Really like the IDE schematic drawing; please criticize my work
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,392
Hey there,
Still making my way around the Propeller IDE and learning something new every day. Today I spent an hour drawing the schematic of my top-level program in an autonomous robot that I've put together for a presentation in Netherlands next week at the Elektor Live event (with Coley and Baggers, two guys who have a real surprise for our visitors!). The purpose of the demo is to show a simple framework for simultaneous processing, simple enough that even I would understand it. You guys on this forum do some impressive stuff and it's really humbling for me to see it all around me. Anyway, this particular demo does speech synthesis (thanks, Phil + Chip), RF send/receive to base station, H-bridge control, and Ping control all at once. The top program ties the processes together in a few short objects. COGs manage the various processes.
But what I'm seeking is feedback on the schematic, and the quality of the drawing I've made. Not looking for any rosy compliments, but real criticism so I can make it better. Being proud of myself usually gets me in trouble. I have pasted a screen capture with select on (hence the blue background) and the actual text in case improvements can be shown. I'm interested in making the best use of the schematic drawing tool for a clean and complete presentation. Does the mix of Vss and symbols bother anybody? Or, the chip-centric view? Should it really be a whole-system schematic that shows the Propeller too?
I'm not done, I know, but your comments will help me get there more quickly.
Since the copy/paste into the Code formatter didn't work I'm attaching part of the file.
Sincerely,
Ken Gracey
P.S. Went to Andy yesterday to ask "what are you using to draw schematics these days? He replied with a myriad of choices: Corel, Eagle, Word. etc. depending on the application. He was saving his best option for last: "use the Prop IDE like you are supposed to!" It's much faster and the limited amount of flexibility helps me get to the final product much quicker.
Post Edited (Ken Gracey (Parallax)) : 11/10/2009 11:31:56 PM GMT
Still making my way around the Propeller IDE and learning something new every day. Today I spent an hour drawing the schematic of my top-level program in an autonomous robot that I've put together for a presentation in Netherlands next week at the Elektor Live event (with Coley and Baggers, two guys who have a real surprise for our visitors!). The purpose of the demo is to show a simple framework for simultaneous processing, simple enough that even I would understand it. You guys on this forum do some impressive stuff and it's really humbling for me to see it all around me. Anyway, this particular demo does speech synthesis (thanks, Phil + Chip), RF send/receive to base station, H-bridge control, and Ping control all at once. The top program ties the processes together in a few short objects. COGs manage the various processes.
But what I'm seeking is feedback on the schematic, and the quality of the drawing I've made. Not looking for any rosy compliments, but real criticism so I can make it better. Being proud of myself usually gets me in trouble. I have pasted a screen capture with select on (hence the blue background) and the actual text in case improvements can be shown. I'm interested in making the best use of the schematic drawing tool for a clean and complete presentation. Does the mix of Vss and symbols bother anybody? Or, the chip-centric view? Should it really be a whole-system schematic that shows the Propeller too?
I'm not done, I know, but your comments will help me get there more quickly.
Since the copy/paste into the Code formatter didn't work I'm attaching part of the file.
Sincerely,
Ken Gracey
P.S. Went to Andy yesterday to ask "what are you using to draw schematics these days? He replied with a myriad of choices: Corel, Eagle, Word. etc. depending on the application. He was saving his best option for last: "use the Prop IDE like you are supposed to!" It's much faster and the limited amount of flexibility helps me get to the final product much quicker.
