Just a note... You can make almost any board with a USB jack USB powered by soldering in a jumper wire from the 5V USB power pin (or capacitor connected to it) to your 3.3V regulator...
I've done it on my Demo board and it's much nicer.
I bet you could run a jumper wire on the Prop Platform board too...
When using multiple shields, they problem sometimes is pin conflicts.
Can we at least now agree on SPI standard for the GG platform?
What pins should go where for
SCLK, MOSI, MISO and SS1, SS2, SS3, SS4
The USB version already have SPI for the SD-card,
That is also shared on the shield pins 13-16 (P0-P3)
So SS2-SS4 should go to 10-12 (P4-P6)
Would only need to be fixed to this if each shield can be daisy chained
without using jumpers to select 2,3 or 4 as each shield shift P4-P6
P.S. So how will the final pin-out on the Quickstart be?
Use the GGs, but just two rows right next each other.
Reverse first row, so two cards can be plugged in, butting up against each other.
These 'half' cards can also be used with the GG prop platform
Working to make it cheaper is a fair call. Comes with open designs, and generally, the more the merrier. IMHO, a minimum package has it's place, as does one with value added.
Calling added value overpriced is my issue. It's not. The things done with GG are added value, and that's worth compensation, period. By way of analogy, the same exact discussion happens with Apple computer. For the hardware one gets, it's overpriced as a similar functioning system can be had for significantly less. All true, and in ordinary PC land, margins are very, very thin, and there is very little added value. However, when one adds up the holistic effort to deliver to the market, the things that Apple does have a lot of value, depending on whether or not the buyer sees that value the way Apple does.
In this case, I simply didn't like the negative connotation associated with the GG product effort. There is none. Nick is busting *** to do good things, and is competing well, earning his keep.
Framing it the way it was framed is sort of like selling by devaluing the other parties. That's never a good thing, as it leads to a race to the bottom, and a generally crappy market place. On the other hand, selling by pitching strengths, whatever they are, produces a good, solid, not crappy market place, and that's what everybody wants in the end.
It should be all positive. When it's not we all lose, and that's the only objection I have. The value people place on their time, and the resources they have, which impacts that value, varies significantly. I totally hear the call to get it rock bottom for people who don't have the means to do otherwise. Been there folks. Been there many times over the last 10 years. That is absolutely not at issue.
After reconsidering this thread, it also occurs to me that there is essentially NO reason to devalue the GG offering in this public way. The end game on that for GG is all negative really, thus my objection. I sure won't hold a grudge on anything, and seek only to keep a positive community positive. If it really is possible and practical to make a less expensive kit, then do that, have the conversation with Nick, if desired, or not, and then announce it, as anyone would do with no worries. Naturally, that requires selling to the strengths, and in that case, one primary strength would be the willingness to produce the kit at a thin margin. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
I value this scene, and the people in it --all of them.
I did not see any one say that Nicks work is 'overpriced' in all, though rather I had said that it is out of the price range for some. Perhaps my choice of wording was not very clear. It does not matter, it has been made clear to me in another thread that my proposal was not helpful.
Also I highly value Nicks work. As stated many times I think his efforts are great. I do not know what was said to mislead people into thinking that any one thinks that Nicks work is not great. I have and will continue to feel that he is a great engineer and the GG is an extraordinary platform.
Lets hope that anyone that makes boards that are Gadget Gangster compatible advertise that fact on this thread. After all not all of them are sold on the Gadget Gangster website. (ie the Xbee one on the previous page from SpinInvent).
If we get enough cards showing up here, maybe it will become a sticky so us "Gadget Gangster" board users can find where to get all the different boards.
Well, I have been designing GG boards but I keep finding little bugs so I'm not quite ready to release them yet. They need to be perfect. Latest change was the discovery of "tall" adapter sockets aka for arduino, so when I found those I was able to redesign the boards smaller because the tall components could then fit under another board. In a nutshell, the Dracblade format is now going to be available as a Gadget Gangster tower rather than as a single board.
