Adepteva is about to deliver me a credit card sized board carrying a dual core ARM9 processor, plus a pile of FPGA logic, plus their own parallel 16 core parallel FPU chip, plus 1GB RAM, plus ethernet, USB and all the normal ARM board goodies.
Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with it? Have you a plan yet? To address Potatohead's point, after six hours with it (to pull a number out of the air) will you have accomplished as much with it as you would have if it were a P2 board? Not talking about a hypothetical person...talking about you.
Edit: I ask these questions for several reasons...
1) There is a glut of tiny high-performance boards. What are they all for?!
2) Adaptiva and its employees must find it more lucrative to sell boards than to employ these same boards to do something. Perhaps it is because they are faced with the same question: To do what?
3) I'm not that interested, personally, in spending five months to make Board X do one thing, even if it does it really well. (This is partly because I haven't thought of that killer application worth five months of dedicated time.) Instead, I have something I want to research this morning, and something else this afternoon. I need a tool that is flexible and quick.
potatohead's post was quite eloquent. I gave a dollar oriented analysis (again) in another thread.
Unfortunately, I think all of us that make boards will still get the "you are charging too much" / "why can't you sell for RPi/BBB/Launchpad prices".
Yet we keep on trying... and investing a lot of money and development time.
Right now, I've started preliminary design work on five potential P2 products. I don't know yet how many I'll bring to market, as I am not sure there will be enough of a market for me to sell enough boards to recoup my development costs. I am also tooling up for low/medium volume SMT production in my lab.
I think one thing that would help all of us (Parallax, board designers) is if Parallax prominently featured third-party designs on the web site, and their future ads. It shows "design wins" for Parallax, showcases products using the P2 - and gets exposure for the board designers.
Parallax did that for a while with the P1 ... then the third party page got buried in the site, becoming hard to find instead of being featured.
Mind you... only decent products should be featured (ie no more wire wrapped expensive memory add-ons)
I think one thing that would help all of us (Parallax, board designers) is if Parallax prominently featured third-party designs on the web site, and their future ads. It shows "design wins" for Parallax, showcases products using the P2 - and gets exposure for the board designers.
We can do this. I'll talk to Ken about it this afternoon.
I think board pricing for the hobbyist market was changed big time by the Raspberry. Before it came along you had +$150.00 boards like the Beagleboard and the bone at around $90.00. The mbed ARM stamp at $60.00.
And then bam!! Out comes a $35.00 ARM based home PC for kids and hackers. Then comes the BeagleBoneBlack at $45.00, the Teensy at $19.00. Freescale Freedom boards in Arduino format at $12.00.
On the FPGA/CPLD front we now have $29.00 boards from Lattice and for $50.00 or so you can get a nice Cyclone based board to play with.
It's never been a better time to be a hobbyist but at the same token never a worse time for a one man shop trying to make it. These low prices have also shaped the views of prospective buyers. They'll look at a $100 board then look at the $40.00 board and go for the latter. Money talks.
As for the P2, I think a introductory board priced at around $40-$50 would be just about right. Anymore than that and you'll get questions like "why shouldn't I get a Raspberry, it's cheaper and it also has digital IO just like your board does".
Only processor manufacturers and huge volume non-profits can make boards at those prices. Ok, and some asian incredible volume board houses.
The only way to compete against that is to differentiate on features, software, and support - so that the customer appreciates the value.
In P2's case, Parallax really has to push the value of soft peripherals for all sorts of hard real time applications - made possible with the eight cores.
I think board pricing for the hobbyist market was changed big time by the Raspberry. Before it came along you had +$150.00 boards like the Beagleboard and the bone at around $90.00. The mbed ARM stamp at $60.00.
And then bam!! Out comes a $35.00 ARM based home PC for kids and hackers. Then comes the BeagleBoneBlack at $45.00, the Teensy at $19.00. Freescale Freedom boards in Arduino format at $12.00.
On the FPGA/CPLD front we now have $29.00 boards from Lattice and for $50.00 or so you can get a nice Cyclone based board to play with.
It's never been a better time to be a hobbyist but at the same token never a worse time for a one man shop trying to make it. These low prices have also shaped the views of prospective buyers. They'll look at a $100 board then look at the $40.00 board and go for the latter. Money talks.
As for the P2, I think a introductory board priced at around $40-$50 would be just about right. Anymore than that and you'll get questions like "why shouldn't I get a Raspberry, it's cheaper and it also has digital IO just like your board does".
