It was said in Post #40 that some of the design will change, so I would not expect an official document until that time.
As I see it, it is an evaluation board. You seem to be asking question aimed at it being a board that could be put into production.
Even if it is an evaluation board, users should at least have some text describing some of the features even before the board is purchased or delivered. Especially for many not used to dealing with someone else's boards. Shouldn't have to be that everyone on their own has to sort of reverse engineer the features included, imho. Maybe I'm looking for info a bit too early.
On looking at post #40 again, I just noticed how small the pcb is. 2" x 3" is a bit smaller than a credit card (about 2.1" x 3.4"). I just laid a credit card on my desk and imagined I had the component side to scale. Dang, I may have a problem with 'big fingers/tiny component' disability. Wish it had pads for a RCA connector (and the 4 resistors), but now understand why not included. Real estate.
I remembered I ordered QuickStart boards from the Parallax site, but find that the Propeller Semiconductor site describes the features a bit more complete.
For example, it mentions the type of USB cable (A to mini . And that it ships in a 'nifty little box'. May even be more; I didn't print both out and compare word-for-word. Maybe all my questions above are answered.....
I still feel some text should be up on the web site with the QuickStart. Maybe as a download?
I remembered I ordered QuickStart boards from the Parallax site, but find that the Propeller Semiconductor site describes the features a bit more complete.
For example, it mentions the type of USB cable (A to mini . And that it ships in a 'nifty little box'. May even be more; I didn't print both out and compare word-for-word. Maybe all my questions above are answered.....
I still feel some text should be up on the web site with the QuickStart. Maybe as a download?
Hey Harley, sit tight for a few more days and we'll get all questions answered and provide schematics and the technical information you are asking about. Tomorrow we are at ESC with an assortment of our Propeller folks, but the key engineer responsible for this product (David Carrier) has room in his schedule to advance the technical data next week.
If for any reason you ended up not being totally happy you could always cancel the order, or take receipt and return it - not a problem. No risk. But I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with the PCB/feature/design decisions we made for you. More importantly, you'll probably like the decisions we didn't make for you as well.
I sure wish I could attend this conference....I just love a big conference...so many
interesting people to meet!
Better than Disneyland IMO.
Very true, but when Chip is coming with you it is important to keep moving because he can talk to a single person for hours. And it's so much more fun to go as an attendee instead of as an exhibitor. After a day or four working in a booth as an exhibitor you really want to retreat to a hole and be left alone, even if you like meeting with customers. But being able to blast through a show in a day as a visitor is really nice, on your own terms.
We found a nice trick to running a booth a while back. It's pretty easy to recruit Parallax customers to run our booth. They're really good sales and support people and they often know the whole product line.
Very true, but when Chip is coming with you it is important to keep moving because he can talk to a single person for hours. And it's so much more fun to go as an attendee instead of as an exhibitor. After a day or four working in a booth as an exhibitor you really want to retreat to a hole and be left alone, even if you like meeting with customers. But being able to blast through a show in a day as a visitor is really nice, on your own terms.
We found a nice trick to running a booth a while back. It's pretty easy to recruit Parallax customers to run our booth. They're really good sales and support people and they often know the whole product line.
I agree with you Ken we the customers make a great sales person at shows. I think this new product will work well for Parallax.
I have some ideas for add on boards that I will post later on for those who like doing automation projects. This board will be similar to the features that are use on the StampPLC. You can see my board that I design for the Spinneret contest.
Very true, but when Chip is coming with you it is important to keep moving because he can talk to a single person for hours. And it's so much more fun to go as an attendee instead of as an exhibitor. After a day or four working in a booth as an exhibitor you really want to retreat to a hole and be left alone, even if you like meeting with customers. But being able to blast through a show in a day as a visitor is really nice, on your own terms.
We found a nice trick to running a booth a while back. It's pretty easy to recruit Parallax customers to run our booth. They're really good sales and support people and they often know the whole product line.
