@ken - I agree, arduino has channel issues. I'm not making the case for adding distributors, but making sure there's enough opportunity for 3rd parties to evangelize the Propeller. Simply:
The arduino went from nothing to 100,000 units annually (in 5 years) by creating opportunities for 3rd parties. They did that by NOT addressing every market need, particularly when the market was small.
Seeing a drawer full of Parallax sensors at Radio Shack a couple weeks ago was a huge surprise to me. I had no idea that Parallax had expanded into my neighborhood! Seemed like an outstanding development. I wish Parallax and R/S great success with this.
Another outstanding development is the board Ken just mentioned. Every time I finish another hand-wired propeller board for a controller application at home, I find myself wishing the board could be smaller than it is. I wish I could make a Propeller board the size and shape of a Javelin board. But even with burying the EEPROM, crystal, and capacitors inside the Propeller socket, I've still got stuff sticking out all over. A properly designed SMD board is the only way to go.
Your board with micro sd is great and people here should
build projects using it and work up articles for publication.
Articles are a great way to get people salivating over our beloved
propeller.
Always manage to use the word arduino someplace in
anything you publish so people using search engines
to find arduino projects will perhaps see yours. Lots of
creative ways to shoehorn in the word arduino.
Do you think you could design an arduino board that also
had a sm prop on it as a booster for the AVR? You could easily get it onto
sites like hack a day. People would be excited just by the props
video hardware.
I'd try it myself but I have no experience designing boards
and having them produced. You seem to have it well in hand.
Maybe someday soon I could pick your brain and get some help
designing a board of my own... I'm scared I will make some
stupid mistake and end up with a bunch of useless boards.
I would add that social component really means business relationships when dealing with commercial entities. For buzz, it's just social. Relationship cultivation and management is everything these days, when it comes to business development and partners. Those business relationships start with a nice social component, but solidify and grow with a common value relationship as well. One big key is understanding where that common ground is!
You start by being able to talk to one another. That's social, and some casual product / process value exchange that's mutual. From there, some analysis is needed, followed by presentations and planning to best "leverage" that relationship. Not a good technical use of the word leverage, but it's so darn common, I'm putting it there anyway. Just know I know that, and call it good [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Eventually, every industry gets commoditized to some extent, and programmable microcontroller modules are no exception. As far as I can tell, the only thing the Arduino is on the leading edge of is entropy. It's like the inevitable waste heat that leaks from any engine of innovation and seeps into the lower reaches of an industry all too eager to embrace commodities over customer service. It has its place, but it's no more a threat to Parallax than the cheapest Joy Luck import cellphone is to Apple's iPhone market. I daresay that any added awareness and buzz it might create helps to float all boats in the industry, including Parallax's. And when customers -- especially those in education -- understand the advantages of working with a vertically-integrated, customer-oriented company like Parallax, with its proven record of support, the hidden cost of choosing a commodity over a Parallax product becomes abundantly clear.
Many years ago, I helped found a fishing tackle company that's still in business today selling saltwater tackle. Our stuff was never the cheapest in the market or most efficiently produced, but it was always in high demand because it was of the best quality, and because we built strong relationships with our dealers. Even now, the company's products command a premium price. But in the face of wholesale commoditization and cheap knock-offs, it still manages to thrive in the niche we originally carved out for it.
The lesson is this: commodities come and go, but quality and service will never fail you.
Nick McClick said...
The reason why the Arduino is dominating educational and hobbyist markets and gets tons of press coverage is pretty easy to illustrate, and it doesn't have anything to do with ADC's, C, or MHz;
Instead of a webshop, you find a list of dozens of companies in as many countries. Arduino doesn't compete with 3rd parties - they pass up a sales opportunity in order to push business their way. Right now, I'll wager that 90% of all Propeller stuff is sold by Parallax. Unless that changes, there really won't be a financial incentive for 3rd parties to get behind the Prop like they have supported the Arduino.
I'm guessing that arduino.cc is not owned by Amtel.
Let's compare apples to apples here.. An Arduino board consists of an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller.
Amtel, is fundamentally in the same business as Parallax and reaps the benefit of all of the arduino hoopla.
Unless I'm wrong they are not a 503c organization, and seek to bring a profit to the their holders. Just like Parallax.
From my perspective, there are more "Propeller" products sold by 3rd parties than by Parallax itself.
I think the popularity is largely because of the multi-platform operating system, small size, low cost, open-source feeling and simple C subset. And the social marketing you mentioned, too.
Ken,
At college I worked in group projects and the students use to yell at me because I would talk with my ideas because I wanted to get the best grade and they just wanted to finish.· It also carries over into other areas of life.· I use to subscribe to Compute and Compute's Gazette and they kept running remedial articles on the Commodore 64 which bothered me because if you are a long time subscriber then you don't need to hear the basics over and over again.
