I am *very* impressed with the Propeller and its documentation!
bill190
Posts: 769
I recently purchased a Propeller Education Kit and have read most·of the Propeller Education Kit Labs Fundamentals book.
Someone did a *lot* of work on this product, its documentation, and the example source code! Fantastic job!
I was able to find the answers to every single question I came up with while reading. Many times just reading a bit further in the book will tell you all about something.
For example I was playing around with the Parallax Serial Terminal. Then wanted to know about its terminal control codes like carriage return, CRSRXY to position the cursor in a specific location, etc...
Then found this information on the serial terminal Prefs/Function page, in the FullDuplexSerialPlus.spin file, and on the Parallax forums with a search. Then I read a bit further in the book and it had a section all about this subject!
So in many cases, my questions were answered just by reading a bit further in the book.
And I'll say I can come up with some highly technical detailed questions! And they were all answered! I am truly amazed at all the thinking which went into this product and the thoroughness of the documentation.
If you are familiar with all this, you can quickly go through the manual and get up to speed.
And if you are not familiar with any of this, everything is there pointing the places to go to learn all about particular subjects. For example for serial communications, the book sends you to Wikipedia to learn all about that subject if you are not familiar with it. And you could spend months following the links on that and learning about just that subject.
So along with all the pointers in the book to other sources of information, this is a *very* complete course on microcontrollers. You could spend a couple of years following all the links and learning about everything if you wanted. And then would have a *very* good understanding of how all this works.
And the example code is perfect. Just long enough to show you how the various things work. But not so long and complicated that you are overwhelmed. Just enough so you get the idea.
And how to get a programmer to write these short simple examples, I do not know? (Most programmers I know want to keep adding features to their code!)
And the hardware features of the Propeller chip are amazing. I keep reading and it does this, will do that, and will do something else. On and on. Even has everything needed to connect it to a TV display except for the RCA jack.
Anyway good job to everyone who did all the work on this product. I know darn well there was a *ton* of work which went into this. It is appreciated!
FYI - Here is a link to the book and example code downloads page...
http://www.parallax.com/go/pekit
·
Someone did a *lot* of work on this product, its documentation, and the example source code! Fantastic job!
I was able to find the answers to every single question I came up with while reading. Many times just reading a bit further in the book will tell you all about something.
For example I was playing around with the Parallax Serial Terminal. Then wanted to know about its terminal control codes like carriage return, CRSRXY to position the cursor in a specific location, etc...
Then found this information on the serial terminal Prefs/Function page, in the FullDuplexSerialPlus.spin file, and on the Parallax forums with a search. Then I read a bit further in the book and it had a section all about this subject!
So in many cases, my questions were answered just by reading a bit further in the book.
And I'll say I can come up with some highly technical detailed questions! And they were all answered! I am truly amazed at all the thinking which went into this product and the thoroughness of the documentation.
If you are familiar with all this, you can quickly go through the manual and get up to speed.
And if you are not familiar with any of this, everything is there pointing the places to go to learn all about particular subjects. For example for serial communications, the book sends you to Wikipedia to learn all about that subject if you are not familiar with it. And you could spend months following the links on that and learning about just that subject.
So along with all the pointers in the book to other sources of information, this is a *very* complete course on microcontrollers. You could spend a couple of years following all the links and learning about everything if you wanted. And then would have a *very* good understanding of how all this works.
And the example code is perfect. Just long enough to show you how the various things work. But not so long and complicated that you are overwhelmed. Just enough so you get the idea.
And how to get a programmer to write these short simple examples, I do not know? (Most programmers I know want to keep adding features to their code!)
And the hardware features of the Propeller chip are amazing. I keep reading and it does this, will do that, and will do something else. On and on. Even has everything needed to connect it to a TV display except for the RCA jack.
Anyway good job to everyone who did all the work on this product. I know darn well there was a *ton* of work which went into this. It is appreciated!
FYI - Here is a link to the book and example code downloads page...
http://www.parallax.com/go/pekit
·
Comments
A squinty-eyed, hunched over, pale man, but rich nonetheless.
Yeah, it's pretty spectacular what you can do with the Prop without having to get a degree in EE first.
Thank you so much for your kind words. They are like oxygen to our squinty-eyed, hunched-over pale authors! I will make sure that the PE Kit Lab author sees it, along with all those who wrote and worked on Propeller documentation and the kit hardware. It takes a whole company to bring a product to your door!
May you continue to be enriched by your enjoyment of the Propeller - we look forward to seeing your own creative projects here in the future.
-Steph
Technical Editor
Parallax Inc.