I think it worthwhile here to comment on those that are going to buy the new BeagleBone Blacks (BBB)... It's the price that is getting people in!!! Even tho' it only has 512MB DDR3, everyone want one (or two). Same with RPi. As I have mentioned, the MK802 variants have 1GB and WiFi and 2 USBs (1 is OTG) and are around $40-$50. There must be a lot of these boards sitting on shelves waiting for something decent to do with them (I have a RPi & MK802 rev3 sitting there).
However, this does make it hard for P2 to get out there. But remember, those boards (BBB, RPi, MK802) are mass produced and have their place. The P2 cannot compete here. But that is not the P2's market. I think most of us that have engineering and/or software backgrounds realise the P2 will be for niche markets for lower volumes where development costs and changes are ultimately easier/lower.
So what will the cheap P2 board made by Parallax need to have on it to get it into the hands of many???
What do you think the price point has to be??? IMHO $25-$40 for the base board.
BTW Just to repeat what I have said before... IMHO the biggest mistake with the RPi is not having WiFi instead of Ethernet.
I bet the folks at Parallax wish they had that sort of mistake on their hands that the Raspberry folks have. They have the sort of success and recognition you can't buy.
So what that it didn't include Wifi. Look the initial target audience of the Raspi were schools and students. Most schools have a existing cable plant that the raspi can make use of and from what I see it hasn't hampered much of anything.
And 512Mb is more than enough for a low end entry level board aimed at students. Look you're not going to be running Aldec or Quartus design or Win apps in emulation mode on it. That's what a fully loaded laptop or desktop is for.
As far as the BBB goes, yes it does step on the territory of the Prop(not that it made much in the way of commercial inroads) and with the PRU and Beagle mind-share, it makes it a serious competitor.
In regards to the P2, it's up to Parallax how they want to sell it. But that finished beast is still many months away. By the time it's ready for market the BBB will have had a 3-9 month head start.
I'm sorry I only had time to read 3 pages so far of this discussion, so as I understand it the general consensus is to have Ethernet and/or USB (with a wifi or bluetooth dongle on USB).
But I have some understanding of how heavy USB and Ethernet / TCP/IP are to implement, and I think it would be a LOT of work (even if it's possible to reuse work from others outside the Propeller community) because the high-speed stuff will have to be in PASM.
I was wondering: has anyone thought of using PPP (point-to-point protocol)? This is basically what was used to make internet connections with modems over the phone.
I think a full TCP/IP + PPP stack is feasible even on the Prop 1, probably at decent speeds too. On the P2, it may even be possible to hit several megabits per second.
It wouldn't require any hardware on the Propeller side, but some software is required; all software probably already exists, it's just a matter of putting it together.
To transport the data, it may be necessary to use a serial cable but wireless transport over other hardware such as XBees should work too. And the other side has to have a PPP stack too of course but that should not require much effort either. Perhaps it would be useful to create a PPP-over-XBee to Wifi bridge in hardware?
I wonder if there is such as thing as a serial-to-bluetooth bridge...
I was wondering: has anyone thought of using PPP (point-to-point protocol)? This is basically what was used to make internet connections with modems over the phone.
SLIP would be easier. Don't think we care about PAP/CHAP authentication for example.
I keep hearing suggestions of USB/WIFI dongle support. Sound great, I have a USB/WIFI dongle for my Raspberry Pi. It cost be 10 Euros. Perfect.
However, it seems to me that such a device requires, for the Propeller:
0) A bit banging USB transport driver.
1) A USB host stack to talk to the dongle.
2) A network stack to, well, do the networking.
Everything after 0) above seems like a lot of work.
Ideally you would have 3 people working on those problems, so they are attacked in parallel. In reality it will be 2 or 3 people, but not in parallel.
I could write all of it, but it would take me 2 or 3 months to get it sorted and debugged, but then again I'm not a full time Parallax employee, so anything I do will be during my off time.
In regards to the P2, it's up to Parallax how they want to sell it. But that finished beast is still many months away. By the time it's ready for market the BBB will have had a 3-9 month head start.
Hopefully not in all ways too much the beast -- that would kill advantages it might otherwise have had.
I do have a concern that getting access to devices like iPads from the Prop is going to require Bluetooth Low Energy (is it called BT 4.0?). Is that within Prop 2's capabilities, in software?
At some stage you need to add 2.4GHz RF, so there will always be a secondary chip.
That means it easiest to simply use a 2.4GHz RF unit, that also has a 'bit of code' too. That gives economies of scale, and it will work with both Prop devices.
