Chip consistently articulates his desire to see the P2 displaying things graphically. Use the various sensors and get the data onto the screen in simple, clear forms. And it will do great sound too, but we just don't get the conversation about that much right now.
It's going to be kind of interesting. If doing that ends up kind of easy, and I suspect the basics will be as there is enough RAM to support reasonable, simple, fast, VGA resolution type displays, perhaps having that in one place can do some of the kinds of things one would use a Pi (or Pi like device) + development board + sensors to do. If people are working right on the Pi, then it takes the PC out of the equation though...
To me, this is still key:
What they care about is that there's an example sketch that does what they want. They may not (and usually aren't) aware the sketch may use an interrupt or two, or does some tricky things with internal timers.
Yep. Perhaps the GCC environment can really get that moving forward.
Again right tool for the right job. If somebody selects a different tool for whatever reason, that is their choice. There's more then one way to skin a cat.
Thats absolutely correct. However, Parallax has positioned the P1 as the right tool for what ?
A smart cookie could indeed probably make a killing with a RPi/P1 solution, where it seems perfect. In fact, Parallax could make a major event of the Prop 2 by getting a moderately cheap RPi I/O co-proc type board out there. Talk about free advertising and your target audience.....
We usually do it the opposite way. Do development first on the prop, because is got tons of power, and we are familliar with it. Once we are completely familliar with the final application and ciruitry, we pare it down and try to stuff is onto the cheapest, smallest device that can scrape by. "Appropriate sizing" they call it. So it doesn't really matter how much the favorite development rig is, the final product will always be cheapest possible, whether its prop or something else will be determined by the applications itself.
When this is done backwards, working based on the cost of the parts first, rather than what the application needs, it tends to turn out poorly.
I know, however the LaunchPad went back on sale for $4.30 around the same time I happened to realize what I needed.
Should make an excellent 1-to-1 comparison between a project done with interrupts and one not, even if it isn't a significantly difficult project.
Also, I'm not advoating Parallax add interrupts to the Prop1/2. I support them and its their right.
I just think that for the majority of projects 'interrupt difficulty' hasn't sold to the masses because it has been over-hyped and blown way, way out of proportion.
Anyone who wants to argue, I just point to the Moon, and comment that we've walked on it, courtesy of interrupts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Interrupts_and_involuntary_counters).
If they still argue, I point to their cellphone, and comment that its more powerful that many, many Cray Supercomputers built in the past, is a phone, a GPS navigation device, TV, game console, and on and on.
All based on those impossible interrupts. (http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2684)
I've a friend with one. Maybe I'll borrow it for a test drive. I've heard everything from "it's fast" to about what you just wrote Jazzed. A 700Mhz machine with reasonably fast RAM and front side bus is still a lot of compute power.
Yes, VNC is a great tool. Does the Pi run X, or not? If it does, VNC could be slow, because screen queries are convoluted in a full X environment. It wasn't really meant to be screen scraped that way.
has everyone seen the Arduino Yun? It's an Arduino paired with a Linux-able chip, i forget which.
How about doing a similar thing with a Prop? *nix handles networking, Prop handles I/O.
A headless computer running VNC is a lot like a computer with keyboard, mouse, and video.
I tried something similar thinking I could use RPi for web browsing on my TV. What a disaster.
An RPi without a window manager might have enough bandwidth to do some useful things.
I have very strong suspicions that the whole Raspberry Pi phenomenon was primarily a means to dump a whole generation of excess ARM chips that were never going to go into actual retail consumer electronics.
The only thing proven was that a lot of people with spend $35 USD to buy something that they may never understand or use.. just because it offered more at that price than they every could get before.
Arduino has also offered a disconnect between purchase and final utility.
It seems that a lot of items have gotten sold off by becoming darlings of the social networking playground. Odd, very odd. I generally avoid wasting my time with such media buzz.
If you really want to learn something useful, you have to be careful and selective of what you buy. Cheap alone is not necessarily informative.
Kickstart code for BasicStamp2, the Propeller, and Arduino! ! ! !
Very refreshing, Parallax once again demonstrates that it actually wants people to learn by doing.. whereas the field of competition may just want to sell you something that you are left on your own to use.
Apparently the Arduino cleverly disguised C code to get their playful artist to accept it. SO with a bit of further effort, the C code is a transferable skill to the Propeller.