I think one thing that would help all of us (Parallax, board designers) is if Parallax prominently featured third-party designs on the web site, and their future ads. It shows "design wins" for Parallax, showcases products using the P2 - and gets exposure for the board designers.
Parallax did that for a while with the P1 ... then the third party page got buried in the site, becoming hard to find instead of being featured.
Mind you... only decent products should be featured (ie no more wire wrapped expensive memory add-ons)
Bill
Spot on Bill and thanks Chip for passing it on to Ken. The projects forum is a great place to see many things, but rarely will you see "true" products that are propeller based. Getting that visibility into the eyes of others can be very valuable.
potatohead, EXCELLENT post, and I completely agree. I have a few projects that would be great for others I know, but since I can't produce them at a favorable cost, they sit collecting dust in my idea book (which is literally a notebook with a label on the front that reads "ideas that sounded good")
I agree 100%...A lot has changed in just one to two years time...the market has many..many..many options. With great prices! I remember 5 to 6 years ago when chip first asked if the prop2 should have more cogs (16) or more hub memory...at that time, I would have paid over $75 for a board with those features...In fact, I paid $25 a piece for my first prop I chips. The price is going to be a huge factor. The market has changed
I know..for an outside vendor (not parallax) to sell a complete board for under $50...would be a tough task. I do not know the answer. When I look at the options/available boards $35 to $45 becomes the limit of what I am willing to pay.
I wasn't attacking you and it wasn't about you. All I was doing was speculating why the prices for hobby boards hit rock bottom and made clearly impossible for one man shops to make money.
I threw out the $40-50 price simply because you can get a decent ARM board for that price. If you want to sell a P2 for more, there has to be a set of benefits to justify the added cost. Just because it's a P2 doesn't cut it.
And no I wouldn't even consider building a P2 board. I came to conclusion long ago, that building Prop boards for sale was a good way to go broke given how many others were doing it as well, despite a limited market appeal.
Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with it?
This is perhaps off topic but as you asked I feel the need to reply.
To be honest I have no idea. However:
1) In my work we have been migrating from two thousand Euro industrial PC boxes to two hundred Euro ARM boards.
2) The Adepteva along with the Beagles and such is unlikely to meet our requirements, if only due to the temperature specs they can support.
3) However, one is exploring options all the time.
4) Personally, the Adepteva comes with some nice FPGA hardware to play with, something I always wanted to do, at a price that competes very well with FPGA dev boards.
5) Given all that, the Adepteva at 100 Euros is a steal even without the funky multi-core floating point gizmo they are putting on it.
6) I think that's the point, I was prepared to burn 100 Euros on it on a whim. Price it any higher and that would not happen.
7) I'm not really a gambler by nature but that kickstarter project grabbed by attention somehow.
Perhaps it all comes to naught, but perhaps something grows out of it.
Something that comes to mind is the accessibility of ARM, can you take a $45 ARM board an whip up an application that is directly applicable to both chips in the same time as a p2? ARM can be byzantine and take a relatively large amount of effort to implement ideas. Conversely, the prop can be very empowering, permitting rapid development of ideas. The endless data sheets of ARM chips can consume as much time as writing the whole application on a prop.
I totally understand - heck I have RPi's, Launchpad's etc as well.
rod1963,
I guess I was getting frustrated with people asking for on-board WiFi, on-board Bluetooth, on-board Eth controllers etc., and expecting to buy such boards for <$50.
I realize you were not attacking me, and while I don't think its impossible for small shops to make money, it has to be to niche markets.
The key is to make something other than a generic <insert ARM chip> linux board with some I/O, that will appeal to a target market. And finding that target market.
This is why I have been pushing hard for soft USB and Ethernet - it would help level the playing field a bit (with ARM and other SOC's) for many applications due to the reduction in BOM costs. Frankly, Parallax should fund soft USB and Ethernet projects, as it would help Prop2 greatly.
The reason for my post was to have a counterpoint that would show other readers why such feature/price ratios are not realistic.
Plus maybe seeing if someone could pull it off :-)
Yes an ARM can be byzantine. Who cares? We have a Linux kernel and a ton of libraries to hide that from the user.
Similarly the AVR is a nightmare. Who cares? We have the Ardruino software stack on top to hide that from the user.
These abstractions take their toll in versatility and above all raw speed.
Turns out 99% of users don't get down to the metal. Even in the Prop world how many would rather grab an object off of OBEX rather than write their own serial port driver or video display?
The only way to compete against that is to differentiate on features, software, and support - so that the customer appreciates the value.
