SimpleIDE for DNA-RTC board

Rsadeika · 2012-08-07 05:14

My other thread, which started to touch on Spin usage with the DNA-RTC board, I have left that for the Spin people. I found that trying to use the OBEX for getting the necessary drivers a real challenge, and very time consuming at this time. I will leave at that.

In the other thread, I also left a question for an explanation of the board types that are found in SimpleIDE. The first question that I have here is, is there some built in support for the RTC that is on the board? I know that PropGCC has a lib for doing an RTC in software, but how would you handle the hardware RTC?

Has the Console terminal progressed to the point of being able to place characters at chosen locations of the screen? I guess a quick experiment would be, to display a continuous running clock at the upper right hand part of the Console screen.

As a general observation of the DNA-xxx board(s), from a marketing standpoint for the DNA-xxx board, I think the headers should already be soldered in place. This should be a ready to go, out of the box, board.

Ray

photomankc · 2012-08-07 07:55

The board is brand new. I doubt there are a ton of C/C++ drivers written for it at this point. I'm working on a C++ driver for I2C but that is not really aimed just at this board. The RTC is an I2C device, should be easy enough to read and write to it once you have a basic I2C driver going.

If it holds the cost down I'm fine with soldering the headers. I'm just glad the Propeller Platform format is not completely dead and now gives me a C++ platform with 1MB of FLASH.

jazzed · 2012-08-07 07:58

Rsadeika wrote: »

In the other thread, I also left a question for an explanation of the board types that are found in SimpleIDE.

The board types are defined in the .cfg files. SimpleIDE just finds and presents them to the user.
Seems like dna.cfg and dna-rtc.cfg should be good enough.

Rsadeika wrote: »

Has the Console terminal progressed to the point of being able to place characters at chosen locations of the screen? I guess a quick experiment would be, to display a continuous running clock at the upper right hand part of the Console screen.

It should work.

Rsadeika wrote: »

The first question that I have here is, is there some built in support for the RTC that is on the board? I know that PropGCC has a lib for doing an RTC in software, but how would you handle the hardware RTC?

The program needs to define two functions such as: getRtcTime and setRtcTime and assign them at startup.
For guidance on what the functions should do, look here: https://code.google.com/p/propgcc/source/browse/lib/sys/propeller/rtc.c

int getRtcTime(struct timeval *tv)
{
    // fill in code
    return 0;
}
int setRtcTime(const struct timeval *tv)
{
    // fill in code
    return 0;
}
 
// initialization fragment ... add to main?
// tell compiler/library how to get and set time

_rtc_gettime = getRtcTime;
_rtc_settime = setRtcTime;

Martin Hodge · 2012-08-07 10:43

The DNA is intended to be a continuation of the Gadget Gangster Propeller Platform USB board. As shipped, the DNA should be compatible with ALL hardware and software specifically written for that board. All the Parallax examples will work, maybe you have to change some pin configurations. The RTC chip and Flash memory were last-minute additions. The Flash memory is already very usable for running very large C/C++ programs, although none exist yet. I think David Betz and a couple other expressed some interest in producing GCC drivers for the RTC. If they find time to do that, great, but I'm not about to make demands on their already stretched-to-the-limit schedules.

David has pushed the DNA config files to the repository, so they will show up in the next beta release or if you clone and compile the repository right now.

As for the headers not being soldered in place, I couldn't disagree more. Should I pre-solder the headers in place in the inner row, outer row, or staggered? Should they be male or female headers. Should they be on the front or the back of the board? The permutations are many, and would satisfy few.

The Arduino is ready to go out of the box, with headers soldered in place and an etched-in-stone (flawed) layout. But remember what "DNA" stands for..

Rsadeika · 2012-08-07 11:51

As for the headers not being soldered in place, I couldn't disagree more. Should I pre-solder the headers in place in the inner row, outer row, or staggered? Should they be male or female headers. Should they be on the front or the back of the board? The permutations are many, and would satisfy few.