I think you could sell a lot more units if your products took a beginner approach and maybe you can market the Prop 1 for beginners and Prop 1 and 2 for educators.
If you are a busy parent and buy the Demo board, you don't have beginner·instructions because it is assumed that you have to do "What is a Microcontroller" so that is where it leaves out those who are more interested in having the prop as a microcomputer instead of just a controller.· The amount of reading: 30 pages for how to use the software for programming the prop and then the manuals are long.· The instructions for the arduino are a few pages and if you have children they aren't going to be interested in waiting while you try to read the instructions and if you go to work exhausted and come home from work exausted, about 30 pages of reading and I'm tired.
What you need is a getting started guide.· A minimalistic instructions where you learn by doing and you get someone up and running within minutes.· Once they know the basics then they can start learning.· Then they could use some basic schematics and different combinations of materials that work with projects.· If you are competing against the big game on tv then having all of this involvement is competing for people's time; I have to read a schematic, I have to figure out all of the symbols, I have to order different parts and then my free time is over.
I bought a Pikit2 because I found another small forum with tutorials and there is less going on and I found another microcontroller beginner kit that runs off of the USB port and can run off of a watch battery so it isn't like people aren't interested in microcontrollers.· It is like learning.· You go to kindergarden and hopefully by then they help the kids write the alphabet and then they learn reading in first grade even though a lot of kids can read by then.· I've taken English classes where the reading was fifty pages a night and you had to remember what you read on top of your other coursework.· We're not in college anymore.· And trying to remember the answer I got was on page 452 of the posts in the general forum means that the help isn't being organized or tabbed.
I've been in college classes where adults were asking me in helping them program.
Some of the companies you list aren't active in evangelizing the prop - Attopilot & Briel, for example, aren't really out there teaching people how to use a Prop, trying to get microcontroller hobbyists involved. But Brilldea, Propmods, GG, mikronauts, and ucontroller.com are the types companies I consider to be promoters of the platform.
Parallax has 40% of the market via direct sales, and maybe another 40% via distributors. The remaining part of the market is too small to support any 3rd parties - we do it because we love the Prop, but it's not financially viable. Until it is, Parallax will be the only company that can afford to really evangelize the Propeller, and a lone voice in a crowded market.
"As far as I can tell, the only thing the Arduino is on the leading edge of is entropy. It's like the inevitable waste heat that leaks from any engine of innovation and seeps into the lower reaches of an industry all too eager to embrace commodities over customer service. It has its place, but it's no more a threat to Parallax than the cheapest Joy Luck import cellphone is to Apple's iPhone market."
Phil, I'm still marveling at your masterful use of literary devices! If data loggers don't pan out (ref. Tim Hawkins - Full Range of Motion) you will always have a future as an author of classic literature. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
@Chuckz: I agree entirely with your statements and they're written into our internal plans. We're short on easy, rewarding getting-started material for the Propeller like we have for the BASIC Stamp in What's a Microcontroller. I've learned our products from our early educational tutorials, too.
@K2 - are you familiar with the Propmod 1x1? It might be a good fit for you and as PropModules sees more sales from their propeller stuff, I bet they'll evangelize the propeller even more.
I think Ken hit the point here that the Curriculum that Parallax has put together is probably more important than the technical specs of the microcontroller that is being used. They series of books on microcontrollers, signals, ADC, IR, robots, etc is really what an educator needs to do for education beyond the very basic uses of the microcontroller. It's amazing that they also have the PDFs for free.
I'm wondering how the prop-2 will do with the built in development environment???? I think this will have major implications A SX-proto board like version of that or even prop-1 at a reasonable cost can go a long way in the education market if it is backed by a new generation of this type of curriculum. (Perhaps rewrites of existing books??)
I've looked at Arduino and don't find the materials for it going that deep, but it still has a fairly robust community. Also, with the Arduino, don't discount the cultural phenomena that it is more 'eurocentric' as a factor in its adoption in Europe.
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Tom Talbot
New Market, MD, USA
I don't get what all the Arduino fuss is about. I would say the PDF's for the basic stamp are what convinced me to buy a Scribbler. The only thing I don't like about the basic stamp is the small amount of variable space.
The propeller looks interesting and really powerful, but the barrier to entry seems pretty high. It's a change of language and architecture, and as a 3.3 volt chip the interfacing to 5 volt chips looks a little complicated.
Martin_H said...
I don't get what all the Arduino fuss is about. I would say the PDF's for the basic stamp are what convinced me to buy a Scribbler. The only thing I don't like about the basic stamp is the small amount of variable space.