In P2's case, Parallax really has to push the value of soft peripherals for all sorts of hard real time applications - made possible with the eight cores.
Correct. Price does matter -- but not always is it the only factor. A chip, a board, a tool will be cut some slack on pricing if it is easier to use, reduces development time, and/or just plain does something that can't be done otherwise. People will pay a bit more for it then. However, when you get into higher-volume applications, engineering effort and cost tend to be sent to the back of the bus. Oh sure, time to market remains important, but the general attitude, right or wrong, is that you can just throw more engineers at the problem. (Also, you can generally count on premium support from chip manufacturers and third-party commercial tool vendors when that kind of money is involved.) Unit cost rules the roost in such cases.
Even the hobbyist or tinkerer has a limit as to what he or she will pay for something "cool." You lose those impulse sales as your price climbs. Nonetheless, you can charge a little more and get away with it if you're viewed as the Cadillac (Jag, etc.) among the available options. So yeah, make my life easier and save me some time, and I'll pay you more. It's a no-brainer for me; well, except in the case of something that actually ships with my design and my boss or client is expecting me to squeeze every last penny per unit built.
These abstractions take their toll in versatility and above all raw speed.
Exactly. Sometimes, however, that just isn't acceptable and therein are the niches the Propeller can potentially fill.
Also, and this is just my opinion, but in terms of education it seems to me that students still need to learn programming on bare metal, at least one class or something. To my mind, it isn't a good idea to have engineering students learn micro/embedded programming only on an RPi or even an Arduino, never seeing first-hand what is underneath. They should have the experience of building a board up from scratch and writing raw drivers and such.
Oh how times change.
My first computer, 8080 based, 3k ram, 1k o/s, 2k tiny basic, no monitor, other storage of any kind cost £ 286 + vat about $450.
Today my much more powerful arduino mini £9 about $13.
In those days documentation was extra - no pdf's then, and if you wanted a developement system or assembler you had to SAVE UP (ouch) - no freebees then.
nevertheless - It changed the direction of my life. (sigh)
I suppose no matter how cheap (inexpensive) something is, we are never satisfied.
I dont do surface mount so-
What I would like is a breakout board (I think you call them), ie a small pcb with cpu, crystal, decoupling, the minimum necessary to run, with output on 0.1 inch spaced pins. I can build the rest. Even the rom can be left off, then I can just jack the cpu board into whatever I am building. No usb chip or any extras, maybe a reset switch.
how much can that be made for???
The abstraction argument is an interesting one. The Propeller architecture largely eschews abstraction in the conventional sense. Yes, SPIN is an object oriented language with a variety of interfaces to make things work or implement higher level functionality, but the difference is that you don't *NEED* that abstraction to make speedy use of the hardware.
A case in point, my code to broadcast a WAV file on FM with direct modulation is very small, it's only like 20 lines of code.
The Propeller architecture is unique in that it doesn't demand an RTOS to make it useful, you can get hacking with the bare hardware and have a lot of work done, without the added expense of an RTOS or OS at all.
Granted, because it's a soft peripheral philosophy, it takes objects and code to make a majority of things happen, but it doesn't seem that difficult or inaccessible to me.
Another example is the GPIO on the RPi, it is mapped to the Linux/Unix device model where a file is a pin, and there is code to do DMA to achieve high speeds. However, when you look at that in the context of the Propeller, you scratch your head and ask "Why all that abstraction for a few pins?".
The very abstraction that the hardware DEMANDS is the same thing that makes it far less suitable for some task that a Propeller would be tremendously more useful for.
What I would like is a breakout board (I think you call them), ie a small pcb with cpu, crystal, decoupling, the minimum necessary to run, with output on 0.1 inch spaced pins. I can build the rest. Even the rom can be left off, then I can just jack the cpu board into whatever I am building. No usb chip or any extras, maybe a reset switch.
how much can that be made for???
Dave
Including USB and proper power supplies, should be possible at $25 plus P2 raw IC cost.
This is fine, but a question for the external board developers and I hope they can agree.
We are on the verge of releasing a new web site which has been under development for 2.5 years. For the last year we've been updating two web sites: the current one and the new one, which is not yet released. The new web site is about to go beta, and although it is long-delayed we're close to release but still managing two web sites in the interim. We don't have the resources to maintain two web sites.
I would rather start showcasing the various Propeller boards on the new web site, so developers would need to wait a week or four maximum for us to release the new web site to see their information.
dr hydra,
This is why I have been pushing hard for soft USB and Ethernet - it would help level the playing field a bit (with ARM and other SOC's) for many applications due to the reduction in BOM costs. Frankly, Parallax should fund soft USB and Ethernet projects, as it would help Prop2 greatly.