It would be nice to see the 'versus' removed from the Arduino/Propeller discussions. Parallax is perfectly capable of producing an Arduino clone board for ATMega chips at any time. It just hasn't wanted to.
Apparently the Arduino cleverly disguised C code to get their playful artist to accept it. SO with a bit of further effort, the C code is a transferable skill to the Propeller.
Actually, a lot of that "bit of further effort" has already been done ....
To copy/paste a "sketch" and use it in SimpleIDE it may be necessary to enable code pruning in a SimpleIDE project. A future SimpleIDE version will enable it by default.
Beyond the copy-n-paste Arduino code angle, I noticed that SimpleTools.h is quite nice! I have been away for a while and with what you guys have there I now can bin a lot of specialized code for this or that for getting pulse out or timing an incoming pulse or pump out a square wave ect or read an I2C bus. That really goes a long way to making it easy to try out an idea on the Prop without having to construct everything from the ground up. Things have come a long ways Steve and the Gang!
Beyond the copy-n-paste Arduino code angle, I noticed that SimpleTools.h is quite nice! I have been away for a while and with what you guys have there I now can bin a lot of specialized code for this or that for getting pulse out or timing an incoming pulse or pump out a square wave ect or read an I2C bus. That really goes a long way to making it easy to try out an idea on the Prop without having to construct everything from the ground up. Things have come a long ways Steve and the Gang!
Glad you like it! Almost all of the Simple Library code was written by Andy at Parallax.
I've written some (simpletext.h etc...) and have more to add after scrubbing the user interface.
There have been a few other library contributors like Martin_H, tdlivings, and others.
Need to get those libraries in the workspace package.
Tell me you guys are joking about having just discovered the KickStarts on the Learn site.
If you aren't (joking), what can be done to increase awareness of this material? The same goes for Andy's tutorials there. You know he and Stephanie work tirelessly to write, edit, and fine-tune this stuff.
Tell me you guys are joking about having just discovered the KickStarts on the Learn site.
If you aren't (joking), what can be done to increase awareness of this material? The same goes for Andy's tutorials there. You know he and Stephanie work tirelessly to write, edit, and fine-tune this stuff.
Tell me you guys are joking about having just discovered the KickStarts on the Learn site.
If you aren't (joking), what can be done to increase awareness of this material? The same goes for Andy's tutorials there. You know he and Stephanie work tirelessly to write, edit, and fine-tune this stuff.
In my own case, I am an older Parallax customer/user... I don't really want to go to Learn to see yet another presentation of Basics. It is good that it is there as new users are extremely importnant to any business model.
I have very strong suspicions that the whole Raspberry Pi phenomenon was primarily a means to dump a whole generation of excess ARM chips that were never going to go into actual retail consumer electronics.
And your suspicions are completely ungrounded in reality:
1) The idea of providing a small, very cheap computer for kids to mess around on and hopefully inspired about computing and programming was born, by Eben Upton, long before any thoughts of Broadcom and/or ARM processors.
2) The first incarnations of the concept were based on some AVR chip and programmable in Python.
3) It was only perchance that Eben Upton left Cambridge to work for Broadcom where he started to think that an AVR solution would not grab attention and something that could do sound and video would be better.
4) The ARM Soc solution they came up with was not even a Broadcom product. The ARM and GPU were put together like that for the Pi.
5) Nobody expected such huge demand for the Pi, they imagined selling 10 or 20 thousand over three or four years. So certainly the idea of "dumping" anything did not enter into it. There was no stock of old chips to dump.
The only thing proven was that a lot of people with spend $35 USD to buy something that they may never understand or use.. just because it offered more at that price than they every could get before.
Not sure what it proves. People would rather pay less for stuff. You don't say. Certainly indications of a huge demand were there from the first day they put up Linux operating system images for the Pi. Long before the Pi hardware was ready for sale. There were thousands of downloads immediately. Seems people understood very well what they were getting into.
As for those who don't understand, well, that was the case back when the personal computer boom kicked off with the 8 bit C64's. Sinclair Spectrums and all the rest. If a few percent of those learn something then it is mission accomplished as far as the Raspberry Pi Foundation is concerned.
It seems that a lot of items have gotten sold off by becoming darlings of the social networking playground. Odd, very odd. I generally avoid wasting my time with such media buzz.
