new book Programming and Customizing the Multicore Propeller Microcontroller: T

fixmax

Hi all,

I just received the new book "Programming and Customizing the Multicore Propeller Microcontroller: The Official Guide" from Amazon this weekend, and I just wanted to say to all involved how great a job you did. You really nailed some of the great, innovative features of the Propeller, and you should really get a lot of great feedback on this book. I hadn't seen any posts yet on just how good this book is. If you haven't gotten yet, go get it.

Please try to do more of this - especially soliciting your major innovating end-users for content in the book. They really bring so much to the table in terms of real world, hard core examples.

I would absolutely love to see more books like this - especially with content created around the great OBEX contributions the forum

I haven't posted to your forum before, but I'm one of the many unseen people that religiously read the forums everyday.

You guys are truly amazing.

BTW, I also ordered "Programming the Propeller with Spin", but haven't gotten that one yet.

Cluso99

Welcome to the forum (athough you have been lurking).

I am pleased you like the book and it's great feedback for Parallax and those who read this forum. Personally I haven't seen the book and didn't have anything to do with it.

When I started with the prop there was very little information other than this forum which was (and is) great. Parallax are a fantastic company and their resources are stretched, so they can only do so much. However, it is all coming together now, and there is some great code being produced in lots of diverse areas.

I presume you have a prop board, so please tell us what you have been doing with it, and what you plan to do.

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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)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

Ken Gracey

fixmax, it is a pleasure to have you on our forums. We welcome the change from lurker to participant! And to be lurking for three years is amazing, too! With that kind of lurking experience you already know a lot about the forums. The Propeller forum is loaded with some very good engineering and these people are willing to share their knowledge. Without a doubt, the forums are the most important asset to everybody (customers, friends, Parallax, etc).

Question: would you mind posting your review on Amazon.com? The Amazon reviews are very important in book selection for people who use search terms.

This particular book wasn't your typical McGraw-Hill publication -- many authors, a company coordinating them, etc. We're honored that readers recognize it as such a universal resource. Publishers offer little incentive to produce such a book and printed technical books are a declining market. The only reason this book was produced is because the authors were truly inspired and McGraw Hill gave us one of their very best editors: Judy Bass. The authors wrote their sections in a mere six weeks after contract signing. Stephanie edited the whole book for McGraw-Hill and acted as a single point of contact for the authors. Had she not served in this important role then this would have been our first and last project with McGraw-Hill -- no way could they handle a tangled web of contributors without Stephanie's help. Somehow we were even able to get Chip's attention for a chapter, too!

We produced the book because we wanted the Propeller to have a proper representation on the bookshelves from the inventors and several key contributors (there are many people on this forum who could have written chapters, too). To date it's sold over 2,200 copies, keeping us on track for our 5,000 units a year goal. The only reason the quantity matters is because we want people to have the book, not because anybody is making much of a profit from it. The cost of producing this book will always exceed any return from book sales.

Again, welcome!

Ken Gracey

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Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/ParallaxKen for some insider news.

fixmax

Thanks for your response Cluso99,

Yes, I actually have quite a bit of hardware to play with, such as the Prop Demo Board, several of the original Prop PC Boards, and several of the Spin Stamp boards. Two things that I REALLY want to play with is the Propscope, and the Prop Professional Developer Board. I may actually get these in the next week or so. Even though I have a Tektronics MSO4054 in my lab, I really love the thought of carrying a Propscope around with me in my laptop bag that could help me take quick scope measurements.

I bought Viewport Ultra from Hanno's website, and have mostly just tinkered around with what I have, such as the Ping module and a couple of other sensors I managed to find at Radio Shack and Fry's.

I have always planned on a couple projects at work using the Propeller, but I stay so tied up on emergent work, that I just never have the time to really dig into a full blown project based around some Propeller hardware.

One project in particular that I had in mind which I had intended to use in some of the systems I design at my company, was a telemetry overlay board of some sort, with a Modbus TCP ethernet interface (such as HMS Networks Anybus ICs). The systems I build are basically tele-operated automated welding machines. With these teleoperated systems, it's important for the operators not to take their eyes from the video image, to monitor parameters and such, and I would like to have a board that can take video from my machine process, and overlay welding parameters and position information (from the ethernet interface), onto the live video image.

To build my systems, I utilize industrial motion controllers (Yaskawa) and hardware, and lots of high-end broadcast transceiver equipment (I run everything over fiber optics), but there isn't a whole lot of selection out there on the market for video telemetry overlay boards (think UAV drone video).

I had looked at an overlay board from Decade Engineering called the Xbob, but I felt that a Propeller based version would be so much better, especially with all of it's on-board video and other capabilities.