The propeller looks interesting and really powerful, but the barrier to entry seems pretty high. It's a change of language and architecture, and as a 3.3 volt chip the interfacing to 5 volt chips looks a little complicated.
The downside of the Arduino is it is slow: about 20 MHZ.· There are some POV displays that the Arduino is not fast enough to run and I'm sure some of the experts can think of things that the Arduino is not fast enough to run.
(1) Some people have a hard enough time programming.· I've had a lot of people beg me to help them in college.· (2) The added problem is that electronics is more more thing to learn on top of something that can be difficult when you are learning two new things you don't understand or fully understand.
When you add headers, it becomes difficult for someone to mess the wiring up although I'm sure it can be done.· Headers almost take an electronics project and reduces it mentally to where the IQ depends on whether you can plug something in or not.· It pretty much takes away a lot of the learning curve and reduces a project to less learning because a lot is already done for the user.· In some ways it gives the hobbyist a false assurance because just because something is made easy doesn't mean it is and when they go to a microcontroller that is less forgiving, they will learn the hard way.· There is less individualism because products are custom shields and there·are less individual wiring schemes.· So instead of saying,"I made it myself" and having a sense of making your own happiness you have to settle with saying,"they made it" and "I just put two or three pieces together".· It doesn't add to a person's significance and allowing them to say,"I really learned something" or "I really understand this."· In a way it is a crutch or a medievel learning tool for beginners.
Some things are really hard and it looks easy because someone else is doing it for you.· You almost don't appreciate the complexity or all the work involved and while the user may gain a foothold in understanding, I think that some intellectual effort will be lost and the individual will have to learn it·for the first time·on a different controller.
Chuckz, most of Parallax's development boards have fixed configurations & breadboards to make it easy to "plug something in". Including the current Propeller dev boards.
Does this make the people that use these boards as intellectually inferior as the people that use Arduinos? It takes the same amount of skill to wire up a circuit with an Arduino as it does on a Board of Education as it does on a Propeller Demo board. It takes the same amount of aptitude to program an Arduino, BS2, or Propeller.
So why do people feel the need to slam the Arduino because it's not a Propeller? The Propeller, as cool as it may be, is just another microcontroller. That's it. Acting like a bunch of "1337 Propeller users" probably turns more people away from the chip than anything else. Seriously. I don't see this kind of stuff in any of the Parallax forums, but it seems that with the Propeller, people lose all measure of objectivity. And to be fair, I've never seen this from the Parallax staff, but man, some of the others...
It's not everybody. There _are_ people that post here that you could actually have an objective conversation with about various microcontrollers. But they get jumped on if they mention anything about some other chip. Displaying this kind of attitude really isn't doing anything to benefit anybody.
@Phil, well said. There is the Dell / Microsoft way, and the Apple way, and it's worth nothing just who has what in the bank, vs their operating costs and longer term liabilities.
@Kevin, also well said. All of this stuff is cool. Talking down others isn't longer term productive at all. The key is talking up both the growth in interest in micros, which is great for everybody, and talking up tech we find favorable, for whatever reason.
I also think that Chuckz is missing the point about the Arduino. It was originally designed for people like art and design students who had no knowledge of electronics, so that they could add motors, LEDs, etc. to their creations, and that is still a major reason why it is so popular. Prototyping shields are available for users who want to create their own add-ons, or people just hook them up to solderless breadboards, in the same way that Propeller users add external hardware.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Kevin Wood said...
Chuckz, most of Parallax's development boards have fixed configurations & breadboards to make it easy to "plug something in". Including the current Propeller dev boards.
Does this make the people that use these boards as intellectually inferior as the people that use Arduinos? It takes the same amount of skill to wire up a circuit with an Arduino as it does on a Board of Education as it does on a Propeller Demo board. It takes the same amount of aptitude to program an Arduino, BS2, or Propeller.
So why do people feel the need to slam the Arduino because it's not a Propeller? The Propeller, as cool as it may be, is just another microcontroller. That's it. Acting like a bunch of "1337 Propeller users" probably turns more people away from the chip than anything else. Seriously. I don't see this kind of stuff in any of the Parallax forums, but it seems that with the Propeller, people lose all measure of objectivity. And to be fair, I've never seen this from the Parallax staff, but man, some of the others...
It's not everybody. There _are_ people that post here that you could actually have an objective conversation with about various microcontrollers. But they get jumped on if they mention anything about some other chip. Displaying this kind of attitude really isn't doing anything to benefit anybody.
I'm actually trying to have an objective conversation about microcontroller chips because·I'm not loyal to one chip but I look more favorably towards those who·think for themselves by doing things for themselves and·if I was loyal to one chip then I wouldn't have two different Microchip processors in my house.· I'm looking at a starter kit that Texas Instruments sells and their processor can run on a watch battery for months which the Arduino can't.· I've actually considered the Arduino.· I'm also looking at an Xmos processor that does video.· So if it appears that I favor the Prop, it isn't yet my processor of choice but Prop II might change that.