Ken: LOL Yes, most of us here are absolutely committed to the prop. And because we have no affiliation (except extremely happy users) our opinions have more credibility. It is a great thing when you have users coming up to your stand praising your product in front of potential customers
The Proteus prototyping board will plug into QuickStart, or QuickStart can plug into it (if you populate the open header position); as long as Parallax does not move the 3v3 and GND pins on the next board revision, I will have a number of prototyping boards available as of UPEW for the QuickStart.
Bill Henning,
I have attached the final header layout.I did move the 3.3 V and 5 V supplies around.
Ariba,
We put a lot into making sure we have the appropriate connectors and pin-outs on our boards. One of the criteria is to make it as compatible as we reasonably can. The times that we have made standardising the highest priority, it hasn't succeeded, for example the AppMod header on the BoE never really caught on. Also, some items we are just reselling, so we weren't involved in the design process.
For some examples, here is some more information about the products you have mentioned:
The gamepad adapter is a servo connector with three more data pins.
The nets surrounding the Propeller in the Propeller Proto Board were never meant to be used as a connector, let alone a standard for one.
The miscroSD adapter pin-out matches the pin-out of an actual card, except power and ground are next to each other.
The MotorMind is a Solutions Cubed product that we resell, and we didn't influence its design.
The Easy BlueTooth module, much like the eb500 module we sold before it, is compatible with the AppMod header ... which never really caught on.
The WiFi module will be compatible with the Prop Plug, with an extra row of pins for power, command/data mode, /RTS, and /CTS. The PropBOE and QuickStart will also be compatible with the Prop Plug, except they will have a socket instead of a header. You can use a right-angle header to connect wither two a Prop Plug, much like connecting the Prop Plug to a breadboard. They both have USB controllers built in, so you wouldn't need to use them with a Prop Plug, but you can use them with anything that anyone has made to be compatible with a Prop Plug.
MacTuxLin,
We have an Altium component library that we could release. Right now it needs to be cleaned up, but we are planning on releasing it once it is stable.
TonyD,
I don't what Eagle can import, but we will export whatever we can so that you can import it into Eagle.
Wurlitzer,
Call sales at 1-888-512-1024; they can check on your order. It is rare for them to take more than one business day to respond to an email.
HShanko,
There are vias (plated-through holes) next to J1 for soldering to. The extra ones along the right edge are power and ground. The documentation will list the pin-out of the header and the functions of the components. We didn't want to clutter the PCB with more labels than were needed.
The unpopulated items are the vias for soldering and pads for a delta-sigma ADC circuit. U5 buffers the LEDs so that they do not load the I/O pins. This allows you to use P23..16 for high-speed communications when you are not actively using the LEDs. J8 is for the delta-sigma ADC circuit, which is not populated so that it doesn't load the I/O pins. The values needed also vary depending on the desired sample rate vs. resolution trade-off. J2 is a USB Mini-B socket. D9 and D10 are USB activity LEDs. They match the functionality of the LEDs on the Prop Plug. U4 isolates U3 (the USB converter) when it is unpowered. This allows you to use P30 and P31 when you aren't using the USB port.
The pin labeled 5V in the header is somewhat of a misnomer, in the current revision of the schematic. It is more of a Vin/Vout. If you are powering the QuickStart board using the USB port, you can draw power from the pin, but with a small voltage drop. If you aren't supplying power over the USB port, you can supply power to this pin, using between 4 and 15 or so volts, depending on the current draw. The voltage drop on D12 will always be less than 0.4 volts, but it should be closer to 0.1 to 0.2. Q2 will drop a few mV or less under almost any circumstance.
Publison,
Pre-orders may not show up on your credit card until we can ship the order.
Please put 3v3 back where it was - you moving it up makes QuickStart incompatible with my prototyping boards, as it would run Vin to the whole power plane.