Hey Bill, we would love to do this once we have working P2 chips and funds to launch these projects.
This is fine, but a question for the external board developers and I hope they can agree.
We are on the verge of releasing a new web site which has been under development for 2.5 years. For the last year we've been updating two web sites: the current one and the new one, which is not yet released. The new web site is about to go beta, and although it is long-delayed we're close to release but still managing two web sites in the interim. We don't have the resources to maintain two web sites.
I would rather start showcasing the various Propeller boards on the new web site, so developers would need to wait a week or four maximum for us to release the new web site to see their information.
Sounds good... however for most impact, USB & Eth should be working before P2 general launch as it would make great ad copy:
"and Propeller 2 has freely available objects for low&full speed USB as well as Ethernet - at no additional cost beyond a few passive components and the appropriate connectors"
Until then, perhaps some forum guys would volunteer to start, if Parallax announced that it wants soft USB + Ethernet to help P2 take off... just a thought...
A quick google search shows there are a large number of open source USB and TCP/IP stacks that can be ported once the low-level support (send packet / receive packet etc) is available.
(Crossing my fingers for a good shuttle run end of this month)
To my mind, it isn't a good idea to have engineering students learn micro/embedded programming only on an RPi or even an Arduino, never seeing first-hand what is underneath. They should have the experience of building a board up from scratch and writing raw drivers and such.
You should be relieved to know that they don't. A close relative (my son), a junior in EE, is wrapping up a microcontrollers course today. Their projects were done "bare metal" with an ARM Cortex M3 from ST.
What I would like is a breakout board (I think you call them), ie a small pcb with cpu, crystal, decoupling, the minimum necessary to run, with output on 0.1 inch spaced pins. I can build the rest.
Amen! We absolutely need a P2 header board. If a DIP is out, a header board is axiomatic.
Yeah, it could be packaged with a few onboard LED'sand touch switches and a snappy name like "QuickStart."
BUT - led's and touch switches take up SPACE - and space is COST - and cost MUST be MINIMAL!
I can add leds and switches till I am blue in the face but I can't solder surface mount!!!
The less I spend on board space the more modules I buy.
Comments
Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with it? Have you a plan yet? To address Potatohead's point, after six hours with it (to pull a number out of the air) will you have accomplished as much with it as you would have if it were a P2 board? Not talking about a hypothetical person...talking about you.
Edit: I ask these questions for several reasons...
1) There is a glut of tiny high-performance boards. What are they all for?!
2) Adaptiva and its employees must find it more lucrative to sell boards than to employ these same boards to do something. Perhaps it is because they are faced with the same question: To do what?
3) I'm not that interested, personally, in spending five months to make Board X do one thing, even if it does it really well. (This is partly because I haven't thought of that killer application worth five months of dedicated time.) Instead, I have something I want to research this morning, and something else this afternoon. I need a tool that is flexible and quick.
The only thing potatohead left out is the giant heaping piles of STRESS!
Dead on.
potatohead's post was quite eloquent. I gave a dollar oriented analysis (again) in another thread.
Unfortunately, I think all of us that make boards will still get the "you are charging too much" / "why can't you sell for RPi/BBB/Launchpad prices".
Yet we keep on trying... and investing a lot of money and development time.
Right now, I've started preliminary design work on five potential P2 products. I don't know yet how many I'll bring to market, as I am not sure there will be enough of a market for me to sell enough boards to recoup my development costs. I am also tooling up for low/medium volume SMT production in my lab.
I think one thing that would help all of us (Parallax, board designers) is if Parallax prominently featured third-party designs on the web site, and their future ads. It shows "design wins" for Parallax, showcases products using the P2 - and gets exposure for the board designers.
Parallax did that for a while with the P1 ... then the third party page got buried in the site, becoming hard to find instead of being featured.
Mind you... only decent products should be featured (ie no more wire wrapped expensive memory add-ons)
Bill
We can do this. I'll talk to Ken about it this afternoon.
That would be great.
And then bam!! Out comes a $35.00 ARM based home PC for kids and hackers. Then comes the BeagleBoneBlack at $45.00, the Teensy at $19.00. Freescale Freedom boards in Arduino format at $12.00.
On the FPGA/CPLD front we now have $29.00 boards from Lattice and for $50.00 or so you can get a nice Cyclone based board to play with.