I use to type programs in on the Commodore 64 and my stepmother use to say that all I was doing was pushing buttons and in a lot of ways she was right.· Then one day Commodore went bankrupt.· Can I go from there to breadboarding a 6502 from scratch?· Suppose Atmel goes bankrupt and no one produces the Arduino anymore.· Can Arduino users breadboard another chip?· Some probably can and some probably can't.· I woke up one day and realized that EMSCOM went bankrupt and sold Commodore·to Gateway and·that Gateway wasn't going to do anything with Amiga technology and few people are building the computer that I want to use.· So if I want a computer that I want then I basically have to build it myself or get some help from other individuals.· If I am just in a consumer mindset then all I'm going to have is a bunch of products but if I build something then I did it myself.· My English professor said we wouldn't understand it back then but he said that I would understand this some day and he quoted a writer who said he didn't want birthday or Christmas gifts unless people made it themselves.· I would appreciate your project more·if you made it yourself.· So if you program an Arduino can you go from that to programming an Intel Atom processor or did you just learn to connect connectors?·
I remember the days of programming and now when you go to a computer club, they stopped doing all of that.· Instead of being able to download a graphic that your neighbor drew, it is all vanilla programming where what you get out of the box is it; it is all you get.· I want to program in multicolor and not one size fits all.· It is Communism by Microsoft to let them tell you what you want and every program has access to the system registry and control the user like it is their computer when they didn't pay for it.· It is also the cause of many viruses because you don't necessarily control the system; other people do!· There weren't really any viruses on the Commodore 64 because you couldn't change ROM.
When I ask other people who work at a university if all microcontrollers basically do the same thing, a bunch of people at this university say they all basically do the same thing.· And I know that they basically have input and output and some of them do some of the same things a little bit different.· It is not true because some have different memory sizes.· They all have different speeds, costs, requirements, and abilities.
Audino's popularity IMO, is due to the popularity of Atmel chips. Atmel and Microchip both make micro controllers that require minimal costs and parts to program and have a myriad of free tools. When i first started with micros I used pics because i could make a programmer that ran off the serial port with a few resistors and diodes. It's the same with Atmel processors. That popularity carries on today with Audino.
Parallax has nothing to worry about. You sell a very well designed product that fills the niche between people who wire wrap and ludites.
As a person who has programed a bunch of different micros( Basic stamp, Picaxe, Propellor, Arduino) i must say that it was the basic stamp that started it all. I could not have learned C++ as my first programming language, it would have been far to difficult. The Arduino is winning the war because you are not somebody, until you can program in C. Think of all the computers/ software around the world. They are not programmed in BASIC, they are programmed in C or C++. A lot of colleges don't even start people off programming in Basic, but rather in C++. Where the stamp has an advantage is in its simplicity and huge data base of knowledge, Plus its acceptance as a great educational tool. The Basic stamp does have its enemies. The Picaxe is Cheaper, smaller, more flexiable, It has larger program space, It has built in i2c ability, Plus some models are faster. And now on the other side. The Arduino has some sort of a apeal to it. Besides the obvious programming difference, there is just something about it that people love. I don't really get why people like it so much. And then there is the Propeller, which is a complete wildcard. I love the prop. It is so powerful and once you know how to use it, really simple. Besides cutting the price of the baisc stamp, I think Parallax would do good to start leaning on the Propeller more. It is a truely unique device. Just my two cents.
You know, you can build a Propeller programmer out of a few transistors and resistors, an if you want a small compact Propeller package, you can get one of these awesome devices. I have one and I use it ALL the time. So convenient and it has SD built in.
I have been reading this post for a while and I am going to add my 3 cents too
I·REALLY HOPE that someone ·or Parallax would write a·>>>> What Is A Micro-Controller for the Propeller<<<<<<·which is very badly need this is what has keep me from really getting into learning how to wite ·Spin Code for my self ·I know that there alot of spin object wrtten in Spin Code But what Is need is how the What Is A Microcontroller ·How it is set up·here is an example
··> DO >>> ··| HIGH 14 ··| PAUSE 250 ··| LOW 14 ··| PAUSE 250 ··^ LOOP ·
How LedOnOff.bs2 Works The command DEBUG "The LED connected to Pin 14 is blinking!" makes this
statement appear in the Debug Terminal. The command HIGH 14 causes the BASIC
Stamp to internally connect I/O pin P14 to Vdd. This turns the LED on.