Er.. isn't that a good thing? People in touch with people. News of good things gets around fast on the internet. Isn't that what this very forum is about? Not sure what you mean by "media buzz" here.
@ Heater
I will try to get this back to the thread topic -- Arduino versus Propeller. The ATMega chips were pretty much moving sluggishly until Arduino came along.
I guess that was where I got the idea that larger companies had begun to look into hobby markets to get rid of inventory and to gain some brand recognition.
With the Beagle Board, Panda Board, Raspberry PI, the ARM SOC seemed to join it. I honestly have never followed the Raspberry Pi story close enough to know precise history. So I should just recant my suspicions.
My personal preferences have never been to have an extremely tiny board that requires an HDMI to VGA adapter or an HDMI monitor. Maybe others have TVs with HDMI interface, I don't.
And having a full file system and OS included takes these into being rather involved devices for beginners that might just want to use the GPIO. I did get the larger and more costly Cubieboard, but haven't done much aside from verifying that I know how to use the tool chain to compile a good binary.
The sales are good. Now what?
With the Propeller, I keep progressing and expanding my knowledge. For a full OS experience I have Mint Linux on my desktop. For me, too many platforms just gets to be a distraction from learning. A few different platforms might offer insights via contrast, but there just isn't enough time to keep up with all of it. I don't even keep up with Windows any more.
Quite so. It's not reasonable to expect "normal" people to keep up with a zillion different platforms. That's a task for the professional who is paid to do so and the really keen.
On the other hand it's all good.
The Arduino was driven by the idea to enable creative types to create micro-controlled things. Not necessarily to make them into electronics or programming wizards. It seems to be fulfilling that goal very well. The Arduino is not for me, if I want an AVR I will just get an AVR.
The Pi was driven by the desire to get youngsters interested in programming. The hardware interfacing side of things is very important but ultimately secondary to that software motivation. Pretty much all UK youngsters have access to a cheap TV with HDMI or composite inputs at least. So the motivation for those features is obvious.
The Propeller seems to be driven by Chip's vision and desire that there be such a thing. Clearly it sits somewhere in the ground between Arduino and bigger things like the Pi. I think there is room for all of them.
I speculate that those who push the Arduiono to the limits would be quite happy to look at a Propeller whereas a Pi would be too big a jump and not support real world interfacing and real-time work as well.
On the other hand there will be those that push the I/O of the Pi to the limit and would also love to look at the Propeller where as the Arduino would suddenly become too small for them.
That is to say that these competitors can actually grow the demand for the Prop. Assuming the Prop pushes itself under the users noses.
I don't even keep up with Windows any more.
He, he, I don't know anyone who bothers with that legacy stuff anymore either.
In my own case, I am an older Parallax customer/user... I don't really want to go to Learn to see yet another presentation of Basics. It is good that it is there as new users are extremely importnant to any business model.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you not using any of the new products or tools? The Learn site has all sorts of brand new information on emerging languages such as C for the Propeller, as well as extended documentation, examples, and tutorials for the latest Parallax offerings, like the new ActivityBoard. New users yes, but the there are also new products, and new supported languages.
Tell me you guys are joking about having just discovered the KickStarts on the Learn site.
If you aren't (joking), what can be done to increase awareness of this material? The same goes for Andy's tutorials there. You know he and Stephanie work tirelessly to write, edit, and fine-tune this stuff.
I tossed this link into this discussion because it seemed related to the topic as an actual "us and them" in real code. This is a very heady and meandering discussion and is fun to read, but I sometimes crave more "down in the metal" and "real world examples" of "us vs them" .
I get questions every week about why use Prop instead of STAMP or Arduino. My answer is a riff on the sentences below.
As you can see from studying servos, uCon have to interface peripherals at very specific times.
You will want to add sensors, recorders, more outputs, etc. many of which will have their own time requirements.
When you have to exactly hit all those timings it becomes very hard. Recall your exercise (controlling different LEDS at different rates)
The Propeller is different - there are 8 microcontrollers inside one chip.
Each one can be given the job of performing one timed interface so working with 8 devices at once is no harder than controlling one servo
The 8 microcontrollers can talk with each other inside the chip for the high-level coordination
Learning to work with Arduino or STAMP is fine, but if you plan to keep studying you are going to move to a Propeller anyhow so why not start with it?
