Which one would you choose

damagedcells

I am looking at stepping into Prop and was leaning towards the demo board (especially since the price was reduced) but now I saw the C3. I have browsed the documentation of the C3 and it looks as if it is very much like the demo board but noticed that there is (roughly) 4 un-assigned pins while the demo board has access to 7. The idea of industrial design uses peaked my interest in the C3; but I want to know:

If you where new to Prop, wanted get pretty flexible platform that you won't out grow too quickly- which board would you buy?

Mike Green

It depends on what you think you want to do with it. If mostly you want to do software, the C3 looks like a better platform since it has built-in hardware (SRAM, Flash, SD card, ADC) that's useful for that. If you want to learn a bit of hardware stuff, you might want to get the Demo Board. It's possible to add SRAM, Flash, SD card, and even an ADC (if you need it) to the Demo Board. I have one set up that way with the SRAM and Flash on the breadboard area and a micro-SD card on a tiny daughter board glued to the top of the VGA connector with jumpers connecting it to the I/O pins.

waltsailing

Hi,

I am new to this also, I have the demo board and it has a little bread board area to plug in the parts you might want to mess around with. Stuff from the boebot, like the ping sensor, compass, etc, will be able to be plugged into the demo board with ease. The C3 looks pretty good, but no place to build yourself a simple circuit or two to quickly to try things out. I am thinking the C3 would be good for a final project but to learn it, if you want your own ckts the the demo board seems easier. So, rather than just the propeller demo board, i would suggest the propeller starter kit and then get the books... three more of them. The propeller manual comes with the demo board in the starter kit, but you should really get these. and the propeller manual if you get the c3. I may get a C3 later, they are out of them right now!

1. Programming the propeller with sping, a beginners guide to parallel processing.
2. Propeller Educaion Kit Labs: Fundementals
3. Programming and Customizing the multicore propeller microcontroller.

Regards,
Walt

AndreL

The C3 also has a daughter prototyping board add on boards that sits on the the C3, so you can do experiments with the IO which you have 16 available on the primary interface header (of course some are muxed with VGA ,etc.). But, the idea of the C3 is to be a new standard platform for development and final applications. I would say, move to the new product since its new and designed to save you the time of adding all these features that everyone typically adds. Plus, it adds them in a consistent way and there are a lot of programmers working on C3 ports, languages, tools, right now to make this one of the breakout products of Parallax Semiconductor.

Andre'

Humanoido

I recommend one of each, a Parallax Demo Board and a Proto Board, so it's possible to develop multi-prop circuits and software.

damagedcells

thanks for all the feed back- Now, I need to know which book is the best to learn SPIN

Unknown

damagedcells wrote: »

I am looking at stepping into Prop and was leaning towards the demo board (especially since the price was reduced) but now I saw the C3. I have browsed the documentation of the C3 and it looks as if it is very much like the demo board but noticed that there is (roughly) 4 un-assigned pins while the demo board has access to 7. The idea of industrial design uses peaked my interest in the C3; but I want to know:

If you where new to Prop, wanted get pretty flexible platform that you won't out grow too quickly- which board would you buy?

It depends on whether you have experience or not. If you don't, get "What is a Microcontroller?" and start from there.

Kevin Wood

The price difference isn't so large when you consider that you'll need an ADC adapter for the Demo board, whereas C3 supports power over USB. Personally, I would choose the C3 for this alone. If you factor in the additional hardware costs if purchased separately, the C3 is probably the better value.

As for breadboarding space... just use a rubber band to attach the C3 to a breadboard: http://todbot.com/blog/2007/11/14/the-1¢-arduino-under-shield/