I pointed out in post #61 on May 2nd that keeping the original GND/3v3/5V pattern of your preliminary design PDF would allow using QuickStart with Mikronauts prototyping boards; as a matter of fact I emailed Ken about the prototyping boards working with QuickStart on May 2nd before posting in this thread...
I thought Parallax would really like having immediate access to a number of high quality third party prototyping boards for QuickStart.
I suggest putting Vin above 3v3, in which case QuickStart has access to two in-production high quality prototyping boards in a manner compatible with my system (and a third in less than two weeks when it is announced at UPEW).
It should therefore be feasible to import the files into most other packages that support P-CAD ASCII import. It would be interesting to see if there are similar problems.
... The times that we have made standardising the highest priority, it hasn't succeeded, for example the AppMod header on the BoE never really caught on....
I don't know the AppMod header but I think if Parallax make all there boards and expansion modules with the same standard header - this standard must succeed.
Such a header should have only a few I/O pins with some power pins. So you can compose a lot of such modules like Lego bricks. A good example for such a system is the Digilent PMOD standard. The single line header has only 4 I/O pins and 3.3V and GND. They have it now expanded to two rows and 8 I/Os. Important is that also the distance between the connectors is standardized, this allows to use more than one header for bigger modules with more than 4/8 I/Os.
See: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,401&Cat=9
Andy
Edit: I forgot to say that this PMOD pinout is perfect compatible to the 10 pin standard if you leave out the last 4 I/Os.
I could not agree with you more - I agree so much I formed Mikronauts based on such a concept of standard connectors, boards and modules years ago!
Parallax introduced a nice 10 pin standard introduced on the Propeller Proto board (serial and USB versions) years ago, and I jumped on that standard with both feet!
At UPEW, I will be introducing 18 ten pin modules that fit the Parallax Proto boards, all Mikronauts boards, and ucontroller.com's spinvent.
(I also standardized the spacing between two modules, to make 16 propeller I/O accessible to one card via two connectors)
I quite like the QuickStart board, and I think it has a great future.
I don't know the AppMod header but I think if Parallax make all there boards and expansion modules with the same standard header - this standard must succeed.
Such a header should have only a few I/O pins with some power pins. So you can compose a lot of such modules like Lego bricks. A good example for such a system is the Digilent PMOD standard. The single line header has only 4 I/O pins and 3.3V and GND. They have it now expanded to two rows and 8 I/Os. Important is that also the distance between the connectors is standardized, this allows to use more than one header for bigger modules with more than 4/8 I/Os.
See: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,401&Cat=9
Comments
Even if it is an evaluation board, users should at least have some text describing some of the features even before the board is purchased or delivered. Especially for many not used to dealing with someone else's boards. Shouldn't have to be that everyone on their own has to sort of reverse engineer the features included, imho. Maybe I'm looking for info a bit too early.
On looking at post #40 again, I just noticed how small the pcb is. 2" x 3" is a bit smaller than a credit card (about 2.1" x 3.4"). I just laid a credit card on my desk and imagined I had the component side to scale. Dang, I may have a problem with 'big fingers/tiny component' disability. Wish it had pads for a RCA connector (and the 4 resistors), but now understand why not included. Real estate.
For example, it mentions the type of USB cable (A to mini
I still feel some text should be up on the web site with the QuickStart. Maybe as a download?
Hey Harley, sit tight for a few more days and we'll get all questions answered and provide schematics and the technical information you are asking about. Tomorrow we are at ESC with an assortment of our Propeller folks, but the key engineer responsible for this product (David Carrier) has room in his schedule to advance the technical data next week.
If for any reason you ended up not being totally happy you could always cancel the order, or take receipt and return it - not a problem. No risk. But I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with the PCB/feature/design decisions we made for you. More importantly, you'll probably like the decisions we didn't make for you as well.
Thanks,
Ken Gracey
I sure wish I could attend this conference....I just love a big conference...so many
interesting people to meet!