For other applications, I really feel that a Propeller-based IO module could bring a lot to the table with my systems. I currently use a lot of slice-based, distributed IO from Phoenix Contact (Inline series), and have used similar products such as Opto-22's Brain boards, B&R's X20, Beckhoff's Kbus, Wago's System 750, etc. One problem that I have with all of the industrial hardware out there today, is their hardware is designed with a mass market in mind. They are not going to develop modules that support most of the vast number of specialty chips and sensors out there right now, particularly chipsets such as Zigbee RF, GPS, accelerometer, Gyroscopic MEMs, etc. just to name a few. A Propeller based IO module with optically, galvanically isolated IO, would be of immense interest to me, especially, since I could embed our company expertise into the module itself. I have even thought about including a video port on each module, that a technician or engineer could plug a standard small LCD monitor, and could monitor IO or status live right there on the screen.

I don't see myself using the Propellers as the main controller at this time, although it certainly could, but could definitely see the Propeller as an excellent auxiliary IO interface chip for the specialty sensors and controls of my systems. Maybe one day, especially with the Prop II to come out, I could consider using that, since it would have the memory and horsepower to run an entire system easily.

Other than that, I have literally tons of applications that I could use propellers on our systems, but just don't have the time to sit down and actually work on them. Every day I read the forum and see something that I could use on my systems - but I just get tied up and am too busy. I have even considered contracting out some of this work, so that I can at least make some progress on it.

BTW - Anyone in the forums who are interested in work like this let me know.

Cluso99

fixmax: You certainly have some interesting projects there. IIRC someone on the forum has done or is doing video overlaying. Not sure whether it is VGA or video(NTSC/PAL).

BTW If your LCD idea for monitoring status can take video (NTSC/PAL RCA) and B&W is OK, then I have posted a driver to the OBEX that does this using only 1 prop pin. I have a keyboard driver there also that uses just 1pin. It also uses a minimal memory footprint. The forum link is http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=431556

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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)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

Invent-O-Doc

I agree this book is very good with lots of practical examples for things people are likely to use. I tried to purchase it from Parallax and stopped when I saw the shipping charges ($12 bucks), so ordered it off Amazon. I'll post a review too when I've gone through the whole thing.

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Tom Talbot
New Market, MD, USA

ElectricAye

fixmax said...
.... The systems I build are basically tele-operated automated welding machines. ...

That's interesting. Many years ago, I talked with someone who was trying to automate a special type of welding machine but the machines could not get the welds to work out. They beat their brains out trying to discover what the human welders did that the machines were not doing. Finally, they plugged the ears of their human test subjects and found out their welds became much like what the machines were producing. It turned out that the sound of the welding process was key to getting it right but it was something the human welders relied on subconsciously.

I was just curious if sound plays a big part of your welding telepresence.

fixmax

You know that's an interesting point you bring out. Historically, one of the toughest things welders had to overcome with using new welding systems was the sound being different from what they were used to. The sound is especially important for MIG processes (GMAW), but not so much for TIG processes (GTAW).

yarisboy

You guys hit the nail on the head for the sound of MIG welding. I my pro days I used Hobart, Lincoln, and Miller MIG Machines. They all had excellent constant voltage controllers in them so the weldor could turn up the wire speed to the maximum for his skill and the heat transfer characteristics of the welded joint area. On the cheapy Harbor Freight unit in my home shop I've done some upgrades but without a good CV controller sound becomes even more important. If you've ever watched the line welders work they often throw the gun up under there with out even looking and lay down perfect spec. stitch welds one after another. Another trick they use is to watch the color of the top side of the weld. Go past dull red on the back/top-side and it's about to burn through. The sound of a MIG welder operating also can tell you exactly when you have gone from globular transfer to spray arc mode. The difference turns out to be about 0.2 volts.
I have an A/D chip for the Prop and some IGBT drive circuits in stock. I suppose one could add voltage control to the Harbor Freight unit by chopping the line current. I already have aluminum and stainless spools to use with it on argon. A little square-wave there would really clean the aluminum around the heat affected zone. The IGBT would have to be on the secondary side to really throw much high-freq on the aluminum. On the primary side chopping would make my thermal trip sooner.

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MOORE'S LAW: The capabilities of electronics shall double every 18 months.
cloyd's corollary: Hardware is easy, software is hard.

Post Edited (yarisboy) : 5/7/2010 3:42:18 AM GMT

Harley

Back in February I ordered and received this book. Today when I tried to use the URLs given, they don't seem to work.

"ftp://ftp.propeller-chip.com/PCMProp/Chapter_12" was the first tried and get back "Safari can’t open the page." Same for the "mhprofessional.com/propeller" listed on the back page. Have these URLs changed?

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Harley Shanko

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

ftp://ftp.propeller-chip.com/PCMProp/Chapter_12 works...

second one didn't here..

OBC

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Harley

Thanks OBC,

The error message in full is this

Safari can’t open the page.
Too many redirects occurred trying to open “ftp://ftp.propeller-chip.com/PCMProp/Chapter_12”. 
This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirected to open the original page.

This might be a problem with Safari on this iMac. Will try later to check if this works OK. Bummer if not.

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Harley Shanko

Steph Lindsay

Harley, are you able to go to ftp://ftp.propeller-chip.com, and navigate from there?

Harley

Thank you Steph,

That worked. Not at first but registering as guest got me there. Some of the folders were empty; I assume they are place holders only in that case.

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Harley Shanko