I would like to see the Propeller II placed on the Propeller Proto Board (USB), 3" X 4" is just right,
That way I could add VGA, mouse and keyboard, with one little adapter (accessory kit)...
@Ken...The propeller 2 evaluation board sounds cool, but expensive...I hope there are simple proto boards available (early)...I really do not want to solder chips
Lattice have a solution very similar to the P8X32A QuickStart, which they call a breakout board ($29)
- This has a minimal : USB connector, IO connectors, and a FT2232H, and they give the user access to the second
channel on the FT2232H.
The FT2232H has a fractional baud generator, to 12MBaud, and parallel modes, as well as SPI and i2c choices.
- so it gives a solid development link, for quite low cost.
So I would vote for a Prop II Quickstart, using a FT2232H, 'fully user available'
I just finished writing a SHA-256 hashing function in PASM for the Prop 1. It's 111 instructions and takes 4742 instruction cycles to run. It can process 4217 blocks per second, which isn't that inspiring. But I just did the math, and the Prop 2 will do 10X that many!
The Prop 2 is 80X faster than the Prop 1, can you believe that! 8-O
Wow, I mean WOW!
Sounds plenty fast enough for the job in hand.
Are you going to show us the code?
Is there some simple implementation in C anywhere we could take a look at?
I have attached the SHA-256 implementation and a test program. My motivation to write this was to prove it could be done, and to make an implementation that was less than 200 longs. The memory footprint is 284 longs with reserved space, 195 longs of code and initialized data.
The uninitialized data space can overlap with code that doesn't have to be reused. You could write code and intersperse labels for the reserved variable space, then overwrite the reserved space with zeros, this way you can overlap code and data as long as the code is only used before the SHA-256 functions.
The test program uses the sample SHA messages from the SHA-256-384-512 specification.
This code was written with guidance from the Wikipedia pseudo code (which is incomplete and obtuse), a Javascript implementation I found, and Aaron Gifford's SHA functions. Applied Cryptography has a very succinct description of the block padding, which isn't well explained the Wikipedia article. The NIST specification has a great explanation and includes the full text of before, during, and after data.
Will there be boards like the quickstart and proto board for the propeller 2...in your past post you talked about...
"Parallax Semiconductor will produce one full-featured, high-quality evaluation board (perhaps form factor of the PropBOE) and support the key external board builders to succeed with the variations that make us all happy."
I just finished writing a SHA-256 hashing function in PASM for the Prop 1. It's 111 instructions and takes 4742 instruction cycles to run. It can process 4217 blocks per second, which isn't that inspiring. But I just did the math, and the Prop 2 will do 10X that many!
The Prop 2 is 80X faster than the Prop 1, can you believe that! 8-O
I know the P2 will do 1 instruction per cycle, and it will run at 160 MHz, but that's 8X faster than the P1. How did you calculate 80X faster? Will the P2 have special instructions that will do SHA-256 with one-tenth the instruction cycles?
Will there be boards like the quickstart and proto board for the propeller 2...in your past post you talked about...
"Parallax Semiconductor will produce one full-featured, high-quality evaluation board (perhaps form factor of the PropBOE) and support the key external board builders to succeed with the variations that make us all happy."
Yes, two boards (not one). A simple reference design circuit (like the QuickStart) and a full-featured evaluation board (like the PropBOE).
I know the P2 will do 1 instruction per cycle, and it will run at 160 MHz, but that's 8X faster than the P1. How did you calculate 80X faster? Will the P2 have special instructions that will do SHA-256 with one-tenth the instruction cycles?
SHA-256 no, but I can only speculate as to what the final clock speed will be, you'll have to wait for March 6th to know for sure.
I do recall from the last several months, 126K of RAM is how much hub memory it will have.
"Oh No! Now I have to decide whether to get the reference design or the Eval. board?"
Decisions, decisions, decisions!"
Love the choices, Ken.
LOL, or it will be like the rest of us, we'll own multiple boards! I have a QuickStart and Proto Board, even though I have no actual use for them since I use the PPDB most often.
"Oh No! Now I have to decide whether to get the reference design or the Eval. board?"
Decisions, decisions, decisions!"