Thanks ++ to Sparkfun/BatchPCB for being able to produce prototypes at a rapid rate. But still it is necessary to design custom parts in Eagle and then actually build a board - eg if you look at the photo, the RCA plug does not sit properly in the holes because the three holes for the plastic pins are not quite big enough.
IMHO Gadget Gangster *is* the standard for the Propeller, just as the Arduino footprint is the standard for that platform. And just for fun, I have a board on the way that is a "motherboard" with a Gadget Gangster and an Arduino footprint on the same board.
One day one might think of a range of adapter boards, eg GG to Arduino, GG to Cluso 1" square boards, GG to existing Prop boards.
If you do power over USB, please make it possible to switch it off. I hate products that I can not power down without yanking the cables out because the USB renders the power switch moot.
On the debate point I think it's easy to sit and take shots at the price of something. It's just "X with Y on it". Even as a hobbist I see the rather significant investment in time to sit down and source out parts, spec it, get PCBs at a reasonable price for a reasonable number to have on-hand. It's about time investment to me when I buy one. Sure I could roll out a toner transfer board that would be similar but then I'd spend a weekend or two just getting it made then finding out what I messed up and doing it again. For ~$50 I can just get going on what I want to make and not worry about the details. I have several of the older kit boards and I love them. The files are all out there so if you want to go the cheap route you certainly can.
As far as copying an open design to sell for less. I think that because a thing can be done, is not a solid reason why it should be done. I also think, as another poster mentioned, you'll find it's going to quickly become 'not-worth-it' as soon as there are a few bumps in the road that wipe out profit margins of the prior sales. Everybody operates an ideal, lean, mean business on the drawing board. Real world business with real world customers gets.... tedious.
Not that I have a choice, but I'm fine with clones / improvements / cheaper versions - part of the benefit of it being open is seeing all the improvements people come up with. The Propeller Platform is meant as a standard, not a particular product.
Also, small point of clarification from someone else's post - Jon Williams designed the original Propeller Platform kit, and defined the standard. I did the Propeller Platform USB.
I remember reading Jon's article in NV and thought it was a cool design especially since it was easy to use a perfboard with it and prototype a circuit easily. You can't do that with the Arduino since they used a little marketing trickery in making it non standard forcing a user to fabricate his own board or buying a commercially made board.
I wasn't quite sold on the GG at first since I had quite a bit of stuff for the Spin Studio and wasn't ready to change to a new standard. With Spin Studio shutting down I jumped aboard by buying a GG USB. Now I'm glad I did!
@Nick if you do get the GG powered by USB you could put a jumper in to make it switchable to external power. That way you are not limited to 500mA (I believe the regulators can handle up to 1 amp). Also you can test a circuit before plugging it into a USB port and blowing the port up due to a mistake in the circuit.
A USB powered board sounds interesting. The GG "standard" has 3 voltages available to other boards; 3V, 5V and "Vin" whatever Vin may be. So if the board was powered from USB then somehow one would need to step up from 5V to a higher voltage (possibly a nominal 9V or 12V) to power other boards that might need this higher voltage.
Dr. Acula, as you may be aware, the QuickStart board is USB powered. I'm not sure if it is the first one designed by Parallax. Makes it rather convenient; no more "Oh '$&@%', where's the power adapter?".
Just today I found that powering on my iMac powered the QS to run, but when I went to program the EEPROM it would fail. When I unplugged/replugged it the worked fine. I'd not seen that before. Guess it might make a difference whether I let Windows, via Parallels virtual engine, use USB automatically or let the user enable USB use.
I can see, though where one needs a heavy 5v power, or multiple voltages, the USB powered isn't as important.
Not that I have a choice, but I'm fine with clones / improvements / cheaper versions - part of the benefit of it being open is seeing all the improvements people come up with. The Propeller Platform is meant as a standard, not a particular product.
Also, small point of clarification from someone else's post - Jon Williams designed the original Propeller Platform kit, and defined the standard. I did the Propeller Platform USB.