{
Wireless Interface Speech Synthesis
XBee-24 RF Module XBee-24 RF Module LM386N-1 Op-Amp
Receiver Transmitter 10 uF
┌────┬┬────┐ ┌────┬┬────┐ ┌─────────┤├────────┐
3.3V ───1│VDD │ +3.3V ───1│VDD │ │ ┌──────┬┬─────┐ │ Set for 200 Gain
│ │ │ │ └1│gain gain│8┘
P25───2│RX │ NC ───2│RX │ │ │ 100 uF
│ │ │ │ VSS ─────2│-input bypass│7───────┤├─────┐
NC───3│TX │ P29 ───3│TX │ P15───┐ │ ▶ │ 
│ │ │ │ 10kΩ ──3│+input Vs│6── 3.3V
VSS──10│GND │ VSS ──10│GND │  │ │ 250 uF
└──────────┘ └──────────┘ VSS ─────4│GND Vout│5───┳───┤├────┐
└─────────────┘  0.05 uF └/─┐8Ω
│ │spkr
10 ohm ┌\─┘
Ultrasonic Distance Detection Sensors  
Ping #1 Ping #2 Ping #3 Ping #4 Ping #5 Ping #6
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ • • │ │ • • │ │ • • │ │ • • │ │ • • │ │ • • │
│GND +5V I/O│ │GND +5V I/O│ │GND +5V I/O│ │GND +5V I/O│ │GND +5V I/O│ │GND +5V I/O│
└─┬───┬───┬─┘ └─┬───┬───┬─┘ └─┬───┬───┬─┘ └─┬───┬───┬─┘ └─┬───┬───┬─┘ └─┬───┬───┬─┘
│ │  1kΩ │ │  1kΩ │ │  1kΩ │ │  1kΩ │ │  1kΩ │ │  1kΩ
 └┘ └ P0  └┘ └ P1  └┘ └ P3  └┘ └ P4  └┘ └ P5  └┘ └ P6
back right back center back left front left front center front right
Motor Control Circuitry
HB-25 Motor HB-25 Motor
Controller #1 Controller #2
1kΩ ┌────┬┬────┐ ┌────┬┬────┐
P7 ── │I/O VDD│ ──+5V HB-25 #1 ─ │I/O VDD│ ──+5V
│ ┌────┐ │ │ ┌────┐ │
+12V ─── │ │ ◀▶ │M1│ ──┐ +12V ─── │ │ ◀▶ │M1│ ──┐
│ └────┘ │ leftMotor │ └────┘ │rightMotor
GND ───4│GND M2│ ──┘ GND ───4│GND M2│ ──┘
└──────────┘ └──────────┘
jumper in jumper out
}
Post Edited (Ken Gracey (Parallax)) : 11/10/2009 11:31:56 PM GMT
730 x 543 - 129K
Comments
Truthfully, I haven't been able to get the Propeller IDE to talk to my SchmartBoard under Wine, but that's mainly because I haven't really tried and probably more because I fried my SchmartBoard somehow.
At any rate, I've been using gschem, a free and open-source program that's part of the gEDA package, to do all of my schematic layout work, though I'm not sure if it's available for Windows.
But instead of the ambiguous terms VCC, VSS, VDD, VEE, I'd suggest using the plain old expressions +5, +3.3, GND.
To a user of parts, it's much more important to know what voltage to connect or what pin to ground instead of what kind of technology is used internally, such as drain, source, collector, emitter, as those expressions were originally meant to express.
Using an ambiguous expression like those Vxx terms is just setting up an accident waiting to happen by not being as clear as possible for how to connect a part.
That is excellent motivation for me to do the same thing.· Its such nice builtin documentation for the myriad of small (meaning not a lot of interconnections) projects that I do with the Prop chip.
It'll be particularly useful when returning to an old project months or years later !
What you have drawn is really more like a block diagram. It is easier to understand than a true schematic.
Suggestions.
You have mixed Vss and GND signals and the ground symbol - you should be consistent.
ExpressSCH allows the use of the power and ground symbols, and you can create 12V, 5V, 3V3 power symbols so that you maintain consistency between your blocks.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
I agree with the other posters that you should not mix Vss, GND, and the ground symbol if they mean the same thing. By doing so, someone may assume that they're different grounds, e.g. a digital ground, an isolated digital ground, and a separate analog ground. It's okay, though to mix these when labeling the pins interior to the package outlines, since different manufacturers label their pins differently. But outside the package, in the schematic itself, you need to be consistent.
