New Guy Needs Help Choosing The Right Stuff
SilentCoder
Posts: 3
Hey everyone, I am new to the forums and am trying to I am trying to decide whether to get a Basic Stamp micro controller or a Propeller micro controller. I have had some experience with Basic Stamp, but I am not sure which one will suite me better. I would like to be able to build fully functional robots, and also be able to create something like a fire panel. I am currently working on a fire panel with a Basic Stamp, but I do not know if a Propeller micro controller could also do that. Oh, and what exactly is Propeller coded in. I have seen it use Split, some sort of C, and then Propeller assembly; which one is best and what IDE can I use for it. Thanks! P.S I would like to buy which every one is most powerful, but can do BOTH of the things up there.
Comments
I'd suggest you get a Propeller Demo Board, and try the Propeller - you will be hooked!
Spin will be a bit of a learning curve, but it is much more powerful than PBASIC.
The demo board only has 8 available I/O pins, but it has a small breadboard.
www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/PropellerDevelopmentBoards/tabid/514/CategoryID/73/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/340/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName
Once you have gotten a bit familiar with it, I would recommend using the USB protoboard for your first applications. If you don't populate the VGA/KB/Mouse section, you will have access to 28 I/O's.
www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/PropellerDevelopmentBoards/tabid/514/CategoryID/73/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/509/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName
If you add the optional VGA/KB/Mouse connector kit, you will be left with only 12 truly available I/O lines - however you can add a standard VGA connector, and still have 16 I/O lines left (this is what I often do).
www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/PropellerAccessories/tabid/786/CategoryID/85/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/425/Default.aspx?SortField=ISBN%2cISBN
Later, there is of course Morpheus
Best Regards,
Bill
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www.mikronauts.com Please use mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com to contact me off-forum, my PM is almost totally full
Morpheusdual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory IO board kit $89.95, both kits $189.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 11/14/2009 7:51:35 PM GMT
The architecture is quite unique, 8 separate 32 bit RISC cores, with 496 words of combined instruction/data space, sharing 32KB of "main" memory, however using my LMM technique it is possible to execute code out of the 32KB with a speed hit (LMM=Large Memory Model)
Other programming tools:
Catalina & ImageCraft C compilers (both support LMM)
a couple of FORTH interpreters
FemtoBasic (Basic interpreter written in Spin)
PropBasic - by Terry Hitt - Basic subset, preview versions available
PropellerBasic - by me - no preview yet
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www.mikronauts.com Please use mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com to contact me off-forum, my PM is almost totally full
Morpheusdual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory IO board kit $89.95, both kits $189.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
But you·can·call me micro.
Want to·experiment with the SX or just put together a cool project?
SX Spinning light display·
Want cheap wholesale electronic parts?
Transistor parts wholesale
Don't mean to hijack the thread but just had a quick question.· Your LMM technique allows you to access memory above 32K.· That' great.· I have a prop proto board.· As you know, it has 64K, and I was wondering how I was going to access the other 32K.· Up to this point, I have been able to get by with 32K but now, a few of my programs are getting close to the limit.· Is your LMM technique in the OBX?·· I looked but could not find it.· Can I use it with spin?· By the way, I have been looking at the boards you sell.· I might be in the market next year.· Thanks and have a good one.· Bob
LMM is for running pasm programs from hub ram, not eeprom - what you want is the i2c routines in obex, they will let you access the upper 32KB of the protoboard eeprom for storage, but you can't run code directly from it.
You could use the "spin loader", have a main spin program that uses say 16KB, then load spin objects up to 16KB to run them - this works best if you program can be broken up into chunks, ie liked different levels in a game.
Best Regards,
Bill
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.mikronauts.com Please use mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com to contact me off-forum, my PM is almost totally full
Morpheusdual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory IO board kit $89.95, both kits $189.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
Thanks for the info!!! Wanted to respond earlier, but MAN, a working weekend and cleaning up after the big storm·last weekend kinda took all my "fun" time.· Anyway, I have some time tonight to browse the OBX for some I2C objects so I can access that 32K EEPROM space.· Yea, I was just going to use it to store data anyway.· But I am very interested in Morpheus, but not until I have more knowledge of PASM and this memory stuff down.· There's more to the prop than I originally thought.· But I will continue to plug away in my spare time.· I'm thankful for all of you more knowledgeable types, guiding us less knowledgeable types.· It certainly makes the learning curve shorter.· THANKS.
Bob