Reading this thread I'm thinking that I may be in the minority in that I'm surprised at how low the price (don't want to use the word cheap! :-)) of the stuff on your site is. What I would like is to see the pin usage of the board standardized. The problem I see is that as the popularity of the standard you've initiated increases that there will be increasing conflicts between boards. It won't do anyone any good to have boards that don't work with each other. I would also like to see the ability to expand horizontally instead of just vertically!
@blitted - the Arduino's pin spacing issue wasn't intentional - although it probably has helped to support the 3rd party Arduino Shield developers. The PPUSB actually uses LD29150DT33R & LD29150DT50R vregs, which are ultra LDO (dropout at max load is 0.4V, typical load is 0.1V) and are rated at to 1.5A.
Bus power is probably the most common feature request. Personally, I use a battery box connected to the screw terminal - most of my projects don't get installed near a computer, so they need their own power, anyway. And many projects will use a small motor or servo or otherwise draw too much current for bus power. But it is handy when you're doing development and just want to update an EEPROM.
@Drac - All the modules I can think of that use Vin use it to drive motors / servos - so stepping up USB's 500mA may not be useful for those ones.
@4x5 - the marketing word is 'inexpensive' . Most modules use the demoboard pinout configuration, which helps reduce conflicts, and you can always build a custom module with any protoboard. But like all modular systems, there's a tradeoff.
A couple of years back, I was faced with implementing all the lessons learned on the PRC (Propeller Robot Controller) as well as correcting two flaws and three omissions. The PRC had been 'popular' and was still selling, but time had marched on and there were newer designs. To make a long story short, I swallowed my ego and threw my support to Nick/Jon's Propeller Platform because I felt it was a standard that had a future. I purchased blank PP pcbs and kitted myself, as well as designed several add on boards. Through out the whole process Nick has been a pleasure to work with ... helpful and encouraging.
I had somehow missed this thread when it started and only stumbled while casually browsing the Forum and chomping on a roast beef sandwich.
I am sitting here now grinning like a Cheshire Cat in that I saw the future way back then and quite happy for my friend Nick's well earned success.
I like Brian's addition of beefier voltage regulators and heat sinks to the GG board as you can power quite a few add on modules with it. While I like Brian's PRC and used it for my robot arm project. The propeller platform needs something like the Arduino robot control shield:
This shield includes an h-bridge, servo headers, and a small breadboard. It's much nicer for robot control of a small robot than stacking several shields. Failing that a GG variant like the DFRobot Romeo would be handy.
I keep hinting about this in the forum hoping someone takes the bait.
I think someone earlier mentioned a "sideways" adapter for the GG platform so I have designed this little board. It uses 40 pin polarised headers and 40 pin ribbon cable with IDC headers are available cheaply (or even for free if you get them from a local computer store as they are the same as the ones used for old IDE hard drives).
So if your tower gets too tall, split it into two!
And I also wanted an easy way to plug the GG into a breadboard, so one idea is to use a 40 pin DIP package - maybe a wirewrap socket as these have long pins.
Congratulations to Nick and his helpers on a fine product. I just got my order today and I must say it was great service, it arrived very quickly(to Nova Scotia Canada), professionally package and well built.
I had no idea how small the Propeller platform USB boards really were(just never thought about the size) and it looks mini when placed next to my Hybrid board.(about 1/3rd of the size) I may have to glue an object to them so they don't get lost. LOL
In terms of expense spent on a set of boards verses my time to install custom circuits, I have been considering the jump to the GG platform as an excellent starting point. This is still a hobby, I am a lone wolf - one man band, and there is no plan for expansion.
My current projects require audio, video and SD card access. For one off proto-types it makes sense to use the $20 PPPB. Once multiple copies are needed, time is consumed faster. I just as soon spend that doing development on another project rather than the repetitive arduous task of mounting component, headers and soldering jumpers by hand. Once I do select a platform, Id like to know they will remain available and compatible in the long run. The extra cost could save me an hour per board. Less expense does not always pay off, while both offerings still have a niche in the market.