The command PAUSE 500 causes the BASIC Stamp to do nothing for ½ a second while
the LED stays on. The number 500 tells the PAUSE command to wait for 500/1000 of a
second. The number that follows PAUSE is called an argument. If you look up PAUSE in
the BASIC Stamp Manual, you will discover that it calls this number the Duration argument. The name duration was chosen for this argument to show that the PAUSE
command pauses for a certain ‘duration’ of time, in milliseconds.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ·Now wanting to learn Spin·Thanks for any··that you may have and all of your time finding them
· · · · Sam
Post Edited (sam_sam_sam) : 4/23/2010 10:22:56 PM GMT
Let me say first that I'm not a Propeller user, in fact I don't even really know anything about the Propeller platform. I stumbled across this thread because of my interest in the use of Arduino in education. I thought I'd add in my $.02.
I teach high school electronics (among other things) at a private school in Michigan. We have no programing classes at our school, so I wanted to incorporate microcontrollers when I started 10 years ago. Personally I had no experience with microcontrollers before starting my teaching career, so I looked at the basic stamp. At the time the cost stopped me from adopting it. I get $35/student to spend on materials. Based on my experience at that point with students and the rate at which they literally burned through electrical components I didn't think I'd be able to afford this even if I could have gotten the start-up funds.
A couple years ago I did a pilot of Arduino vs. Picaxe in my classroom. I chose these two platforms due to the low cost. I involved my students in the process of charting the future of the course and by the end of the semester it was a nearly unanimous decision to go with Arduino. Due in part because of the basis on C rather than Basic. Remember, this is the first experience in programming for at least 95% of my students and they were not frightened off by programming in C.
In my class I use the Bare Bones Board sold by Modern Device http://www.moderndevice.com/ After shipping I think I pay around $12-13 per board (up from $11 when I started using it) plus a $20 FTDI cable. If a student fries the chip along the way, it only costs me $6 to replace it. At the end of the course students build a final project that incorporates their Arduino and they get to keep the board, but to keep my costs down I have to keep the cable (or sell it to them at cost).
In the end the deciding factors were not about the most powerful board with the most functions or the focus of the board on an educational market. It was mostly about price for a board/system that is "good enough". That said, many other teachers I've talked with love the Parallax products because of all the support and the high quality educational materials produced by Parallax (re: Getting Started with Microcontrollers).
I'm not trying to win people over to "my side" with this post and I probably won't be convinced to change my course. It just seemed that people might be interested one data point for Arduino's popularity.
Even when one is not under tight fiduciary constraint, it is still human nature to shop around. Finding the most bang for the buck seems to be our nature...or at least it is my nature.
Buying a bare PCB and populating only the necessary components is one of the best ways of getting into the Propeller inexpensively, IMHO. Several fine folks on this forum have made available bare PCBs for very little money. Populating only the Propeller, EEPROM, and voltage regulator, along with a few capacitors will enable a student to gain a vast amount of programming experience and accomplish all sorts of things, yet still have a hardware upgrade path to much more.
Board - $6, Propeller - $8, EEPROM - $1.50, voltage regulator - $1.00. These prices are before applying any kind of volume discount.
Bill Henning, I'm sure, could work out a great deal on a couple dozen serial prop plug kits.
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The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Comments
Given that page dates back to 2006, it's no wonder they've got traction.
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You only ever need two tools in life. If it moves and it shouldn't use Duct Tape. If it does not move and it should use WD40.
@ken - I agree, arduino has channel issues. I'm not making the case for adding distributors, but making sure there's enough opportunity for 3rd parties to evangelize the Propeller. Simply:
The arduino went from nothing to 100,000 units annually (in 5 years) by creating opportunities for 3rd parties. They did that by NOT addressing every market need, particularly when the market was small.
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Another outstanding development is the board Ken just mentioned. Every time I finish another hand-wired propeller board for a controller application at home, I find myself wishing the board could be smaller than it is. I wish I could make a Propeller board the size and shape of a Javelin board. But even with burying the EEPROM, crystal, and capacitors inside the Propeller socket, I've still got stuff sticking out all over. A properly designed SMD board is the only way to go.
Your board with micro sd is great and people here should
build projects using it and work up articles for publication.
Articles are a great way to get people salivating over our beloved
propeller.
Always manage to use the word arduino someplace in
anything you publish so people using search engines
to find arduino projects will perhaps see yours. Lots of
creative ways to shoehorn in the word arduino.
Do you think you could design an arduino board that also
had a sm prop on it as a booster for the AVR? You could easily get it onto
sites like hack a day. People would be excited just by the props
video hardware.
I'd try it myself but I have no experience designing boards
and having them produced. You seem to have it well in hand.
Maybe someday soon I could pick your brain and get some help
designing a board of my own... I'm scared I will make some
stupid mistake and end up with a bunch of useless boards.
Don't worry. That just never, ever happens!