The new TI CC2541 2.4-GHz Bluetooth® low energy and Proprietary System-on-Chip is in a 6mm package, and TI claims sub $2/1ku
At some stage you need to add 2.4GHz RF, so there will always be a secondary chip.
That means it easiest to simply use a 2.4GHz RF unit, that also has a 'bit of code' too. That gives economies of scale, and it will work with both Prop devices.
The new TI CC2541 2.4-GHz Bluetooth® low energy and Proprietary System-on-Chip is in a 6mm package, and TI claims sub $2/1ku
I would love to have a Prop 1 or 2 that could connect to any of the field busses and to an iPad like device via bluetooth for troubleshooting. That would make life a lot easier.
Apple does not allow generic BT usage; you have to join their developer program, add a 2~3 "authentication chip", and get approval for every app.
Only real connectivity is via TCP/IP (wifi)
Android, on the other hand, seems happy to talk to anyone. I'm in the process of migrating from my 1st Gen iPad to a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 just because of it's more open communication possibilities. So far, it's been like any change, some things I like better, some things I miss or haven't gotten used to yet.
I think kiwnn's request would be very doable depending on the field buss requirements and if the Prop can handle it.
I have a strong background in interpreted or incrementally compiled languages (from BASIC in 1977 to LISP, PROLOG, SMALLTALK, MATLAB, a little Java) and since many years I program my AVRs in BASCOM which is a compiled BASIC for the 8-bit AVR series.
One of the thinks I like most about it is the very tight integration of BASIC (with local vars, structured programming and integrated support for all the AVR peripherals)
and inline ASM. This gives me speed of development AND speed of execution where I need it. Unfortunately I lose the interpreter features of dynamically creating new code.
... Oh I should mention I started to learn Forth the Tachyon variant - which gives me this dynamic code creation again :-)
ARDUINO:
since the Arduino concept is not tied to a specific processor and works on small 8-bitters as well as new 32-bit ARM - why not jump boldly on this train and go for a Arduino-MC1 (multi core) based on the P1 and shortly Arduino-MC2 on P2.
The Propeller ASC+ is the board that provides all the required HW to start with.
but I think it is only visible to the Propeller community - not even the name tells the Arduino community that this is another high potential Arduino-module based on a fast 8-core 32-bit controller. And while it is great that Arduino shields can be used with it, marketing it aggressively as a better - multi core - Arduino board has a greater impact since it addresses the established Arduino community and not the propeller community..
With PropGC the base of using the Arduino Environment for development should not be too far out. And in a short time the next generation with P2 could build on this first step.
I wonder, why there is not more energy visible in this direction.
Self contained development environment would not be a very important feature for me - good integration with RPI and BBB and similar is much more important.
My understanding is they still don't allow SPP, and low energy = low range... and still require an auth chip & sale only through app store.
Due to Apple's limitations, my development efforts are Android oriented (for tablets / phones)
I will admit my wife loves her iPad and iPod - but I find them limiting, and I also find my Galaxy Nexus phone and Iconia A500 tablet superior (for my uses).
Yes, they still don't allow SPP, but they don't require an auth chip for LE Bluetooth. There is at least one development tool available through the App Store ready made ... techBasic. This can do LE Bluetooth as well as WiFi I/O and also supports the Hijack standard which provides for a small amount of power extracted from one channel of audio output while the other channel is used with the microphone input line for a low speed modem (something like 2400 Baud). TI sells several development kits for LE Bluetooth and Seeed Studio sells a Hijack development kit.
Frankly I am opposed to Apple's policies to lock out I/O, requiring (admittedly clever) hacks like using audio I/O severely limiting throughput, their patent wars... so I am not developing for Apple products.
Android is MUCH better for developers - it is totally open, no SPP issues etc.
Yes, they still don't allow SPP, but they don't require an auth chip for LE Bluetooth. There is at least one development tool available through the App Store ready made ... techBasic. This can do LE Bluetooth as well as WiFi I/O and also supports the Hijack standard which provides for a small amount of power extracted from one channel of audio output while the other channel is used with the microphone input line for a low speed modem (something like 2400 Baud). TI sells several development kits for LE Bluetooth and Seeed Studio sells a Hijack development kit.
I agree that WiFi is extremely important, and I want us to leverage of cheap mass market WiFi dongles.
Regarding wired Ethernet... RPi, BBB etc don't have WiFi built onto the dev board PCB for the same cost reasons I outlined in an earlier message.