Better than Disneyland IMO.
Very true, but when Chip is coming with you it is important to keep moving because he can talk to a single person for hours. And it's so much more fun to go as an attendee instead of as an exhibitor. After a day or four working in a booth as an exhibitor you really want to retreat to a hole and be left alone, even if you like meeting with customers. But being able to blast through a show in a day as a visitor is really nice, on your own terms.
We found a nice trick to running a booth a while back. It's pretty easy to recruit Parallax customers to run our booth. They're really good sales and support people and they often know the whole product line.
Noooo, I don't want to cancel my order. Apologies for being an pest.
I just assumed maybe there wouldn't be any further documentation once the product was announced.
I'll hold my patience and await further 'goodies' to be written prior to shipping the product.
Thanks Ken
I have some ideas for add on boards that I will post later on for those who like doing automation projects. This board will be similar to the features that are use on the StampPLC. You can see my board that I design for the Spinneret contest.
Ken: LOL Yes, most of us here are absolutely committed to the prop. And because we have no affiliation (except extremely happy users) our opinions have more credibility. It is a great thing when you have users coming up to your stand praising your product in front of potential customers
I still didn't see a physical size in the PDF, but it <appears> to be under credit card size.
Full documents posted yet ?
jr
The Proteus prototyping board will plug into QuickStart, or QuickStart can plug into it (if you populate the open header position); as long as Parallax does not move the 3v3 and GND pins on the next board revision, I will have a number of prototyping boards available as of UPEW for the QuickStart.
See http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?130665 for details and photo's. Future runs will be blue.
I will also make a "qsBridge" board that will bring the wonderful world of 10 pin modules to the QuickStart
(smiley face because I will be showing ~20 10-pin modules at UPEW)
I have attached the final header layout.I did move the 3.3 V and 5 V supplies around.
Ariba,
We put a lot into making sure we have the appropriate connectors and pin-outs on our boards. One of the criteria is to make it as compatible as we reasonably can. The times that we have made standardising the highest priority, it hasn't succeeded, for example the AppMod header on the BoE never really caught on. Also, some items we are just reselling, so we weren't involved in the design process.
For some examples, here is some more information about the products you have mentioned:
- The gamepad adapter is a servo connector with three more data pins.
- The nets surrounding the Propeller in the Propeller Proto Board were never meant to be used as a connector, let alone a standard for one.
- The miscroSD adapter pin-out matches the pin-out of an actual card, except power and ground are next to each other.
- The MotorMind is a Solutions Cubed product that we resell, and we didn't influence its design.
- The Easy BlueTooth module, much like the eb500 module we sold before it, is compatible with the AppMod header ... which never really caught on.
The WiFi module will be compatible with the Prop Plug, with an extra row of pins for power, command/data mode, /RTS, and /CTS. The PropBOE and QuickStart will also be compatible with the Prop Plug, except they will have a socket instead of a header. You can use a right-angle header to connect wither two a Prop Plug, much like connecting the Prop Plug to a breadboard. They both have USB controllers built in, so you wouldn't need to use them with a Prop Plug, but you can use them with anything that anyone has made to be compatible with a Prop Plug.MacTuxLin,
We have an Altium component library that we could release. Right now it needs to be cleaned up, but we are planning on releasing it once it is stable.
TonyD,
I don't what Eagle can import, but we will export whatever we can so that you can import it into Eagle.
Wurlitzer,
Call sales at 1-888-512-1024; they can check on your order. It is rare for them to take more than one business day to respond to an email.
HShanko,
There are vias (plated-through holes) next to J1 for soldering to. The extra ones along the right edge are power and ground. The documentation will list the pin-out of the header and the functions of the components. We didn't want to clutter the PCB with more labels than were needed.