It's never been a better time to be a hobbyist but at the same token never a worse time for a one man shop trying to make it. These low prices have also shaped the views of prospective buyers. They'll look at a $100 board then look at the $40.00 board and go for the latter. Money talks.
As for the P2, I think a introductory board priced at around $40-$50 would be just about right. Anymore than that and you'll get questions like "why shouldn't I get a Raspberry, it's cheaper and it also has digital IO just like your board does".
Only processor manufacturers and huge volume non-profits can make boards at those prices. Ok, and some asian incredible volume board houses.
The only way to compete against that is to differentiate on features, software, and support - so that the customer appreciates the value.
In P2's case, Parallax really has to push the value of soft peripherals for all sorts of hard real time applications - made possible with the eight cores.
Spot on Bill and thanks Chip for passing it on to Ken. The projects forum is a great place to see many things, but rarely will you see "true" products that are propeller based. Getting that visibility into the eyes of others can be very valuable.
potatohead, EXCELLENT post, and I completely agree. I have a few projects that would be great for others I know, but since I can't produce them at a favorable cost, they sit collecting dust in my idea book (which is literally a notebook with a label on the front that reads "ideas that sounded good")
I agree 100%...A lot has changed in just one to two years time...the market has many..many..many options. With great prices! I remember 5 to 6 years ago when chip first asked if the prop2 should have more cogs (16) or more hub memory...at that time, I would have paid over $75 for a board with those features...In fact, I paid $25 a piece for my first prop I chips. The price is going to be a huge factor. The market has changed
I am sure that all of us on the forum would love to see you design, build, sell, and market such boards for <$50 ... and make money at it.
Especially if you manage to include on-board WiFi at that price :-)
p.s.
The above was NOT meant to be sarcastic. I would really love to see how you could do that without losing money.
I know..for an outside vendor (not parallax) to sell a complete board for under $50...would be a tough task. I do not know the answer. When I look at the options/available boards $35 to $45 becomes the limit of what I am willing to pay.
Had a bad morning?
I wasn't attacking you and it wasn't about you. All I was doing was speculating why the prices for hobby boards hit rock bottom and made clearly impossible for one man shops to make money.
I threw out the $40-50 price simply because you can get a decent ARM board for that price. If you want to sell a P2 for more, there has to be a set of benefits to justify the added cost. Just because it's a P2 doesn't cut it.
And no I wouldn't even consider building a P2 board. I came to conclusion long ago, that building Prop boards for sale was a good way to go broke given how many others were doing it as well, despite a limited market appeal.
re: the Adepteva board: This is perhaps off topic but as you asked I feel the need to reply.
To be honest I have no idea. However:
1) In my work we have been migrating from two thousand Euro industrial PC boxes to two hundred Euro ARM boards.
2) The Adepteva along with the Beagles and such is unlikely to meet our requirements, if only due to the temperature specs they can support.
3) However, one is exploring options all the time.
4) Personally, the Adepteva comes with some nice FPGA hardware to play with, something I always wanted to do, at a price that competes very well with FPGA dev boards.
5) Given all that, the Adepteva at 100 Euros is a steal even without the funky multi-core floating point gizmo they are putting on it.
6) I think that's the point, I was prepared to burn 100 Euros on it on a whim. Price it any higher and that would not happen.
7) I'm not really a gambler by nature but that kickstarter project grabbed by attention somehow.
Perhaps it all comes to naught, but perhaps something grows out of it.
I totally understand - heck I have RPi's, Launchpad's etc as well.
rod1963,
I guess I was getting frustrated with people asking for on-board WiFi, on-board Bluetooth, on-board Eth controllers etc., and expecting to buy such boards for <$50.
I realize you were not attacking me, and while I don't think its impossible for small shops to make money, it has to be to niche markets.
The key is to make something other than a generic <insert ARM chip> linux board with some I/O, that will appeal to a target market. And finding that target market.
This is why I have been pushing hard for soft USB and Ethernet - it would help level the playing field a bit (with ARM and other SOC's) for many applications due to the reduction in BOM costs. Frankly, Parallax should fund soft USB and Ethernet projects, as it would help Prop2 greatly.
The reason for my post was to have a counterpoint that would show other readers why such feature/price ratios are not realistic.
Plus maybe seeing if someone could pull it off :-)
Never forget abstraction.
Yes an ARM can be byzantine. Who cares? We have a Linux kernel and a ton of libraries to hide that from the user.
Similarly the AVR is a nightmare. Who cares? We have the Ardruino software stack on top to hide that from the user.
These abstractions take their toll in versatility and above all raw speed.