I would add that social component really means business relationships when dealing with commercial entities. For buzz, it's just social. Relationship cultivation and management is everything these days, when it comes to business development and partners. Those business relationships start with a nice social component, but solidify and grow with a common value relationship as well. One big key is understanding where that common ground is!
You start by being able to talk to one another. That's social, and some casual product / process value exchange that's mutual. From there, some analysis is needed, followed by presentations and planning to best "leverage" that relationship. Not a good technical use of the word leverage, but it's so darn common, I'm putting it there anyway. Just know I know that, and call it good [noparse]:)[/noparse]
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Safety Tip: Life is as good as YOU think it is!
Many years ago, I helped found a fishing tackle company that's still in business today selling saltwater tackle. Our stuff was never the cheapest in the market or most efficiently produced, but it was always in high demand because it was of the best quality, and because we built strong relationships with our dealers. Even now, the company's products command a premium price. But in the face of wholesale commoditization and cheap knock-offs, it still manages to thrive in the niche we originally carved out for it.
The lesson is this: commodities come and go, but quality and service will never fail you.
-Phil
I'm guessing that arduino.cc is not owned by Amtel.
Let's compare apples to apples here.. An Arduino board consists of an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller.
Amtel, is fundamentally in the same business as Parallax and reaps the benefit of all of the arduino hoopla.
Unless I'm wrong they are not a 503c organization, and seek to bring a profit to the their holders. Just like Parallax.
From my perspective, there are more "Propeller" products sold by 3rd parties than by Parallax itself.
Let's take a look.. I'll start with the easy one.
Gadgetgangter.com
uController.com
EFX-TEK
Schmart
XGameStation.com
ElMicro.com
Mikronauts
Briel Computers
vgaok.com
Brilldea.com
Attopilot
propmodule.com
openstomp.com
Machine Intelligence?
OBC
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Visit the: PROPELLERPOWERED SIG forum kindly hosted by Savage Circuits.
At college I worked in group projects and the students use to yell at me because I would talk with my ideas because I wanted to get the best grade and they just wanted to finish.· It also carries over into other areas of life.· I use to subscribe to Compute and Compute's Gazette and they kept running remedial articles on the Commodore 64 which bothered me because if you are a long time subscriber then you don't need to hear the basics over and over again.
I think you could sell a lot more units if your products took a beginner approach and maybe you can market the Prop 1 for beginners and Prop 1 and 2 for educators.
If you are a busy parent and buy the Demo board, you don't have beginner·instructions because it is assumed that you have to do "What is a Microcontroller" so that is where it leaves out those who are more interested in having the prop as a microcomputer instead of just a controller.· The amount of reading: 30 pages for how to use the software for programming the prop and then the manuals are long.· The instructions for the arduino are a few pages and if you have children they aren't going to be interested in waiting while you try to read the instructions and if you go to work exhausted and come home from work exausted, about 30 pages of reading and I'm tired.
What you need is a getting started guide.· A minimalistic instructions where you learn by doing and you get someone up and running within minutes.· Once they know the basics then they can start learning.· Then they could use some basic schematics and different combinations of materials that work with projects.· If you are competing against the big game on tv then having all of this involvement is competing for people's time; I have to read a schematic, I have to figure out all of the symbols, I have to order different parts and then my free time is over.
I bought a Pikit2 because I found another small forum with tutorials and there is less going on and I found another microcontroller beginner kit that runs off of the USB port and can run off of a watch battery so it isn't like people aren't interested in microcontrollers.· It is like learning.· You go to kindergarden and hopefully by then they help the kids write the alphabet and then they learn reading in first grade even though a lot of kids can read by then.· I've taken English classes where the reading was fifty pages a night and you had to remember what you read on top of your other coursework.· We're not in college anymore.· And trying to remember the answer I got was on page 452 of the posts in the general forum means that the help isn't being organized or tabbed.
I've been in college classes where adults were asking me in helping them program.
Chuck
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Some of the companies you list aren't active in evangelizing the prop - Attopilot & Briel, for example, aren't really out there teaching people how to use a Prop, trying to get microcontroller hobbyists involved. But Brilldea, Propmods, GG, mikronauts, and ucontroller.com are the types companies I consider to be promoters of the platform.
Parallax has 40% of the market via direct sales, and maybe another 40% via distributors. The remaining part of the market is too small to support any 3rd parties - we do it because we love the Prop, but it's not financially viable. Until it is, Parallax will be the only company that can afford to really evangelize the Propeller, and a lone voice in a crowded market.
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Phil, I'm still marveling at your masterful use of literary devices! If data loggers don't pan out (ref. Tim Hawkins - Full Range of Motion) you will always have a future as an author of classic literature. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=workshops
At the recent Maker Faire in Newcastle, there must have been a dozen or more Arduino-based projects.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
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Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.