Love the choices, Ken.
Harley, we've had to spend your money wisely in the past and it worked out so you can trust us again, right? You'll want both boards.
I can share our strategy with the subject of board offerings since it seems odd to offer so few choices. After all, one day ago I told you we'd only make one board until somebody reminded us that we need a simple reference design. We've got two reasons for keeping it simple and everybody will appreciate both of them.
First, designing and selling chips is a serious investment in terms of non-recurring engineering costs, fabrication, production setup for testing, characterization and documentation. We're not in this for "the money" but it's absolutely necessary to run it under a self-sustaining and viable business model. Specifically, we must sell lots of chips! Though absolute peanuts in comparison to big semiconductor companies, Parallax must move at least 3-5 million Propellers a year. Still reading? This means our engineering focus will be on customer support and design-in assistance, not producing too many variations of boards.
Second, the most important contribution will be made by others who produce boards. Parallax can make all the boards we want, but when others start producing boards and tools it grows a much stronger business around a vibrant community. We want to support these people.
Hobby and education is in our blood and will clearly remain a top priority in everything we do (it's in the veins). Honestly, we'd be most rewarded if we could make our educational hardware free as a result of commercial success.
We are more excited than ever to be part of what lies ahead. Chip's got a lot in the queue for us this time, as pedward stated above.
An ASC for the 1600 MHz mulitcore P2 with full GCC support (running on any OS) and Arduino-compatible code libraries? Just a little advance drum-beating for ya.
You'll be among the first to have our pre-production chips.
Harley, we've had to spend your money wisely in the past and it worked out so you can trust us again, right? You'll want both boards.
I can share our strategy with the subject of board offerings since it seems odd to offer so few choices. After all, one day ago I told you we'd only make one board until somebody reminded us that we need a simple reference design. We've got two reasons for keeping it simple and everybody will appreciate both of them.
First, designing and selling chips is a serious investment in terms of non-recurring engineering costs, fabrication, production setup for testing, characterization and documentation. We're not in this for "the money" but it's absolutely necessary to run it under a self-sustaining and viable business model. Specifically, we must sell lots of chips! Though absolute peanuts in comparison to big semiconductor companies, Parallax must move at least 3-5 million Propellers a year. Still reading? This means our engineering focus will be on customer support and design-in assistance, not producing too many variations of boards.
Second, the most important contribution will be made by others who produce boards. Parallax can make all the boards we want, but when others start producing boards and tools it grows a much stronger business around a vibrant community. We want to support these people.
Hobby and education is in our blood and will clearly remain a top priority in everything we do (it's in the veins). Honestly, we'd be most rewarded if we could make our educational hardware free as a result of commercial success.
We are more excited than ever to be part of what lies ahead. Chip's got a lot in the queue for us this time, as pedward stated above.
Ken Gracey
I could not agree more Ken. Parallax must make 2 boards....
A reference design, and a simple and cheap board. Firstly, that is what (commercial) engineers require these days - something to look at and check out. The chip isn't just a new PIC/AVR/ARM variation. They need to get their hands on one quickly before the enthusiasm dies once they decide to give it a look. And they are more likely to buy from Parallax than any of us making hobby boards.
We will all make our various versions for various reasons. Hopefully they will entice engineers who are just looking to play, and buy one of "our" hobby boards, to realise the great things the P2 can do and design them into commercial products too. Or at least show them off to the engineers who make decisions.
That is a big target quantity to get to initially, but the P2 will be a great product. And hopefully will spur some into using the P1 as well. The P2 should also serve to legitimise the P1 because it will not be an orphan, so to speak.
Also a suggestion, on the Quickstart board the 40 pin header is only usable from the top. They make headers that are surface mount that can be entered from the bottom or top, just drill the through holes in the bottom and you can decide if you want the Prop 2 QuickStart to be mounted as a chip carrier.
The problem with the TQFP is that you need a barebones carrier as a daughter board in applications where soldering a TQFP is not possible. Having the through hole headers, arranged like most TQFP daughter boards, with holes in the bottom for dual entry, would be stellar!