Turns out 99% of users don't get down to the metal. Even in the Prop world how many would rather grab an object off of OBEX rather than write their own serial port driver or video display?
Even the hobbyist or tinkerer has a limit as to what he or she will pay for something "cool." You lose those impulse sales as your price climbs. Nonetheless, you can charge a little more and get away with it if you're viewed as the Cadillac (Jag, etc.) among the available options. So yeah, make my life easier and save me some time, and I'll pay you more. It's a no-brainer for me; well, except in the case of something that actually ships with my design and my boss or client is expecting me to squeeze every last penny per unit built.
Also, and this is just my opinion, but in terms of education it seems to me that students still need to learn programming on bare metal, at least one class or something. To my mind, it isn't a good idea to have engineering students learn micro/embedded programming only on an RPi or even an Arduino, never seeing first-hand what is underneath. They should have the experience of building a board up from scratch and writing raw drivers and such.
Again, maybe that's just me, though.
My first computer, 8080 based, 3k ram, 1k o/s, 2k tiny basic, no monitor, other storage of any kind cost £ 286 + vat about $450.
Today my much more powerful arduino mini £9 about $13.
In those days documentation was extra - no pdf's then, and if you wanted a developement system or assembler you had to SAVE UP (ouch) - no freebees then.
nevertheless - It changed the direction of my life. (sigh)
I suppose no matter how cheap (inexpensive) something is, we are never satisfied.
I dont do surface mount so-
What I would like is a breakout board (I think you call them), ie a small pcb with cpu, crystal, decoupling, the minimum necessary to run, with output on 0.1 inch spaced pins. I can build the rest. Even the rom can be left off, then I can just jack the cpu board into whatever I am building. No usb chip or any extras, maybe a reset switch.
how much can that be made for???
Dave
A case in point, my code to broadcast a WAV file on FM with direct modulation is very small, it's only like 20 lines of code.
The Propeller architecture is unique in that it doesn't demand an RTOS to make it useful, you can get hacking with the bare hardware and have a lot of work done, without the added expense of an RTOS or OS at all.
Granted, because it's a soft peripheral philosophy, it takes objects and code to make a majority of things happen, but it doesn't seem that difficult or inaccessible to me.
Another example is the GPIO on the RPi, it is mapped to the Linux/Unix device model where a file is a pin, and there is code to do DMA to achieve high speeds. However, when you look at that in the context of the Propeller, you scratch your head and ask "Why all that abstraction for a few pins?".
The very abstraction that the hardware DEMANDS is the same thing that makes it far less suitable for some task that a Propeller would be tremendously more useful for.
Including USB and proper power supplies, should be possible at $25 plus P2 raw IC cost.
This is fine, but a question for the external board developers and I hope they can agree.
We are on the verge of releasing a new web site which has been under development for 2.5 years. For the last year we've been updating two web sites: the current one and the new one, which is not yet released. The new web site is about to go beta, and although it is long-delayed we're close to release but still managing two web sites in the interim. We don't have the resources to maintain two web sites.
I would rather start showcasing the various Propeller boards on the new web site, so developers would need to wait a week or four maximum for us to release the new web site to see their information.
Okay by you, and Chip?
Hey Bill, we would love to do this once we have working P2 chips and funds to launch these projects.
NOT a problem for me... or anyone else I think.
Thanks for doing this. It will be good for everyone.
"and Propeller 2 has freely available objects for low&full speed USB as well as Ethernet - at no additional cost beyond a few passive components and the appropriate connectors"
Until then, perhaps some forum guys would volunteer to start, if Parallax announced that it wants soft USB + Ethernet to help P2 take off... just a thought...
A quick google search shows there are a large number of open source USB and TCP/IP stacks that can be ported once the low-level support (send packet / receive packet etc) is available.
(Crossing my fingers for a good shuttle run end of this month)
You should be relieved to know that they don't. A close relative (my son), a junior in EE, is wrapping up a microcontrollers course today. Their projects were done "bare metal" with an ARM Cortex M3 from ST.
That is a sentiment I can relate to. Thanks for the answer.
Amen! We absolutely need a P2 header board. If a DIP is out, a header board is axiomatic.
Yeah, it could be packaged with a few onboard LED'sand touch switches and a snappy name like "QuickStart."
BUT - led's and touch switches take up SPACE - and space is COST - and cost MUST be MINIMAL!
I can add leds and switches till I am blue in the face but I can't solder surface mount!!!
The less I spend on board space the more modules I buy.
Dave