Should I buy a Propeller C?

allday

Just looking for some informed advice on whether I should buy a Prop C microcontroller based on my needs and experience level.

Needs: read data from multiple sensors (perhaps an accelerometer or pressure sensors), feed data to software I will have written, and send instructions to an output device (such as a motor).

The device I would eventually like to build is something similar to a Segway.

Experience: I've developed fairly sophisticated software in C and have logged many (many!) hours with it. I have ZERO experience with microcontrollers or digital hardware of any kind. Assembly language may as well be Japanese to me (I don't speak Japanese) in fact, I'm not even sure what assembly language is exactly. I have no formal training with electrical engineering or computer science (my degree was in physics).

Is the Prop C the way to go or is there another device/product I should be looking at?

jazzed

allday wrote: »

Just looking for some informed advice on whether I should buy a Prop C microcontroller based on my needs and experience level.

The first thing one learns about C on the Propeller is that some will try to push another language on you

Propeller C is based on the GCC tool-chain. It supports the ANSI-C standard C and C++.

Propeller C supports small systems, and support is getting better daily. Parallax is pushing hard to make more micro-controller sized libraries available for Propeller. If you really need C standard libraries, external memory solutions make that more feasible.

Visit http://learn.parallax.com/propeller-c and you will find many tutorials and micro-controller sized libraries for use with SimpleIDE. We are adding some new libraries to make it even more micro-controller friendly.

You may need to buy a Propeller Kit to get started, but the tools are and free.

Ttailspin

You are already very far ahead in the game if you have mastered C.
I think, This board is most definitely for you as a beginner to Microcontrollers... :thumb:



-Tommy

Mike Green

Just so you know, it's not a Prop C microcontroller, it's a Propeller 1 microcontroller. First of all, although you can program the Propeller in C, you can also program it in a number of other programming languages including the original language for the Propeller, called Spin. You may not know any assembly language, but the Propeller's is easy enough to learn when you're ready to learn it. Fortunately you don't have to know it, but it's handy to know at times. There is a Propeller 2 in development at this time that will be faster, have more memory, and have a number of important new features, but the Propeller 1 will be around for a long time (a policy of Parallax's).

Parallax has been in the robotics / microcontroller educational business since its inception and is good at making their products easy to understand and use. These support forums are well respected for being helpful and welcoming for expert and beginners alike. There are a number of people here doing projects involving closed loop control, mostly flight control, but the same stuff is applicable to something Segway-ish. Have a look at Hanno Sander's balancing robot for example (here).

The Propeller is certainly a good way to go and, with your experience with C, I'd stick with that, but by all means, become familiar over time with Spin and Propeller assembly.

LoopyByteloose

C or C++ is an excellent point of entry language for the Propeller. And for you project, parallel processing will make many things much easier to do.

But at the end of the day, microcontrollers are not big computers that tend to depend on large file and storage systems.

And much of what you want to do is motor control. That is very critical in terms of sensing and executing fast. To do so, you need to still understand the underlying silicon and what I would call the Propeller architecture and its related support systems that are on the silicon.

Timing is everything. C may in some cases be adequate and in other cases too slow. But it is the right entry point for yourself.