Follow me at http://twitter.com/ParallaxKen for some insider news.
@K2 - are you familiar with the Propmod 1x1? It might be a good fit for you and as PropModules sees more sales from their propeller stuff, I bet they'll evangelize the propeller even more.
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I'm wondering how the prop-2 will do with the built in development environment???? I think this will have major implications A SX-proto board like version of that or even prop-1 at a reasonable cost can go a long way in the education market if it is backed by a new generation of this type of curriculum. (Perhaps rewrites of existing books??)
I've looked at Arduino and don't find the materials for it going that deep, but it still has a fairly robust community. Also, with the Arduino, don't discount the cultural phenomena that it is more 'eurocentric' as a factor in its adoption in Europe.
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Tom Talbot
New Market, MD, USA
The propeller looks interesting and really powerful, but the barrier to entry seems pretty high. It's a change of language and architecture, and as a 3.3 volt chip the interfacing to 5 volt chips looks a little complicated.
(1) Some people have a hard enough time programming.· I've had a lot of people beg me to help them in college.· (2) The added problem is that electronics is more more thing to learn on top of something that can be difficult when you are learning two new things you don't understand or fully understand.
When you add headers, it becomes difficult for someone to mess the wiring up although I'm sure it can be done.· Headers almost take an electronics project and reduces it mentally to where the IQ depends on whether you can plug something in or not.· It pretty much takes away a lot of the learning curve and reduces a project to less learning because a lot is already done for the user.· In some ways it gives the hobbyist a false assurance because just because something is made easy doesn't mean it is and when they go to a microcontroller that is less forgiving, they will learn the hard way.· There is less individualism because products are custom shields and there·are less individual wiring schemes.· So instead of saying,"I made it myself" and having a sense of making your own happiness you have to settle with saying,"they made it" and "I just put two or three pieces together".· It doesn't add to a person's significance and allowing them to say,"I really learned something" or "I really understand this."· In a way it is a crutch or a medievel learning tool for beginners.
Some things are really hard and it looks easy because someone else is doing it for you.· You almost don't appreciate the complexity or all the work involved and while the user may gain a foothold in understanding, I think that some intellectual effort will be lost and the individual will have to learn it·for the first time·on a different controller.
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Does this make the people that use these boards as intellectually inferior as the people that use Arduinos? It takes the same amount of skill to wire up a circuit with an Arduino as it does on a Board of Education as it does on a Propeller Demo board. It takes the same amount of aptitude to program an Arduino, BS2, or Propeller.
So why do people feel the need to slam the Arduino because it's not a Propeller? The Propeller, as cool as it may be, is just another microcontroller. That's it. Acting like a bunch of "1337 Propeller users" probably turns more people away from the chip than anything else. Seriously. I don't see this kind of stuff in any of the Parallax forums, but it seems that with the Propeller, people lose all measure of objectivity. And to be fair, I've never seen this from the Parallax staff, but man, some of the others...
It's not everybody. There _are_ people that post here that you could actually have an objective conversation with about various microcontrollers. But they get jumped on if they mention anything about some other chip. Displaying this kind of attitude really isn't doing anything to benefit anybody.
@Kevin, also well said. All of this stuff is cool. Talking down others isn't longer term productive at all. The key is talking up both the growth in interest in micros, which is great for everybody, and talking up tech we find favorable, for whatever reason.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
I use to type programs in on the Commodore 64 and my stepmother use to say that all I was doing was pushing buttons and in a lot of ways she was right.· Then one day Commodore went bankrupt.· Can I go from there to breadboarding a 6502 from scratch?· Suppose Atmel goes bankrupt and no one produces the Arduino anymore.· Can Arduino users breadboard another chip?· Some probably can and some probably can't.· I woke up one day and realized that EMSCOM went bankrupt and sold Commodore·to Gateway and·that Gateway wasn't going to do anything with Amiga technology and few people are building the computer that I want to use.· So if I want a computer that I want then I basically have to build it myself or get some help from other individuals.· If I am just in a consumer mindset then all I'm going to have is a bunch of products but if I build something then I did it myself.· My English professor said we wouldn't understand it back then but he said that I would understand this some day and he quoted a writer who said he didn't want birthday or Christmas gifts unless people made it themselves.· I would appreciate your project more·if you made it yourself.· So if you program an Arduino can you go from that to programming an Intel Atom processor or did you just learn to connect connectors?·
I remember the days of programming and now when you go to a computer club, they stopped doing all of that.· Instead of being able to download a graphic that your neighbor drew, it is all vanilla programming where what you get out of the box is it; it is all you get.· I want to program in multicolor and not one size fits all.· It is Communism by Microsoft to let them tell you what you want and every program has access to the system registry and control the user like it is their computer when they didn't pay for it.· It is also the cause of many viruses because you don't necessarily control the system; other people do!· There weren't really any viruses on the Commodore 64 because you couldn't change ROM.