I do not believe that the reason that Gadget Gangster quit making the PP-USB board was because he pre-soldered the headers, I could be mistaken. Once the headers are pre-soldered, in whichever place that you decide, then that becomes the standard, and I believe that their were a lot of people that liked the PP-USB with the headers pre-soldered. This is your business, and your board, so you will be deciding as to what works best for you.

The only reason I mentioned it was that, in the long run, you end up selling a bunch of these boards, and we, the customer, do not have to go searching for a new replacement because you did decide, because of minimal sales, you have to discontinue the product. My suggestions are to help you keep that cash register ringing.

Ray

Martin Hodge · 2012-08-07 14:12

I find it hard to believe that success hinges on a bit of soldering. However if it turn out that a preponderance of people really want a pre-soldered header, then I have absolutely no problem with doing it. If the damn things weren't so obscenely expensive I'd just fill both rows.

jazzed · 2012-08-07 14:25

Martin Hodge wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that success hinges on a bit of soldering. However if it turn out that a preponderance of people really want a pre-soldered header, then I have absolutely no problem with doing it. If the damn things weren't so obscenely expensive I'd just fill both rows.

That's the main weakness of the Propeller Platform. It should really only have one set of headers. Stack-able headers are cheap.

Rsadeika · 2012-08-08 05:08

I am not so sure about that, the C3 has only one set of headers, and I have not seen a flood of little expansion boards utilizing the header. I think Jon Williams mentioned that he was trying to make a board that would use his version of a "shield". Generally speaking, I have not seen a Propeller Platform board that is selling like gangbusters. Maybe that particular platform is yet to be designed. Of course it will not be me, I have enough problems with just trying to program.

Ray

jazzed · 2012-08-08 21:06

Rsadeika wrote: »

I am not so sure about that, the C3 has only one set of headers ....

Ray, the point is that the dual-rows in the Propeller Platform lead to confusion and frustration about how they are or should be stuffed - that certainly happened to me. Just having single-rows would force a correction to the problem.

It's not much, but I ship some TetraProp boards every month. They always ship with stack-able headers. The forth folk seem to like TetraProp a lot. Guess I've sold about 20 boards in a year.

Rsadeika · 2012-08-09 03:43

That just proves that I am not a hardware man, I thought you were talking about something completely different. If you have just one row, then you are forced to expand up or down, but not both ways. Yes, I can also see the problem with the "shields", if somebody wanted to provide a "shield" that was "ready to go", where does he solder the headers? I guess if you are just going to work with one "shield", then their would be no problem.

Ray

Ding-Batty · 2012-08-13 13:47

I speak only for myself, but I had to desolder the headers on the last PP add-on board that I bought with pre-installed headers, because they didn't match the arrangement I preferred, and which my PP boards to that point all used -- that was annoying. As long as the PP has two rows of holes, which provide flexibility, I would very much prefer that the boards did not have the headers pre-installed.

For example, I was able to add headers to a Propeller Proto board from Parallax that lined up with my preferred header spacing (staggered) -- it would have been either much harder, uglier or downright impossible if I had to use the spacing of the outer rows. Some folks might have an issue with Some Assembly Required, but the alternatives are either less flexibility, or an inventory management problem with multiple configurations.

Or, as another alternative, a new design that is similar to the PP, but with only one row of header holes on each edge -- but that would no longer really be PP compatible. So we'd need an adapter board to go between the PP layout and the new one, and everyone would be happy

Martin Hodge · 2012-08-13 20:27

I may just add an option during checkout to have the headers soldered in place for a cuppla bucks extra.

mindrobots · 2012-08-14 07:10

Sounds like you'd need to add (at least) 4 options: inside holes, outside holes, stagger/shifted left and stagger/shifted right....then there's top or bottom, male or female, stackable, non-stackable.......

...or how about male-bottom-stagger-left, female-top stagger-right??

Just causing trouble!!

I enjoy soldering my own (I find it relaxing), thank you for offering!

SimpleIDE for DNA-RTC board

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