I know that is not the story, the whole story and nothing but the story but it fits with their experiences to date and what they can envision for their future. It is an understandable answer.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you not using any of the new products or tools? The Learn site has all sorts of brand new information on emerging languages such as C for the Propeller, as well as extended documentation, examples, and tutorials for the latest Parallax offerings, like the new ActivityBoard. New users yes, but the there are also new products, and new supported languages.
Well, I bought five 40 pin DIP Propeller early on, I bought 3 Propeller Demo Boards early on, and I bought another 5 Propeller Proto Boards early. I also have a dozen or more BasicStamps with various boards and maybe 50 SX chips in various situations. There is plenty of capactity to build projects without purchasing new boards or migrating to new languages.
In sum, I am learning driven -- not marketing driven. Too many changes in format make me feel like I am studying federal tax law, not engineering fundamentals or better programing. My programing goals are to use Assember and to depense with the burden of learning yet another high-level language with its quirks, bugs, and updates.
I've yet to program the Propeller in C, but have moved into learning Forth in a big way. My biggest 'new language' interest is Python, which really is not appropriate for the Propeller 1.
I am willing to program the Propeller in C when Simple IDE is ready for Linux. I given up trying to keep up with the leading edge at Parallax. It is exciting, but raises my blood pressure to unhealthy levels.
@Gordon McComb
Congratulations on your Kickstart book that has just been released. I am sure it will be a valued addition to Parallax publications.
This kind of support for new users is an important lynch pin to Parallax's on-going prosperity. My own position is rather aside. I am just a 65 year old with a lot of accumulated electronics at this point. ... Not a young person wanting to learn as a means to adapt to a future that will certainly have more computers.
What I really meant was, given that the Learn site is heavily populated with new product -- that tends to be what people want to know about -- and assuming you're getting some of this new product, is the information there too basic? The KickStarts are supposed to be introductory, but some of the other content gets into more detail. For someone more familiar with Parallax product, are you finding value in the Learn site?
Mind you, I have really no say or input to the content of the Learn site, but as an occasional contributor, I'm always interested in what people are looking to find.
Well, Parallax has invested heavily in Learn as an outreach to new users. I just don't fit the demographic.
But I am please to see that they are providing parallel code for BasicStamp2, the Propeller, and Arduino. Users do learn much more by becoming adept at translating code rather than being entirely dependent on one language and one device.
It is a great way to demonstrate that the Propeller will support what the Arduino does... and MUCH more at similar or lower cost as the Propeller has more generic i/o, provides color TV or VGA output, and keyboard or mouse input.
I may be old-fashioned, but I do like reference books as an accessory to programming. Using a computer to both compile a program and read a reference at the same time gets to be awkward. It is cheaper to buy the reference book that a second VGA screen.
I agree to the "apples to oranges" comment posted earlier, however, here's my take (besides the fact that I like both):
My main problem was that in Arduino it's a single core platform, therefore I can only run a single loop simultaneously. So if I need to program different sensors to read data so I can then take an action depending on the sensor's data, I'd have to wait until my loop finishes and then starts up again. For example, let's say I wanted to program a quadcopter with a gyro sensor to control the current of motors... In Arduino I can't simultaneously read the data from the sensor in "live" mode and take an action on all my motors, by the time my loop reaches that section in my loop the data will have changed from the sensor (of course in any case their will be a delay! But still...).
Meanwhile, through the Propeller, I can have 1 thread running on one core that reads gyro data and saves the data into a global variable, and 4 more threads, each controlling current to my motors and each simultaneously reading the global variables recorded by the 1st thread (Gyro data) to control current! By doing this, each function is running completely independently on its own thread without having to worry about delays between your loop restarts.
I guess it all depends on what you intend to use it for.
By the way, someone made an incorrect statement in this thread... Propeller DOES have a tool for Windows and Mac that is entirely for C programming and it is available on their website: SimpleIDE. So if you're familiar with Arduino programming in C, this is pretty much the same.
Comments
Chip consistently articulates his desire to see the P2 displaying things graphically. Use the various sensors and get the data onto the screen in simple, clear forms. And it will do great sound too, but we just don't get the conversation about that much right now.
It's going to be kind of interesting. If doing that ends up kind of easy, and I suspect the basics will be as there is enough RAM to support reasonable, simple, fast, VGA resolution type displays, perhaps having that in one place can do some of the kinds of things one would use a Pi (or Pi like device) + development board + sensors to do. If people are working right on the Pi, then it takes the PC out of the equation though...