With a 10Mbps MagJack, add an AP or Router via a cheap Cat-5 cable
Or add a WiFi stick via USB
(Or later add module via broken out pins)
Adding a WiFi module to "base" boards will become practical when we can buy FCC-certified WiFi modules at around $2.50 (qty.100) as then it will only add $10-$12.50 to the MSRP.
I am looking forward to such modules, at such low prices - but I think they are ~2 years away.
I totally agree. However, my current thoughts are that WiFi is overtaking the usefulness of Bluetooth.
IMHO RaspberryPi should have had WiFi instead of Ethernet. Just look at the MK802 versions with WiFi.
IIRC Texas Instruments have jsut release a cheap WiFi chip solution and some companies are currently putting them on pcb modules that will have FCC approval.
USB Full Speed should be easily achieved with the P2. IMHO this is really important for the P2 these days. I am not so sure about Ethernet.
I've went and looked at a variety of projects that used Arduino. There is something to what Bill is saying here, and that something is people are far more willing to spend to get the pieces they want than they generally are to buy "all in one" type solutions. I've seen many stacked up projects with various things added on, the total being more than a smart all in one thing would be.
I suspect they see value in:
1. The idea that they can reuse the pieces. This is like buying a Prop Plug, and being able to use it on a lot of things, vs always paying for USB on board. Buying a wi-fi capable module, shield, add on, stacker, whatever, means having wi-fi "in the house" as opposed to "on that board" where it's much more limited in terms of potential uses, even across solutions.
2. The idea of waste. Sometimes we see this on the Propeller with people asking, "why is there one on every COG, when...." and of course we've got great answers to that, but still they see something they paid for wasted...
3. Failure points. If it's all in one, and something bad happens, it's all under repair, or they buy another one, etc... On the other hand, if it's in pieces, something bad can happen to one piece and the rest still works, meaning they only buy what they need to get it done, despite the trouble.
4. "Fits in the budget" and some here have hinted at that in various ways. $100 is a lot of money. $50 is still a lot of money, but easier to let go of. $35, $25, etc... is pretty easy. We see this in lots of things. People will buy things over and over at $9.99, but won't buy in the same way at $39.99. Late night TV work around? You can pay for it in four easy payments of $9.99...
NOT as a way of forcing everyone to pay $39 more for WiFi on board Prop boards, even if they don't need it. Let's not price P2 boards out of the market.
My vote is to use the MQTT protocol (part of the internet-of-things mentioned earlier in this thread.) The hardware interface just needs to be anything that talks TCP.
Every Prop could then publish subscribe to any other Prop or any other MQTT client on the network .... I just had a play on my Linux box and a RPI and it's a breeze ..
.. just subscribe to a topic you are interested in and you will get the data published on that topic ..
I would like to see an Xbee socket. It's cheap, Xbee rocks, and then there are things like WiFly abd Bluetooth modules with the Xbee footprint. There's also room underneath for a Micro SD. even better, It doesn't hog the I/O
Better yet, how about all the stuff on the Propeller Activity Board, but with sockets like the Quickstart instead of the breadboard? (D/A and A/D obviously not needed with prop II)
Bloody hell. I just put a server into production use that contains my own home made publish/subscribe protocol over websockets. Now you tell me about MQTT which does pretty much exactly the same thing! Looks like I'm going to be ripping out my pub/sub code and replacing it with MQTT.
One day I hope someone will write a MQTT client for the Prop.
Looks like all it needs is a bit of lower level driver code to talk to an ethernet or WIFI shield or whatever which probably exists for the Prop already.
That is only about 200 lines of C++ code and it looks like it would be pretty straight forward to translate it into Spin.
I'd also be interested a MQTT prop effort. Some people around here are fans of MQTT and have written code for other micros. I believe it would fit comfortably on a prop
Comments
However, this does make it hard for P2 to get out there. But remember, those boards (BBB, RPi, MK802) are mass produced and have their place. The P2 cannot compete here. But that is not the P2's market. I think most of us that have engineering and/or software backgrounds realise the P2 will be for niche markets for lower volumes where development costs and changes are ultimately easier/lower.
So what will the cheap P2 board made by Parallax need to have on it to get it into the hands of many???
What do you think the price point has to be??? IMHO $25-$40 for the base board.
BTW Just to repeat what I have said before... IMHO the biggest mistake with the RPi is not having WiFi instead of Ethernet.
I bet the folks at Parallax wish they had that sort of mistake on their hands that the Raspberry folks have. They have the sort of success and recognition you can't buy.
So what that it didn't include Wifi. Look the initial target audience of the Raspi were schools and students. Most schools have a existing cable plant that the raspi can make use of and from what I see it hasn't hampered much of anything.