I cannot think of one success story where low production copies of an exact open source clone ever paid off. Something always suffers to offer it for a few bucks less. Seems like a high risk venture start-up and a long ways if ever, to recoup any initial investment at a lower margin.
The again, I am not much of an entrepreneur. Id always give away more than I take in. Governments don't like that kind of competition!
I like Brian's addition of beefier voltage regulators and heat sinks to the GG board as you can power quite a few add on modules with it. While I like Brian's PRC and used it for my robot arm project. The propeller platform needs something like the Arduino robot control shield:
This shield includes an h-bridge, servo headers, and a small breadboard. It's much nicer for robot control of a small robot than stacking several shields. Failing that a GG variant like the DFRobot Romeo would be handy.
I keep hinting about this in the forum hoping someone takes the bait.
I think someone earlier mentioned a "sideways" adapter for the GG platform so I have designed this little board. It uses 40 pin polarised headers and 40 pin ribbon cable with IDC headers are available cheaply (or even for free if you get them from a local computer store as they are the same as the ones used for old IDE hard drives).
So if your tower gets too tall, split it into two!
And I also wanted an easy way to plug the GG into a breadboard, so one idea is to use a 40 pin DIP package - maybe a wirewrap socket as these have long pins.
I'm thinking of getting these made soon.
DrAc
I have also thought about the long pin thing into a breadboard. Probably won't do it though because the normal wrap socket or header pin just fits the board. If it does not trash that hole with few insertions I worry it will be left too sloppy for reliable contact by normal through hole leads or ic leads. Also on some of the bottom feeder brands of wrap sockets and headers, if you look closely you will note the orientation of the pins is not to uniform and may not be able to plug in at all. Part also of why I have not tried schmartboard's smt 2 dip adapters.
Thanks Frank. Yes, more experimentation to do as I agree that wire wrap pins are a bit large and do trash breadboards. I have some "long header" pins on order and I think they may be more suitable as they are designed for the arduino system.
Comments
I've done it on my Demo board and it's much nicer.
I bet you could run a jumper wire on the Prop Platform board too...
Can we at least now agree on SPI standard for the GG platform?
What pins should go where for
SCLK, MOSI, MISO and SS1, SS2, SS3, SS4
The USB version already have SPI for the SD-card,
That is also shared on the shield pins 13-16 (P0-P3)
So SS2-SS4 should go to 10-12 (P4-P6)
Would only need to be fixed to this if each shield can be daisy chained
without using jumpers to select 2,3 or 4 as each shield shift P4-P6
P.S. So how will the final pin-out on the Quickstart be?
Use the GGs, but just two rows right next each other.
Reverse first row, so two cards can be plugged in, butting up against each other.
These 'half' cards can also be used with the GG prop platform
Working to make it cheaper is a fair call. Comes with open designs, and generally, the more the merrier. IMHO, a minimum package has it's place, as does one with value added.
Calling added value overpriced is my issue. It's not. The things done with GG are added value, and that's worth compensation, period. By way of analogy, the same exact discussion happens with Apple computer. For the hardware one gets, it's overpriced as a similar functioning system can be had for significantly less. All true, and in ordinary PC land, margins are very, very thin, and there is very little added value. However, when one adds up the holistic effort to deliver to the market, the things that Apple does have a lot of value, depending on whether or not the buyer sees that value the way Apple does.
In this case, I simply didn't like the negative connotation associated with the GG product effort. There is none. Nick is busting *** to do good things, and is competing well, earning his keep.
Framing it the way it was framed is sort of like selling by devaluing the other parties. That's never a good thing, as it leads to a race to the bottom, and a generally crappy market place. On the other hand, selling by pitching strengths, whatever they are, produces a good, solid, not crappy market place, and that's what everybody wants in the end.