Also a suggestion, on the Quickstart board the 40 pin header is only usable from the top. They make headers that are surface mount that can be entered from the bottom or top, just drill the through holes in the bottom and you can decide if you want the Prop 2 QuickStart to be mounted as a chip carrier.
The problem with the TQFP is that you need a barebones carrier as a daughter board in applications where soldering a TQFP is not possible. Having the through hole headers, arranged like most TQFP daughter boards, with holes in the bottom for dual entry, would be stellar!
Thank you...thank you...I am so glad you have decided to make a quickstart board for the propeller 2....you have made my day! I was getting worried that after the long wait for the propeller 2...I would be unable to use it.
I love the quickstart board for the propeller 1...and look forward to a similar quickstart board with the propeller 2! I will be ordering boards as soon as possible...
PS...If I bring my lawn chair down to the office tonight...will I be the first one in line for the propeller 2...Just kidding
Hmm...Ken said 3 to 5 million P2's shipping out a year (if self-sustaining). Well, at 10K chips per calendar day, that'd be ~3.65M chips a year, which gets us into the foregoing range. That's about 14K chips per work day (based on 260 such days a year, subtracting out weekends but not holidays). It's hard for me to imagine humble Parallax shipping out that many chips a day (though I believe it does/can/will). Okay, that's on average for a day (not every day) and perhaps a target at this point (though the P1 sales experience obviously helps with the estimate), but, still, that would be just over 70K chips per week. That's keeping the shipping department busy!
The point of all the above musing is that it makes me feel small as an end-user. I've bought under a handful of chips, though I hope/plan to buy many times more in the future. And many of you have purchased multiple dozens, and some even hundreds or thousands. But not that many of you, I guess. So that begs the question: WHY does Parallax care enough about us to monitor this forum and pay us the respect to respond to our questions and comments?
The only reasons I can come up with offhand are: [1] it's the right thing to do in a world where money shouldn't be the only thing, [2] some of us (and all of us, collectively, I guess) are among their leading product evangelists, which directly or indirectly leads to bigger/big orders, and [3] as Ken said, they love (and feel blessed by) what they do, and are likely thrilled to be able to financially support themselves in this way.
Everything Ken (and others) said about the board options at or near launch makes sense. Certainly, it's proper to focus their efforts on what will bring in the big orders such that those of us who make small orders can glean the benefits of what drops down from such success (support, information, the P2, boards, a possible P2B/C or P3, and so on).
I would, however, be thrilled to see the following: a fairly minimalistic and aggessively-priced drop-in board/module with a P2 and a DRAM chip (as these will be the hardest for future inventors and volume purchasers to deal with fabrication-wise), possibly with 1.8 and 3.3V regulators on board, and perhaps with an (optional) EEPROM (for maintaining product state and saving settings to deal with external hardware changes caused by sourcing issues and so on). Such a board would be as flat as possible and could be soldered right on top of a user-supplied motherboard (perhaps using through-holes), or it could go with connectors on 1-4 sides facilitating connection. An SD-card socket (or uSD one), a likely requirement for many uses, could be included or be an option, but, even if included, traces should also be routed to at least one connector on the perimeter to facilitate positioning a user-supplied SD socket on the user's motherboard in order to provide access as desired in low- to mid-volume products (not just one-offs).
Such a board would be a drop-in module in many ways. It could kick-start a lot of lower-volume projects that might mature into higher-volume projects. Single quantities of such a board could include a healthy profit margin, but small volumes (100, 250, 500, 1000) should be much more aggessively priced. It seems to me that this would be a way to encourage and seed inventiveness (and possibly helping America's competitiveness to boot). Although purchasing ready-made high-volume products (millions of units) from leading manufacturers/brands is the way it's done these days (as few could be expected to build their own when off-the-shelf alternatives are readily available), having convenient-to-use modules that support invention, education and even small- and medium-sized (if not larger) production runs could become a trend. If such a module is *not* available, how will the P2 be competitive against the Raspberry Pi board or other (likely ARM-based) boards that come along. Okay, granted, the Pi is more of a complete system, sans case and power supply, but it's aggressively priced and does have connectors supporting expansion. Of course, it's for a somewhat different market, but it portends a trend that the days of high-priced boards are drawing to a close (with cheaper boards becoming available and whole systems being cheap). Even the folks associated with the much more expensive BeagleBoard came up with a cheaper option, the BeagleBone (though still not cheap enough). So, an aggressively-priced module for the P2 would meet this trend, encourage all kinds of related sales, and meet a need in our world with a chip and module that does some things that those other offerings don't readily provide (ease-of-use, orthogonality, flexibility and so on), though they also have their own strengths.