To me, this is still key:
What they care about is that there's an example sketch that does what they want. They may not (and usually aren't) aware the sketch may use an interrupt or two, or does some tricky things with internal timers.
Yep. Perhaps the GCC environment can really get that moving forward.
Must be something is wrong with my RPi. It is agonizingly slow. My old 700MHz Pentium Fedora PC is very responsive by comparison.
Thats absolutely correct. However, Parallax has positioned the P1 as the right tool for what ?
A smart cookie could indeed probably make a killing with a RPi/P1 solution, where it seems perfect. In fact, Parallax could make a major event of the Prop 2 by getting a moderately cheap RPi I/O co-proc type board out there. Talk about free advertising and your target audience.....
I know, however the LaunchPad went back on sale for $4.30 around the same time I happened to realize what I needed.
Should make an excellent 1-to-1 comparison between a project done with interrupts and one not, even if it isn't a significantly difficult project.
Also, I'm not advoating Parallax add interrupts to the Prop1/2. I support them and its their right.
I just think that for the majority of projects 'interrupt difficulty' hasn't sold to the masses because it has been over-hyped and blown way, way out of proportion.
Anyone who wants to argue, I just point to the Moon, and comment that we've walked on it, courtesy of interrupts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Interrupts_and_involuntary_counters).
If they still argue, I point to their cellphone, and comment that its more powerful that many, many Cray Supercomputers built in the past, is a phone, a GPS navigation device, TV, game console, and on and on.
All based on those impossible interrupts. (http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2684)
Yes, VNC is a great tool. Does the Pi run X, or not? If it does, VNC could be slow, because screen queries are convoluted in a full X environment. It wasn't really meant to be screen scraped that way.
How about doing a similar thing with a Prop? *nix handles networking, Prop handles I/O.
And on a different but related note, are people aware of this?
A Wifi platform running full *nix in an SD card !?
There are so many opportunities for the right aggregation
for/at the right moment.
I have very strong suspicions that the whole Raspberry Pi phenomenon was primarily a means to dump a whole generation of excess ARM chips that were never going to go into actual retail consumer electronics.
The only thing proven was that a lot of people with spend $35 USD to buy something that they may never understand or use.. just because it offered more at that price than they every could get before.
Arduino has also offered a disconnect between purchase and final utility.
It seems that a lot of items have gotten sold off by becoming darlings of the social networking playground. Odd, very odd. I generally avoid wasting my time with such media buzz.
If you really want to learn something useful, you have to be careful and selective of what you buy. Cheap alone is not necessarily informative.
http://learn.parallax.com/KickStart
Very refreshing, Parallax once again demonstrates that it actually wants people to learn by doing.. whereas the field of competition may just want to sell you something that you are left on your own to use.
Apparently the Arduino cleverly disguised C code to get their playful artist to accept it. SO with a bit of further effort, the C code is a transferable skill to the Propeller.
It would be nice to see the 'versus' removed from the Arduino/Propeller discussions. Parallax is perfectly capable of producing an Arduino clone board for ATMega chips at any time. It just hasn't wanted to.
Actually, a lot of that "bit of further effort" has already been done ....
Here's the thread:
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/148401-Propeller-Chip-runs-a-mostly-unmodified-Arduino-program-(video)?p=1188583&viewfull=1#post1188583
Here's the latest package that contains the Aduino library for SimpleIDE - look for libPropellerino:
http://forums.parallax.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=103105&d=1375153522
To copy/paste a "sketch" and use it in SimpleIDE it may be necessary to enable code pruning in a SimpleIDE project. A future SimpleIDE version will enable it by default.
Glad you like it! Almost all of the Simple Library code was written by Andy at Parallax.
I've written some (simpletext.h etc...) and have more to add after scrubbing the user interface.
There have been a few other library contributors like Martin_H, tdlivings, and others.
Need to get those libraries in the workspace package.
We are looking for other contributions.
If you aren't (joking), what can be done to increase awareness of this material? The same goes for Andy's tutorials there. You know he and Stephanie work tirelessly to write, edit, and fine-tune this stuff.
Get someone to post about it more often?
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/137633-New-Book!-quot-Microcontroller-KickStarts-quot-by-Gordon-McComb?p=1205347&viewfull=1#post1205347
In my own case, I am an older Parallax customer/user... I don't really want to go to Learn to see yet another presentation of Basics. It is good that it is there as new users are extremely importnant to any business model.