-Phil
Here's a speaker I created for a project a while back
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Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting
WBA-TH1M Sensirion SHT11 Module
Special Olympics Polar Bear Plunge, Mar 20, 2010
Looks great. Thanks for posting this! It inspires me to give it a try. I've played with it just a little, but don't really have the hang of how to use it yet.
@Andrew,
I like the speaker symbol you made too.
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Whit+
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney
Post Edited (Whit) : 11/11/2009 2:15:17 AM GMT
For the pings, I don't think you need to reproduce it 6 times. Just indicate that p is [noparse][[/noparse]0:5] for pings [noparse][[/noparse]1:6], or something similar. I think A table would be more reliable to somebody reproducing the circuit.
On the first row of chips, put a space between the C type character and the number for easier reading.
On the speech synthesis chip, it isn't clear if the resistor on p15 is a pot, a resistor between p and the chip/ground, between the chip and p/ground, or between ground and p/chip.
But what's really most important to all of you is that we leave this place early in the morning so the master can get back to Prop 2 design.
Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.
Echoing others, I suggest you invest time in a true EDA suite. I use KiCad for larger projects. KiCad's schematic capture can make really good looking schematics for publication, but it takes work few are willing to spend (and rightfully so for small projects). Plus KiCad has 3D board visualization with the Wings3D add-in. KiCad is cross-platform open-source under GPL. For smaller projects you can use a simple dimensional drawing application. It is a sad fact but true that for production documentation professional EDA users almost always port or re-do the schematic capture in a drawing optimized application. An old version of Visio will make nice schematics (yes I know, ugh... but I've got a lot of custom libraries). You can even make nice small board layouts for toner-transfer prototyping in Visio by saving the output in the likes of .jpg format and mirror the output in high resolution then re-importing the saved images in panelized format in Viso for printing. This mirrors text. My old version of Visio has no native mirrored text capability, but I'm pretty sure I can find a mirrored-text TTF out there somewhere; haven't looked yet. There are plenty of alternatives. Go to www.osalt.com and find open-source alternatives to the likes of Visio.
Remember when you make diagrams in the Propeller Tool, the file is no longer strict ASCII compatible (someone clarify the changes here perhaps). This makes distribution a bit difficult in my experience on some machines. An ASCII schematic capture (only) tool is available here free www.tech-chat.de/aacircuit.html. Some love it, some hate it. I'm in the middle; love it sometimes.
Regards, DR
James
I'm a little envious that you have the master to ask questions. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
The only problem I would have is I would have to keep asking him to translate his answers. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
The LM386... I'm not really sure it is a true op-amp, and audio power amps often also use the op-amp-like pins and
symbols. With that being said, I've noticed that although LM386 usually is shown with the "inverting input" grounded,
it seems to work just as well and be easier to route boards if you ground the non-inverting input which is right next
to ground anyway. Notice also that LM386 uses a capacitor (and sometimes a resistor) on it's "gain" pins, while op
amps are usually gain set by feedback on the inverting input. I compare that to a bias resistor between C and B on
a transistor which is a similar feedback. BTW I wonder how the inputs can be grounded without creating a class B
(half wave) amplifier, like an op amp probably would do. Signal ground is usually midpoint between power rails
in an op amp.
On the OP topic, schematics, when I first got a Propeller, a friend of mine had a very ambitious cybernetic project
idea involving a vehicle, and we imagined a self-diagnostic mode like on Star Trek NG where it would show logic pulses
and circuits and flashing red tiles where faults might be. Was just a daydream though.
RoboGeek
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BS2: $49
SX48 Protoboard: $10
Propeller Protoboard: Priceless
www.apple.com
www.parallax.com
www.goldmine-elec.com
www.expresspcb.com
www.jameco.com
I know it runs under Linux -- I installed it on Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 straight from the repository.
The official website is here: www.gpleda.org/index.html
A quick check to Wikipedia tells me that it's for "Unix-like" operating systems only.