Of course, Parallax has to cater to high-volume purchasers (obviously required for success), otherwise nothing will be possible for any of us (and I realize that they also choose to "cater" to us and education for whatever reasons, and thanks for doing so). But for their lower-volume efforts, my plea to Parallax is not to simply depend on the hobbiest and education markets. Obviously, for hobbiest building one-off, labor-of-love projects, it doesn't matter if Parallax's profit margins are good (possibly due to low manufacturing efficiency caused by low volume) because we will be happy to pay it to make our creative dreams come true. And the education environment is lucky to have a company like Parallax that provides accessibly products from which their students can learn. But neither of those will often directly lead to low- or mid-volume production (with the potential of higher volumes) by such customers.
But if Parallax could set the bar, so to speak, for an agressively-priced and easy-to-integrate drop-in module, then that could lead to all kinds of sales both in the near-term and down-the-road. Not doing so, in my way of thinking, is to not aggresively tackle the modern reality, where fewer and fewer people are developing products (not including one-offs). Perhaps Parallax should consider leading, by producing an aggressively-priced module suitable for production, just like one can buy, for example, an entire Bluetooth module with antenna on a small board that can be mated to a motherboard. It's a constantly changing world these days, an ongoing new reality, so to speak. Parallax could get out in front of that (or stay abreast), maybe even start the next trend. If anyone can do it, Parallax can, as they're in it for more than just the money (though money is a necessary "evil" (and the love of it definitely is or leads to evil) and also a convenient indicator of the success of one's or a company's creativity/productivity).
So, in conclusion, I vote for three board offerings, not just two, that is, the two planned and one meeting the needs described in this post. Sure, such a board could be left to one of us to design, market and manufacture. But that's another middle-man/woman, increasing costs. And many here will be coming up with all kinds of other boards, anyway, so there's no need to leave it to us. And leaving it to another party adds uncertainty for any person, would-be company or company depending on such a source for the module. A drop-in module supplied by Parallax would probably be the best way for current and future designers to obtain modules with confidence and at a reasonalbe price (even if such modules are made abroad). Look how they boast--and rightfully so--at the longevity of their BS2 and P1 products, and have promised the same for the P2. And such a source would provide an upgrade path of sorts for all of Parallax's other P2-related products, both the chip itself and boards populated with it. Such a module could give potential customers a reason to jump on the bandwagon in the first place. Well, that's my unsolicited 2 1/2 cents, for better or worse.
By the way, I'd like to thank Parallax for all their recent posts about their current activities and progress and future plans. That really adds to our confidence that the dream is within reach. Of course, the P1 dream goes on and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But it's nice to see its future offspring about to be sprung. To Parallax, thank you! And thanks for considering the admittedly ignorant-about-business-and-the-chip-industry ramblings of an admirer, even though such ramblings are quite possibly way off-base. And, by the way, to the forum, I intended no disrespect for hobbiest or one-off projects. I've developed one myself. But, if it's useful for me, it could be useful for others, and it'd be nice to have another option on the table to make such a reality. Okay, let's call it my 3 cents (I like to round up).
P.S.: Ken is the Oprah Winfrey of microcontrollers: you get a chip, and you get a chip, and you get a chip....
Comments
That way I could add VGA, mouse and keyboard, with one little adapter (accessory kit)...
-Tommy
Lattice have a solution very similar to the P8X32A QuickStart, which they call a breakout board ($29)
- This has a minimal : USB connector, IO connectors, and a FT2232H, and they give the user access to the second
channel on the FT2232H.
The FT2232H has a fractional baud generator, to 12MBaud, and parallel modes, as well as SPI and i2c choices.
- so it gives a solid development link, for quite low cost.