1) The idea of providing a small, very cheap computer for kids to mess around on and hopefully inspired about computing and programming was born, by Eben Upton, long before any thoughts of Broadcom and/or ARM processors.
2) The first incarnations of the concept were based on some AVR chip and programmable in Python.
3) It was only perchance that Eben Upton left Cambridge to work for Broadcom where he started to think that an AVR solution would not grab attention and something that could do sound and video would be better.
4) The ARM Soc solution they came up with was not even a Broadcom product. The ARM and GPU were put together like that for the Pi.
5) Nobody expected such huge demand for the Pi, they imagined selling 10 or 20 thousand over three or four years. So certainly the idea of "dumping" anything did not enter into it. There was no stock of old chips to dump.
Not sure what it proves. People would rather pay less for stuff. You don't say. Certainly indications of a huge demand were there from the first day they put up Linux operating system images for the Pi. Long before the Pi hardware was ready for sale. There were thousands of downloads immediately. Seems people understood very well what they were getting into.
As for those who don't understand, well, that was the case back when the personal computer boom kicked off with the 8 bit C64's. Sinclair Spectrums and all the rest. If a few percent of those learn something then it is mission accomplished as far as the Raspberry Pi Foundation is concerned.
Er.. isn't that a good thing? People in touch with people. News of good things gets around fast on the internet. Isn't that what this very forum is about? Not sure what you mean by "media buzz" here.
If you want to hear it from the horses mouth per se, you can listen to him tell the whole story here:
... and the framed certificate in the background in our World Record for the world's largest QR code in case you're curious.
Lucky Dog!
I will try to get this back to the thread topic -- Arduino versus Propeller. The ATMega chips were pretty much moving sluggishly until Arduino came along.
I guess that was where I got the idea that larger companies had begun to look into hobby markets to get rid of inventory and to gain some brand recognition.
With the Beagle Board, Panda Board, Raspberry PI, the ARM SOC seemed to join it. I honestly have never followed the Raspberry Pi story close enough to know precise history. So I should just recant my suspicions.
My personal preferences have never been to have an extremely tiny board that requires an HDMI to VGA adapter or an HDMI monitor. Maybe others have TVs with HDMI interface, I don't.
And having a full file system and OS included takes these into being rather involved devices for beginners that might just want to use the GPIO. I did get the larger and more costly Cubieboard, but haven't done much aside from verifying that I know how to use the tool chain to compile a good binary.
The sales are good. Now what?
With the Propeller, I keep progressing and expanding my knowledge. For a full OS experience I have Mint Linux on my desktop. For me, too many platforms just gets to be a distraction from learning. A few different platforms might offer insights via contrast, but there just isn't enough time to keep up with all of it. I don't even keep up with Windows any more.
On the other hand it's all good.
The Arduino was driven by the idea to enable creative types to create micro-controlled things. Not necessarily to make them into electronics or programming wizards. It seems to be fulfilling that goal very well. The Arduino is not for me, if I want an AVR I will just get an AVR.
The Pi was driven by the desire to get youngsters interested in programming. The hardware interfacing side of things is very important but ultimately secondary to that software motivation. Pretty much all UK youngsters have access to a cheap TV with HDMI or composite inputs at least. So the motivation for those features is obvious.
The Propeller seems to be driven by Chip's vision and desire that there be such a thing. Clearly it sits somewhere in the ground between Arduino and bigger things like the Pi. I think there is room for all of them.
I speculate that those who push the Arduiono to the limits would be quite happy to look at a Propeller whereas a Pi would be too big a jump and not support real world interfacing and real-time work as well.
On the other hand there will be those that push the I/O of the Pi to the limit and would also love to look at the Propeller where as the Arduino would suddenly become too small for them.
That is to say that these competitors can actually grow the demand for the Prop. Assuming the Prop pushes itself under the users noses.
He, he, I don't know anyone who bothers with that legacy stuff anymore either.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you not using any of the new products or tools? The Learn site has all sorts of brand new information on emerging languages such as C for the Propeller, as well as extended documentation, examples, and tutorials for the latest Parallax offerings, like the new ActivityBoard. New users yes, but the there are also new products, and new supported languages.