And 512Mb is more than enough for a low end entry level board aimed at students. Look you're not going to be running Aldec or Quartus design or Win apps in emulation mode on it. That's what a fully loaded laptop or desktop is for.
As far as the BBB goes, yes it does step on the territory of the Prop(not that it made much in the way of commercial inroads) and with the PRU and Beagle mind-share, it makes it a serious competitor.
In regards to the P2, it's up to Parallax how they want to sell it. But that finished beast is still many months away. By the time it's ready for market the BBB will have had a 3-9 month head start.
But I have some understanding of how heavy USB and Ethernet / TCP/IP are to implement, and I think it would be a LOT of work (even if it's possible to reuse work from others outside the Propeller community) because the high-speed stuff will have to be in PASM.
I was wondering: has anyone thought of using PPP (point-to-point protocol)? This is basically what was used to make internet connections with modems over the phone.
I think a full TCP/IP + PPP stack is feasible even on the Prop 1, probably at decent speeds too. On the P2, it may even be possible to hit several megabits per second.
It wouldn't require any hardware on the Propeller side, but some software is required; all software probably already exists, it's just a matter of putting it together.
To transport the data, it may be necessary to use a serial cable but wireless transport over other hardware such as XBees should work too. And the other side has to have a PPP stack too of course but that should not require much effort either. Perhaps it would be useful to create a PPP-over-XBee to Wifi bridge in hardware?
I wonder if there is such as thing as a serial-to-bluetooth bridge...
===Jac
SLIP would be easier. Don't think we care about PAP/CHAP authentication for example.
I have the successor to the 28J60 sitting on my desk, and that has parallel bus capability.
I keep hearing suggestions of USB/WIFI dongle support. Sound great, I have a USB/WIFI dongle for my Raspberry Pi. It cost be 10 Euros. Perfect.
However, it seems to me that such a device requires, for the Propeller:
0) A bit banging USB transport driver.
1) A USB host stack to talk to the dongle.
2) A network stack to, well, do the networking.
Everything after 0) above seems like a lot of work.
Will all that fit in the PII?
Who knows how to do it?
I could write all of it, but it would take me 2 or 3 months to get it sorted and debugged, but then again I'm not a full time Parallax employee, so anything I do will be during my off time.
Bluetooth... Its portable
And a new Awesome Series of "Propellers" in class books for all the new generations to appreciate in the following years
USB3.0 is 5Gbps, that's faster than the main memory access of the P2. 480Mbps is 60MB/s, which is much more achievable.
USB 1.5Mbps, 12Mbps, and 480Mbps would be nice, but full USB full speed support would work fine for many applications.
At some stage you need to add 2.4GHz RF, so there will always be a secondary chip.
That means it easiest to simply use a 2.4GHz RF unit, that also has a 'bit of code' too. That gives economies of scale, and it will work with both Prop devices.
The new TI CC2541 2.4-GHz Bluetooth® low energy and Proprietary System-on-Chip is in a 6mm package, and TI claims sub $2/1ku
http://www.ti.com/product/cc2541?DCMP=ble-remote&HQS=ble-remote-pr-pf
I would love to have a Prop 1 or 2 that could connect to any of the field busses and to an iPad like device via bluetooth for troubleshooting. That would make life a lot easier.
Only real connectivity is via TCP/IP (wifi)
Android, on the other hand, seems happy to talk to anyone. I'm in the process of migrating from my 1st Gen iPad to a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 just because of it's more open communication possibilities. So far, it's been like any change, some things I like better, some things I miss or haven't gotten used to yet.
I think kiwnn's request would be very doable depending on the field buss requirements and if the Prop can handle it.
One of the thinks I like most about it is the very tight integration of BASIC (with local vars, structured programming and integrated support for all the AVR peripherals)
and inline ASM. This gives me speed of development AND speed of execution where I need it. Unfortunately I lose the interpreter features of dynamically creating new code.
... Oh I should mention I started to learn Forth the Tachyon variant - which gives me this dynamic code creation again :-)
ARDUINO:
since the Arduino concept is not tied to a specific processor and works on small 8-bitters as well as new 32-bit ARM - why not jump boldly on this train and go for a Arduino-MC1 (multi core) based on the P1 and shortly Arduino-MC2 on P2.
The Propeller ASC+ is the board that provides all the required HW to start with.
but I think it is only visible to the Propeller community - not even the name tells the Arduino community that this is another high potential Arduino-module based on a fast 8-core 32-bit controller. And while it is great that Arduino shields can be used with it, marketing it aggressively as a better - multi core - Arduino board has a greater impact since it addresses the established Arduino community and not the propeller community..