It should be all positive. When it's not we all lose, and that's the only objection I have. The value people place on their time, and the resources they have, which impacts that value, varies significantly. I totally hear the call to get it rock bottom for people who don't have the means to do otherwise. Been there folks. Been there many times over the last 10 years. That is absolutely not at issue.
After reconsidering this thread, it also occurs to me that there is essentially NO reason to devalue the GG offering in this public way. The end game on that for GG is all negative really, thus my objection. I sure won't hold a grudge on anything, and seek only to keep a positive community positive. If it really is possible and practical to make a less expensive kit, then do that, have the conversation with Nick, if desired, or not, and then announce it, as anyone would do with no worries. Naturally, that requires selling to the strengths, and in that case, one primary strength would be the willingness to produce the kit at a thin margin. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
I value this scene, and the people in it --all of them.
Cheers all.
I did not see any one say that Nicks work is 'overpriced' in all, though rather I had said that it is out of the price range for some. Perhaps my choice of wording was not very clear. It does not matter, it has been made clear to me in another thread that my proposal was not helpful.
Also I highly value Nicks work. As stated many times I think his efforts are great. I do not know what was said to mislead people into thinking that any one thinks that Nicks work is not great. I have and will continue to feel that he is a great engineer and the GG is an extraordinary platform.
If we get enough cards showing up here, maybe it will become a sticky so us "Gadget Gangster" board users can find where to get all the different boards.
Well, I have been designing GG boards but I keep finding little bugs so I'm not quite ready to release them yet. They need to be perfect. Latest change was the discovery of "tall" adapter sockets aka for arduino, so when I found those I was able to redesign the boards smaller because the tall components could then fit under another board. In a nutshell, the Dracblade format is now going to be available as a Gadget Gangster tower rather than as a single board.
Thanks ++ to Sparkfun/BatchPCB for being able to produce prototypes at a rapid rate. But still it is necessary to design custom parts in Eagle and then actually build a board - eg if you look at the photo, the RCA plug does not sit properly in the holes because the three holes for the plastic pins are not quite big enough.
IMHO Gadget Gangster *is* the standard for the Propeller, just as the Arduino footprint is the standard for that platform. And just for fun, I have a board on the way that is a "motherboard" with a Gadget Gangster and an Arduino footprint on the same board.
One day one might think of a range of adapter boards, eg GG to Arduino, GG to Cluso 1" square boards, GG to existing Prop boards.
All very exciting times ahead!
On the debate point I think it's easy to sit and take shots at the price of something. It's just "X with Y on it". Even as a hobbist I see the rather significant investment in time to sit down and source out parts, spec it, get PCBs at a reasonable price for a reasonable number to have on-hand. It's about time investment to me when I buy one. Sure I could roll out a toner transfer board that would be similar but then I'd spend a weekend or two just getting it made then finding out what I messed up and doing it again. For ~$50 I can just get going on what I want to make and not worry about the details. I have several of the older kit boards and I love them. The files are all out there so if you want to go the cheap route you certainly can.
As far as copying an open design to sell for less. I think that because a thing can be done, is not a solid reason why it should be done. I also think, as another poster mentioned, you'll find it's going to quickly become 'not-worth-it' as soon as there are a few bumps in the road that wipe out profit margins of the prior sales. Everybody operates an ideal, lean, mean business on the drawing board. Real world business with real world customers gets.... tedious.
Also, small point of clarification from someone else's post - Jon Williams designed the original Propeller Platform kit, and defined the standard. I did the Propeller Platform USB.
I wasn't quite sold on the GG at first since I had quite a bit of stuff for the Spin Studio and wasn't ready to change to a new standard. With Spin Studio shutting down I jumped aboard by buying a GG USB. Now I'm glad I did!
@Nick if you do get the GG powered by USB you could put a jumper in to make it switchable to external power. That way you are not limited to 500mA (I believe the regulators can handle up to 1 amp). Also you can test a circuit before plugging it into a USB port and blowing the port up due to a mistake in the circuit.