I tossed this link into this discussion because it seemed related to the topic as an actual "us and them" in real code. This is a very heady and meandering discussion and is fun to read, but I sometimes crave more "down in the metal" and "real world examples" of "us vs them" .
As you can see from studying servos, uCon have to interface peripherals at very specific times.
You will want to add sensors, recorders, more outputs, etc. many of which will have their own time requirements.
When you have to exactly hit all those timings it becomes very hard. Recall your exercise (controlling different LEDS at different rates)
The Propeller is different - there are 8 microcontrollers inside one chip.
Each one can be given the job of performing one timed interface so working with 8 devices at once is no harder than controlling one servo
The 8 microcontrollers can talk with each other inside the chip for the high-level coordination
Learning to work with Arduino or STAMP is fine, but if you plan to keep studying you are going to move to a Propeller anyhow so why not start with it?
I know that is not the story, the whole story and nothing but the story but it fits with their experiences to date and what they can envision for their future. It is an understandable answer.
Well, I bought five 40 pin DIP Propeller early on, I bought 3 Propeller Demo Boards early on, and I bought another 5 Propeller Proto Boards early. I also have a dozen or more BasicStamps with various boards and maybe 50 SX chips in various situations. There is plenty of capactity to build projects without purchasing new boards or migrating to new languages.
In sum, I am learning driven -- not marketing driven. Too many changes in format make me feel like I am studying federal tax law, not engineering fundamentals or better programing. My programing goals are to use Assember and to depense with the burden of learning yet another high-level language with its quirks, bugs, and updates.
I've yet to program the Propeller in C, but have moved into learning Forth in a big way. My biggest 'new language' interest is Python, which really is not appropriate for the Propeller 1.
I am willing to program the Propeller in C when Simple IDE is ready for Linux. I given up trying to keep up with the leading edge at Parallax. It is exciting, but raises my blood pressure to unhealthy levels.
Congratulations on your Kickstart book that has just been released. I am sure it will be a valued addition to Parallax publications.
This kind of support for new users is an important lynch pin to Parallax's on-going prosperity. My own position is rather aside. I am just a 65 year old with a lot of accumulated electronics at this point. ... Not a young person wanting to learn as a means to adapt to a future that will certainly have more computers.
Mind you, I have really no say or input to the content of the Learn site, but as an occasional contributor, I'm always interested in what people are looking to find.
But I am please to see that they are providing parallel code for BasicStamp2, the Propeller, and Arduino. Users do learn much more by becoming adept at translating code rather than being entirely dependent on one language and one device.
It is a great way to demonstrate that the Propeller will support what the Arduino does... and MUCH more at similar or lower cost as the Propeller has more generic i/o, provides color TV or VGA output, and keyboard or mouse input.
I may be old-fashioned, but I do like reference books as an accessory to programming. Using a computer to both compile a program and read a reference at the same time gets to be awkward. It is cheaper to buy the reference book that a second VGA screen.
My main problem was that in Arduino it's a single core platform, therefore I can only run a single loop simultaneously. So if I need to program different sensors to read data so I can then take an action depending on the sensor's data, I'd have to wait until my loop finishes and then starts up again. For example, let's say I wanted to program a quadcopter with a gyro sensor to control the current of motors... In Arduino I can't simultaneously read the data from the sensor in "live" mode and take an action on all my motors, by the time my loop reaches that section in my loop the data will have changed from the sensor (of course in any case their will be a delay! But still...).
Meanwhile, through the Propeller, I can have 1 thread running on one core that reads gyro data and saves the data into a global variable, and 4 more threads, each controlling current to my motors and each simultaneously reading the global variables recorded by the 1st thread (Gyro data) to control current! By doing this, each function is running completely independently on its own thread without having to worry about delays between your loop restarts.
I guess it all depends on what you intend to use it for.
By the way, someone made an incorrect statement in this thread... Propeller DOES have a tool for Windows and Mac that is entirely for C programming and it is available on their website: SimpleIDE. So if you're familiar with Arduino programming in C, this is pretty much the same.
Welcome to the forum.
I think you summed up the Props advantages very well.
This is a very old thread now, perhaps SimpleIDE was not an option then.
Now we have SimpleIDE for C programming the Prop and PropellerIDE for Spin programming. Life is good in Propeller land.
Welcome to the forums.
As Heater said, you bring up good points for using the Propeller.
Please stick around and share your Propeller experiences.