New Wiznet chips
FredBlais
Posts: 380
Parallax are now selling the W5200 and W5300 chips. However there is the W5100 on the spinneret. Do you know if there is any reason for that? They do not plan to make the spinneret with the W5100 anymore?
Fred
Fred
Comments
David? David, where are you? Fred's got a question...
-Matt
We are planning on an updated Spinneret Web Server with the recently released W5200. It has double the sockets and buffer space as the W5100, as well as a high-speed SPI port that can outperform the indirect mode parallel interface that the Spinneret Web Server is currently using with the W5100. It is also physically smaller than the W5100. Code written for the current Spinneret Web Server will be able to work with the next version, by swapping out the W5100 object for a W5200 object. We haven't started development yet, which will happen in September, so we don't have a timeline or an availability date.
— David Carrier
Parallax Inc.
Make Mike G. a alpha-tester/development partner.....he's done good for the Spinneret!!!
Will the new Spinneret have the same form factor and connectivity (I hope )?
-Phil
Do you mean the New Spinneret with the RJ-45 connector or the new Spinneret with WIFI?????
(This may just be a hopeful rumor!)
-Phil
If you are considering a spinneret v2 then please consider dropping some of the corner case features like the onboard switch and open collector lines to free up more native prop pins. 4 general purpose pins is barely enough to do anything really interesting. I'd also request dropping the support for parallel mode or at worst providing those lines via a header and jumper block so the poor end user could get those lines as well.
A huge stumbling block (and show stopper for me at least) was the lack of a secure communications propocol, SSL, SSH or something to allow secure remote access/configuration. The only method I could think of is a cross over cable and RFC1918 adresses and using the onboard switch to tell it to allow co figuration access. Though that is just simply unworkable in a consumer device. I haven't looked at the new chips to see if they give this capability, but I don't think the prop has enough memory to do it in spin, or if it could then I'd doubt the remaining memory would be much value to do anything else interesting.
As mentioned above making it wireless (802.11g) would make it incredibly useful in a significant number of applications.
While on the wish list, I'd like to see a built in lithium battery (maybe on the underside) for support of TUBULARs secure prop capability, that would allow folks to use it in serious consumer products.
If you can do all 3 at a similar pricepoint (big ask) then you'd have a killer product platform.