So I would vote for a Prop II Quickstart, using a FT2232H, 'fully user available'
The Prop 2 is 80X faster than the Prop 1, can you believe that! 8-O
Sounds plenty fast enough for the job in hand.
Are you going to show us the code?
Is there some simple implementation in C anywhere we could take a look at?
Follow link.
http://www.koders.com/c/fid0CD8966FC588C58F03ADCF30F11AFB16556E60E1.aspx
Cheers
The uninitialized data space can overlap with code that doesn't have to be reused. You could write code and intersperse labels for the reserved variable space, then overwrite the reserved space with zeros, this way you can overlap code and data as long as the code is only used before the SHA-256 functions.
The test program uses the sample SHA messages from the SHA-256-384-512 specification.
This code was written with guidance from the Wikipedia pseudo code (which is incomplete and obtuse), a Javascript implementation I found, and Aaron Gifford's SHA functions. Applied Cryptography has a very succinct description of the block padding, which isn't well explained the Wikipedia article. The NIST specification has a great explanation and includes the full text of before, during, and after data.
Ref:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-3/fips180-3_final.pdf
http://www.iwar.org.uk/comsec/resources/cipher/sha256-384-512.pdf
http://www.webtoolkit.info/javascript-sha256.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2
http://www.aarongifford.com/computers/sha.html
Perhaps after all that research and effort you might consider updating the wikipedia pseudo code to be complete and straight forward.
very impressive
Ken: Looking forward to 6 March
Will there be boards like the quickstart and proto board for the propeller 2...in your past post you talked about...
"Parallax Semiconductor will produce one full-featured, high-quality evaluation board (perhaps form factor of the PropBOE) and support the key external board builders to succeed with the variations that make us all happy."
Yes, two boards (not one). A simple reference design circuit (like the QuickStart) and a full-featured evaluation board (like the PropBOE).
Ken Gracey
"Oh No! Now I have to decide whether to get the reference design or the Eval. board?"
Decisions, decisions, decisions!"
Love the choices, Ken.
SHA-256 no, but I can only speculate as to what the final clock speed will be, you'll have to wait for March 6th to know for sure.
I do recall from the last several months, 126K of RAM is how much hub memory it will have.
LOL, or it will be like the rest of us, we'll own multiple boards! I have a QuickStart and Proto Board, even though I have no actual use for them since I use the PPDB most often.
200Mhz / 1cpi = 200MIPS x 8 = 1600MIPS
80Mhz / 4cpi = 20MIPS x 8 = 160MIPS
I guess my math is off, I was calculating the 10x speedup time 8 COGs, so 10x8 = 80x
Hey, if the Prop 2 is worth 10 Prop 1 chips in speed, that's still awesome!
Harley, we've had to spend your money wisely in the past and it worked out so you can trust us again, right? You'll want both boards.
I can share our strategy with the subject of board offerings since it seems odd to offer so few choices. After all, one day ago I told you we'd only make one board until somebody reminded us that we need a simple reference design. We've got two reasons for keeping it simple and everybody will appreciate both of them.
First, designing and selling chips is a serious investment in terms of non-recurring engineering costs, fabrication, production setup for testing, characterization and documentation. We're not in this for "the money" but it's absolutely necessary to run it under a self-sustaining and viable business model. Specifically, we must sell lots of chips! Though absolute peanuts in comparison to big semiconductor companies, Parallax must move at least 3-5 million Propellers a year. Still reading? This means our engineering focus will be on customer support and design-in assistance, not producing too many variations of boards.
Second, the most important contribution will be made by others who produce boards. Parallax can make all the boards we want, but when others start producing boards and tools it grows a much stronger business around a vibrant community. We want to support these people.
Hobby and education is in our blood and will clearly remain a top priority in everything we do (it's in the veins). Honestly, we'd be most rewarded if we could make our educational hardware free as a result of commercial success.
We are more excited than ever to be part of what lies ahead. Chip's got a lot in the queue for us this time, as pedward stated above.
Ken Gracey
I know what I'll be making...
An ASC for the 1600 MHz mulitcore P2 with full GCC support (running on any OS) and Arduino-compatible code libraries? Just a little advance drum-beating for ya.
You'll be among the first to have our pre-production chips.