I did a search for stepup converters and the LM2577 is a popular one. Then looking for a good price, I came across modules for around $5 to $6 on ebay. These modules seem less than the cost of the parts! (search LM2577 eg http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/LM2577-DC-DC-Boost-Step-Up-Adjustable-Power-Module-C75-/270817419489?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0df9e0e1 )
Then design a PCB to accommodate the module?
Just today I found that powering on my iMac powered the QS to run, but when I went to program the EEPROM it would fail. When I unplugged/replugged it the worked fine. I'd not seen that before. Guess it might make a difference whether I let Windows, via Parallels virtual engine, use USB automatically or let the user enable USB use.
I can see, though where one needs a heavy 5v power, or multiple voltages, the USB powered isn't as important.
Reading this thread I'm thinking that I may be in the minority in that I'm surprised at how low the price (don't want to use the word cheap! :-)) of the stuff on your site is. What I would like is to see the pin usage of the board standardized. The problem I see is that as the popularity of the standard you've initiated increases that there will be increasing conflicts between boards. It won't do anyone any good to have boards that don't work with each other. I would also like to see the ability to expand horizontally instead of just vertically!
Bus power is probably the most common feature request. Personally, I use a battery box connected to the screw terminal - most of my projects don't get installed near a computer, so they need their own power, anyway. And many projects will use a small motor or servo or otherwise draw too much current for bus power. But it is handy when you're doing development and just want to update an EEPROM.
@Drac - All the modules I can think of that use Vin use it to drive motors / servos - so stepping up USB's 500mA may not be useful for those ones.
@4x5 - the marketing word is 'inexpensive'
I had somehow missed this thread when it started and only stumbled while casually browsing the Forum and chomping on a roast beef sandwich.
I am sitting here now grinning like a Cheshire Cat in that I saw the future way back then and quite happy for my friend Nick's well earned success.
This shield includes an h-bridge, servo headers, and a small breadboard. It's much nicer for robot control of a small robot than stacking several shields. Failing that a GG variant like the DFRobot Romeo would be handy.
I keep hinting about this in the forum hoping someone takes the bait.
So if your tower gets too tall, split it into two!
And I also wanted an easy way to plug the GG into a breadboard, so one idea is to use a 40 pin DIP package - maybe a wirewrap socket as these have long pins.
I'm thinking of getting these made soon.
Congratulations to Nick and his helpers on a fine product. I just got my order today and I must say it was great service, it arrived very quickly(to Nova Scotia Canada), professionally package and well built.
I had no idea how small the Propeller platform USB boards really were(just never thought about the size) and it looks mini when placed next to my Hybrid board.(about 1/3rd of the size) I may have to glue an object to them so they don't get lost. LOL
Let the fun begin!
Bob
My current projects require audio, video and SD card access. For one off proto-types it makes sense to use the $20 PPPB. Once multiple copies are needed, time is consumed faster. I just as soon spend that doing development on another project rather than the repetitive arduous task of mounting component, headers and soldering jumpers by hand. Once I do select a platform, Id like to know they will remain available and compatible in the long run. The extra cost could save me an hour per board. Less expense does not always pay off, while both offerings still have a niche in the market.
I cannot think of one success story where low production copies of an exact open source clone ever paid off. Something always suffers to offer it for a few bucks less. Seems like a high risk venture start-up and a long ways if ever, to recoup any initial investment at a lower margin.
The again, I am not much of an entrepreneur. Id always give away more than I take in. Governments don't like that kind of competition!
Where do I buy one of these?
DrAc
I have also thought about the long pin thing into a breadboard. Probably won't do it though because the normal wrap socket or header pin just fits the board. If it does not trash that hole with few insertions I worry it will be left too sloppy for reliable contact by normal through hole leads or ic leads. Also on some of the bottom feeder brands of wrap sockets and headers, if you look closely you will note the orientation of the pins is not to uniform and may not be able to plug in at all. Part also of why I have not tried schmartboard's smt 2 dip adapters.
Frank