The unpopulated items are the vias for soldering and pads for a delta-sigma ADC circuit. U5 buffers the LEDs so that they do not load the I/O pins. This allows you to use P23..16 for high-speed communications when you are not actively using the LEDs. J8 is for the delta-sigma ADC circuit, which is not populated so that it doesn't load the I/O pins. The values needed also vary depending on the desired sample rate vs. resolution trade-off. J2 is a USB Mini-B socket. D9 and D10 are USB activity LEDs. They match the functionality of the LEDs on the Prop Plug. U4 isolates U3 (the USB converter) when it is unpowered. This allows you to use P30 and P31 when you aren't using the USB port.
The pin labeled 5V in the header is somewhat of a misnomer, in the current revision of the schematic. It is more of a Vin/Vout. If you are powering the QuickStart board using the USB port, you can draw power from the pin, but with a small voltage drop. If you aren't supplying power over the USB port, you can supply power to this pin, using between 4 and 15 or so volts, depending on the current draw. The voltage drop on D12 will always be less than 0.4 volts, but it should be closer to 0.1 to 0.2. Q2 will drop a few mV or less under almost any circumstance.
Publison,
Pre-orders may not show up on your credit card until we can ship the order.
Please put 3v3 back where it was - you moving it up makes QuickStart incompatible with my prototyping boards, as it would run Vin to the whole power plane.
I pointed out in post #61 on May 2nd that keeping the original GND/3v3/5V pattern of your preliminary design PDF would allow using QuickStart with Mikronauts prototyping boards; as a matter of fact I emailed Ken about the prototyping boards working with QuickStart on May 2nd before posting in this thread...
I thought Parallax would really like having immediate access to a number of high quality third party prototyping boards for QuickStart.
I suggest putting Vin above 3v3, in which case QuickStart has access to two in-production high quality prototyping boards in a manner compatible with my system (and a third in less than two weeks when it is announced at UPEW).
Attached are scans of uCProto and Proteus.
Can you also create ASCII file formats, of an older format for best portability ? eg Altium, .pcbdoc & .schdoc, and OrCAD 10.5 or older ?
I'd still like to see it smaller, and with headers placed to allow 'even smaller again' via some saw cuts. (tho now losing buttons and buffers )
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131448-QuickStart-Board&p=999513#post999513
There are some problems.
It should therefore be feasible to import the files into most other packages that support P-CAD ASCII import. It would be interesting to see if there are similar problems.
Where did you get the PCAD ASCII files ?
Can you give a link, or post them ? I can import PCAD.PCB and PCAD.sch (2002-2006) ASCII files.
Thank you for the detailed answer to my little rant.
I don't know the AppMod header but I think if Parallax make all there boards and expansion modules with the same standard header - this standard must succeed.
Such a header should have only a few I/O pins with some power pins. So you can compose a lot of such modules like Lego bricks. A good example for such a system is the Digilent PMOD standard. The single line header has only 4 I/O pins and 3.3V and GND. They have it now expanded to two rows and 8 I/Os. Important is that also the distance between the connectors is standardized, this allows to use more than one header for bigger modules with more than 4/8 I/Os.
See: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,401&Cat=9
Andy
Edit: I forgot to say that this PMOD pinout is perfect compatible to the 10 pin standard if you leave out the last 4 I/Os.
I could not agree with you more - I agree so much I formed Mikronauts based on such a concept of standard connectors, boards and modules years ago!
Parallax introduced a nice 10 pin standard introduced on the Propeller Proto board (serial and USB versions) years ago, and I jumped on that standard with both feet!
At UPEW, I will be introducing 18 ten pin modules that fit the Parallax Proto boards, all Mikronauts boards, and ucontroller.com's spinvent.
(I also standardized the spacing between two modules, to make 16 propeller I/O accessible to one card via two connectors)
I quite like the QuickStart board, and I think it has a great future.
Sorry if I say that.
I'm are missing Separate screw connector and re-strapping pins --- For possibility to drive this PCB on Battery.