When I ask other people who work at a university if all microcontrollers basically do the same thing, a bunch of people at this university say they all basically do the same thing.· And I know that they basically have input and output and some of them do some of the same things a little bit different.· It is not true because some have different memory sizes.· They all have different speeds, costs, requirements, and abilities.
Parallax has nothing to worry about. You sell a very well designed product that fills the niche between people who wire wrap and ludites.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
I'm not worried about Parallax losing buissness.
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Check out my new website!!
Use the Propeller icon!!
Follow me on Twitter! Search "Microcontrolled"
I·REALLY HOPE that someone ·or Parallax would write a·>>>> What Is A Micro-Controller for the Propeller<<<<<<·which is very badly need this is what has keep me from really getting into learning how to wite ·Spin Code for my self
·I know that there alot of spin object wrtten in Spin Code But what Is need is how the What Is A Microcontroller
·How it is set up·here is an example
··> DO >>>
··| HIGH 14
··| PAUSE 250
··| LOW 14
··| PAUSE 250
··^ LOOP
·
How LedOnOff.bs2 Works
The command DEBUG "The LED connected to Pin 14 is blinking!" makes this
statement appear in the Debug Terminal. The command HIGH 14 causes the BASIC
Stamp to internally connect I/O pin P14 to Vdd. This turns the LED on.
The command PAUSE 500 causes the BASIC Stamp to do nothing for ½ a second while
the LED stays on. The number 500 tells the PAUSE command to wait for 500/1000 of a
second. The number that follows PAUSE is called an argument. If you look up PAUSE in
the BASIC Stamp Manual, you will discover that it calls this number the Duration
argument. The name duration was chosen for this argument to show that the PAUSE
command pauses for a certain ‘duration’ of time, in milliseconds.
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·Now wanting to learn Spin· Thanks for any·
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Sam
Post Edited (sam_sam_sam) : 4/23/2010 10:22:56 PM GMT
Yes I know what·you are going to point out is·if you have not written any type of micro-controller code before then yes I agree that maybe you should
start with What is a Micro-controller
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·Now wanting to learn Spin· Thanks for any·
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Sam
I teach high school electronics (among other things) at a private school in Michigan. We have no programing classes at our school, so I wanted to incorporate microcontrollers when I started 10 years ago. Personally I had no experience with microcontrollers before starting my teaching career, so I looked at the basic stamp. At the time the cost stopped me from adopting it. I get $35/student to spend on materials. Based on my experience at that point with students and the rate at which they literally burned through electrical components I didn't think I'd be able to afford this even if I could have gotten the start-up funds.
A couple years ago I did a pilot of Arduino vs. Picaxe in my classroom. I chose these two platforms due to the low cost. I involved my students in the process of charting the future of the course and by the end of the semester it was a nearly unanimous decision to go with Arduino. Due in part because of the basis on C rather than Basic. Remember, this is the first experience in programming for at least 95% of my students and they were not frightened off by programming in C.
In my class I use the Bare Bones Board sold by Modern Device http://www.moderndevice.com/ After shipping I think I pay around $12-13 per board (up from $11 when I started using it) plus a $20 FTDI cable. If a student fries the chip along the way, it only costs me $6 to replace it. At the end of the course students build a final project that incorporates their Arduino and they get to keep the board, but to keep my costs down I have to keep the cable (or sell it to them at cost).
In the end the deciding factors were not about the most powerful board with the most functions or the focus of the board on an educational market. It was mostly about price for a board/system that is "good enough". That said, many other teachers I've talked with love the Parallax products because of all the support and the high quality educational materials produced by Parallax (re: Getting Started with Microcontrollers).
I'm not trying to win people over to "my side" with this post and I probably won't be convinced to change my course. It just seemed that people might be interested one data point for Arduino's popularity.
Even when one is not under tight fiduciary constraint, it is still human nature to shop around. Finding the most bang for the buck seems to be our nature...or at least it is my nature.
Buying a bare PCB and populating only the necessary components is one of the best ways of getting into the Propeller inexpensively, IMHO. Several fine folks on this forum have made available bare PCBs for very little money. Populating only the Propeller, EEPROM, and voltage regulator, along with a few capacitors will enable a student to gain a vast amount of programming experience and accomplish all sorts of things, yet still have a hardware upgrade path to much more.
Board - $6, Propeller - $8, EEPROM - $1.50, voltage regulator - $1.00. These prices are before applying any kind of volume discount.
Bill Henning, I'm sure, could work out a great deal on a couple dozen serial prop plug kits.
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The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.