With PropGC the base of using the Arduino Environment for development should not be too far out. And in a short time the next generation with P2 could build on this first step.
I wonder, why there is not more energy visible in this direction.
Self contained development environment would not be a very important feature for me - good integration with RPI and BBB and similar is much more important.
The do allow low energy BT on the newest iPhones and iPads.
Due to Apple's limitations, my development efforts are Android oriented (for tablets / phones)
I will admit my wife loves her iPad and iPod - but I find them limiting, and I also find my Galaxy Nexus phone and Iconia A500 tablet superior (for my uses).
Frankly I am opposed to Apple's policies to lock out I/O, requiring (admittedly clever) hacks like using audio I/O severely limiting throughput, their patent wars... so I am not developing for Apple products.
Android is MUCH better for developers - it is totally open, no SPP issues etc.
I agree that WiFi is extremely important, and I want us to leverage of cheap mass market WiFi dongles.
Regarding wired Ethernet... RPi, BBB etc don't have WiFi built onto the dev board PCB for the same cost reasons I outlined in an earlier message.
With a 10Mbps MagJack, add an AP or Router via a cheap Cat-5 cable
Or add a WiFi stick via USB
(Or later add module via broken out pins)
Adding a WiFi module to "base" boards will become practical when we can buy FCC-certified WiFi modules at around $2.50 (qty.100) as then it will only add $10-$12.50 to the MSRP.
I am looking forward to such modules, at such low prices - but I think they are ~2 years away.
I'm sure we can too!
There is NOTHING wrong with the idea of a $39 WiFi add-on module!
(Mind you, a $9-$15 USB WiFi module is MUCH cheaper.)
There is nothing wrong with adding WiFi on-board to application-specific P2 boards that customers comission someone to design and build for them.
There are many things VERY wrong with adding $39 to the MSRP of Prop2 dev boards, just to have WiFi on-board.
just my 10 yen
I suspect they see value in:
1. The idea that they can reuse the pieces. This is like buying a Prop Plug, and being able to use it on a lot of things, vs always paying for USB on board. Buying a wi-fi capable module, shield, add on, stacker, whatever, means having wi-fi "in the house" as opposed to "on that board" where it's much more limited in terms of potential uses, even across solutions.
2. The idea of waste. Sometimes we see this on the Propeller with people asking, "why is there one on every COG, when...." and of course we've got great answers to that, but still they see something they paid for wasted...
3. Failure points. If it's all in one, and something bad happens, it's all under repair, or they buy another one, etc... On the other hand, if it's in pieces, something bad can happen to one piece and the rest still works, meaning they only buy what they need to get it done, despite the trouble.
4. "Fits in the budget" and some here have hinted at that in various ways. $100 is a lot of money. $50 is still a lot of money, but easier to let go of. $35, $25, etc... is pretty easy. We see this in lots of things. People will buy things over and over at $9.99, but won't buy in the same way at $39.99. Late night TV work around? You can pay for it in four easy payments of $9.99...
Shows demand for wifi...
NOT as a way of forcing everyone to pay $39 more for WiFi on board Prop boards, even if they don't need it. Let's not price P2 boards out of the market.
Every Prop could then publish subscribe to any other Prop or any other MQTT client on the network .... I just had a play on my Linux box and a RPI and it's a breeze ..
.. just subscribe to a topic you are interested in and you will get the data published on that topic ..
See --> http://mqtt.org/
One day I hope someone will write a MQTT client for the Prop.
My 2c
Bernie
Better yet, how about all the stuff on the Propeller Activity Board, but with sockets like the Quickstart instead of the breadboard? (D/A and A/D obviously not needed with prop II)
Bloody hell. I just put a server into production use that contains my own home made publish/subscribe protocol over websockets. Now you tell me about MQTT which does pretty much exactly the same thing! Looks like I'm going to be ripping out my pub/sub code and replacing it with MQTT.
If you are prepared to program your Prop in C++ then there already is one. Just use the Arduino MQTT client.https://github.com/knolleary/pubsubclient/tree/master/PubSubClient
Looks like all it needs is a bit of lower level driver code to talk to an ethernet or WIFI shield or whatever which probably exists for the Prop already.
That is only about 200 lines of C++ code and it looks like it would be pretty straight forward to translate it into Spin.
I'd also be interested a MQTT prop effort. Some people around here are fans of MQTT and have written code for other micros. I believe it would fit comfortably on a prop