EDIT: Apparently some of the software in the gEDA suite *can* run under Windows: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA#Microsoft_Windows
While Your block diagram looks nice, It lacks the schematic. Add the Propeller and the power supply pins, and then point to pin connections.
You already have nice software for the schematic layout, So why use something else? I also think it would be more impressive if the parallax software did all of the schematics
on a marketing point!
Please remember us old school basic programmers when developing the propeller2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
________$WMc%______________
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The Truth is out there············___$WMc%___···························· BoogerWoods, FL. USA
@PhiPi ... Thanks for the mention of DesignWorks Lite. I'd used the full version of it on a non-Intel Mac/iMac for over two decades.
At Wescon in 1984 there was a booth demo-ing a pcb layout package by Douglas Electronics on a 9" b/w Macintosh. They were selling it for $12 on a 3-1/2" diskette. I didn't even have a computer yet; but soon bought a Mac and began working with it. This was pcb layout only, no schematic capture, Gerber generator or any other application. Soon I was aware the Douglas had a full pcb CAD (around $3600). That worked well to create near 100 boards, including revisions. Later I was aware they had it for Windows also.
Now I have an Intel iMac, so cannot run that old CAD. And my non-Intel iMac G5 has lost the power supply/analog board again -- and I've yet to find anyone to repair it. Obsolescence!
I've downloaded DesignWorks Lite; sure looks like the old DW. Now to search for another pcb layout package to run on the newer iMac.
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Harley Shanko
For example, opening the spin file in the opening post in WordPad just shows gibberish.
ryman,
To enter the special characters, click Help/View character chart... From there you can click on the special characters in the chart to enter them in your code.
-Phil
Is it?
WordPad is not the point, it's only an example. But anyway why not? It's just as good an editor as the Prop Tool.
Just now I am on Windows and I want a quick look at that file. Click, boom, gibberish.
Go and look at the code box in the opening post. It's gibberish.
Now go and open the link to the Spin Example Schematic.spin in the opening post in a browser window. It's gibberish.
Now try opening that spin file in a dozen other editors on Windows, or Mac, or Linux. It's gibberish.
Basically using text and a funky font to draw diagrams with is a horrible non-standard, non-portable hack.
It was kind of OK in the days when one would use 8 bit ASCII chars and mono-spaced fonts in CP/M or DOS but really it's junk.
If you really want diagrams in your source how about putting SVG in the comments and using a proper tool to draw and render them?
Now, if we move on to useful software tools like source code repositories and diff and patch etc that diagrammatic gibberish is just noise to deal with.
I tend to agree about avoiding custom fonts, but there is a way to include this level of Schematic drawing into Source code, without needing special fonts.
Take a look at
http://www.tech-chat.de/download.html
AAcircuit works rather like a SCH editor with symbols, but they render in a std font and certainly well enough to do block diagram connections,
and simple circuit outlines.
I run into this problem quite frequently since I edit on Linux. Any time that somebody used special characters to make a diagram it is useless for me, and unreadable.
I feel that it is better to document the circuit with a natural language description, rather than character schematics. If the circuit is too complex, then a referenced image file or pdf would be good.
I think you could include them in a Word file just fine if you embedded the font with it:
http://www.howtogeek.com/106681/how-to-embed-fonts-in-a-microsoft-word-document/
I take it you mean an Open Document Format file
I just feel that source code files should be for source code and schematics should be in some common exchangeable schematics format that is useful by itself and be easily edited. We have free tools to do that now a days. No reason we can't have them all bundled up in a Spin project. Which of course you are maintaining a version control system like git, on github say, so there is no issue with the circuit and the code getting out of synch.
Anyway, there's nothing "funny" or "special" about the schematic characters. They're part of Unicode, along with Cyrillic and Mandarin. (Would you tell a billion Chinese perople to use Wordpad or that their writing looks like "gibberish?") The world has gotten a lot bigger since 7-bit ASCII. All the city folks are using Unicode these days. Give it a try. You, too, might like it!
-Phil