Ken Gracey
Oooh, I get goosebumps when you say "pre-production chips"! :surprise:
And you too. Will get some to you. . . and you. . . and you . . . and you. . .
Ken Gracey
I could not agree more Ken. Parallax must make 2 boards....
A reference design, and a simple and cheap board. Firstly, that is what (commercial) engineers require these days - something to look at and check out. The chip isn't just a new PIC/AVR/ARM variation. They need to get their hands on one quickly before the enthusiasm dies once they decide to give it a look. And they are more likely to buy from Parallax than any of us making hobby boards.
We will all make our various versions for various reasons. Hopefully they will entice engineers who are just looking to play, and buy one of "our" hobby boards, to realise the great things the P2 can do and design them into commercial products too. Or at least show them off to the engineers who make decisions.
That is a big target quantity to get to initially, but the P2 will be a great product. And hopefully will spur some into using the P1 as well. The P2 should also serve to legitimise the P1 because it will not be an orphan, so to speak.
Bring on March 6
The problem with the TQFP is that you need a barebones carrier as a daughter board in applications where soldering a TQFP is not possible. Having the through hole headers, arranged like most TQFP daughter boards, with holes in the bottom for dual entry, would be stellar!
Something like this: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/53
With this style of header: http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/89898-310ALF/609-4473-6-ND/2665550
That header would be a great upgrade for the QS board as-is, then you can mount long pin headers on a board below it.
Ugh! $2.55/header @ qty 10,000
Awesome header though!
Thank you...thank you...I am so glad you have decided to make a quickstart board for the propeller 2....you have made my day! I was getting worried that after the long wait for the propeller 2...I would be unable to use it.
I love the quickstart board for the propeller 1...and look forward to a similar quickstart board with the propeller 2! I will be ordering boards as soon as possible...
PS...If I bring my lawn chair down to the office tonight...will I be the first one in line for the propeller 2...Just kidding
The point of all the above musing is that it makes me feel small as an end-user. I've bought under a handful of chips, though I hope/plan to buy many times more in the future. And many of you have purchased multiple dozens, and some even hundreds or thousands. But not that many of you, I guess. So that begs the question: WHY does Parallax care enough about us to monitor this forum and pay us the respect to respond to our questions and comments?
The only reasons I can come up with offhand are: [1] it's the right thing to do in a world where money shouldn't be the only thing, [2] some of us (and all of us, collectively, I guess) are among their leading product evangelists, which directly or indirectly leads to bigger/big orders, and [3] as Ken said, they love (and feel blessed by) what they do, and are likely thrilled to be able to financially support themselves in this way.
Everything Ken (and others) said about the board options at or near launch makes sense. Certainly, it's proper to focus their efforts on what will bring in the big orders such that those of us who make small orders can glean the benefits of what drops down from such success (support, information, the P2, boards, a possible P2B/C or P3, and so on).
I would, however, be thrilled to see the following: a fairly minimalistic and aggessively-priced drop-in board/module with a P2 and a DRAM chip (as these will be the hardest for future inventors and volume purchasers to deal with fabrication-wise), possibly with 1.8 and 3.3V regulators on board, and perhaps with an (optional) EEPROM (for maintaining product state and saving settings to deal with external hardware changes caused by sourcing issues and so on). Such a board would be as flat as possible and could be soldered right on top of a user-supplied motherboard (perhaps using through-holes), or it could go with connectors on 1-4 sides facilitating connection. An SD-card socket (or uSD one), a likely requirement for many uses, could be included or be an option, but, even if included, traces should also be routed to at least one connector on the perimeter to facilitate positioning a user-supplied SD socket on the user's motherboard in order to provide access as desired in low- to mid-volume products (not just one-offs).
