good return, considering that Java is now widely used in enterprises and schools.

    Just my personal opinion, of course...
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