Such a board would be a drop-in module in many ways. It could kick-start a lot of lower-volume projects that might mature into higher-volume projects. Single quantities of such a board could include a healthy profit margin, but small volumes (100, 250, 500, 1000) should be much more aggessively priced. It seems to me that this would be a way to encourage and seed inventiveness (and possibly helping America's competitiveness to boot). Although purchasing ready-made high-volume products (millions of units) from leading manufacturers/brands is the way it's done these days (as few could be expected to build their own when off-the-shelf alternatives are readily available), having convenient-to-use modules that support invention, education and even small- and medium-sized (if not larger) production runs could become a trend. If such a module is *not* available, how will the P2 be competitive against the Raspberry Pi board or other (likely ARM-based) boards that come along. Okay, granted, the Pi is more of a complete system, sans case and power supply, but it's aggressively priced and does have connectors supporting expansion. Of course, it's for a somewhat different market, but it portends a trend that the days of high-priced boards are drawing to a close (with cheaper boards becoming available and whole systems being cheap). Even the folks associated with the much more expensive BeagleBoard came up with a cheaper option, the BeagleBone (though still not cheap enough). So, an aggressively-priced module for the P2 would meet this trend, encourage all kinds of related sales, and meet a need in our world with a chip and module that does some things that those other offerings don't readily provide (ease-of-use, orthogonality, flexibility and so on), though they also have their own strengths.
Of course, Parallax has to cater to high-volume purchasers (obviously required for success), otherwise nothing will be possible for any of us (and I realize that they also choose to "cater" to us and education for whatever reasons, and thanks for doing so). But for their lower-volume efforts, my plea to Parallax is not to simply depend on the hobbiest and education markets. Obviously, for hobbiest building one-off, labor-of-love projects, it doesn't matter if Parallax's profit margins are good (possibly due to low manufacturing efficiency caused by low volume) because we will be happy to pay it to make our creative dreams come true. And the education environment is lucky to have a company like Parallax that provides accessibly products from which their students can learn. But neither of those will often directly lead to low- or mid-volume production (with the potential of higher volumes) by such customers.
But if Parallax could set the bar, so to speak, for an agressively-priced and easy-to-integrate drop-in module, then that could lead to all kinds of sales both in the near-term and down-the-road. Not doing so, in my way of thinking, is to not aggresively tackle the modern reality, where fewer and fewer people are developing products (not including one-offs). Perhaps Parallax should consider leading, by producing an aggressively-priced module suitable for production, just like one can buy, for example, an entire Bluetooth module with antenna on a small board that can be mated to a motherboard. It's a constantly changing world these days, an ongoing new reality, so to speak. Parallax could get out in front of that (or stay abreast), maybe even start the next trend. If anyone can do it, Parallax can, as they're in it for more than just the money (though money is a necessary "evil" (and the love of it definitely is or leads to evil) and also a convenient indicator of the success of one's or a company's creativity/productivity).
So, in conclusion, I vote for three board offerings, not just two, that is, the two planned and one meeting the needs described in this post. Sure, such a board could be left to one of us to design, market and manufacture. But that's another middle-man/woman, increasing costs. And many here will be coming up with all kinds of other boards, anyway, so there's no need to leave it to us. And leaving it to another party adds uncertainty for any person, would-be company or company depending on such a source for the module. A drop-in module supplied by Parallax would probably be the best way for current and future designers to obtain modules with confidence and at a reasonalbe price (even if such modules are made abroad). Look how they boast--and rightfully so--at the longevity of their BS2 and P1 products, and have promised the same for the P2. And such a source would provide an upgrade path of sorts for all of Parallax's other P2-related products, both the chip itself and boards populated with it. Such a module could give potential customers a reason to jump on the bandwagon in the first place. Well, that's my unsolicited 2 1/2 cents, for better or worse.
By the way, I'd like to thank Parallax for all their recent posts about their current activities and progress and future plans. That really adds to our confidence that the dream is within reach. Of course, the P1 dream goes on and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But it's nice to see its future offspring about to be sprung. To Parallax, thank you! And thanks for considering the admittedly ignorant-about-business-and-the-chip-industry ramblings of an admirer, even though such ramblings are quite possibly way off-base. And, by the way, to the forum, I intended no disrespect for hobbiest or one-off projects. I've developed one myself. But, if it's useful for me, it could be useful for others, and it'd be nice to have another option on the table to make such a reality. Okay, let's call it my 3 cents (I like to round up).
P.S.: Ken is the Oprah Winfrey of microcontrollers: you get a chip, and you get a chip, and you get a chip....