Is anything really "OPEN?"
rjo__
Posts: 2,114
Some weeks ago, I bought an Arducamhttp://www.arducam.com, just to see what the competition is up to, to test my deeply held prejudices, and so that I could have a full bored(no holds barred) Arduino experience. (This is good for China as everything came from China.)
To my great surprise, the product works just as it is advertised. Everything is open except of course: no access to details of any importance and a huge black box sitting right in the middle of this supposedly open offspring.
My prejudges were completely satisfied and with that satisfied feeling of having missed driving over a dead animal in the middle of the street, I turned my precious little time and attention back to the P2... only to realize the full horror of needing another cog(or a much deeper understanding of NTSC and multitasking,etc.) which means that I really need two things: a new board from Terasic and an adapter board from Parallax. I know I could wait for the silicon but I don't want to wait for the silicon the
FPGA version is just fine with me:P)II
I can buy the board from Terasic but I can't buy the adapter board from Parallax. I suppose there is enough information in the forum to build my own but is there?
Is P2 development "open" or not?
Rich
To my great surprise, the product works just as it is advertised. Everything is open except of course: no access to details of any importance and a huge black box sitting right in the middle of this supposedly open offspring.
My prejudges were completely satisfied and with that satisfied feeling of having missed driving over a dead animal in the middle of the street, I turned my precious little time and attention back to the P2... only to realize the full horror of needing another cog(or a much deeper understanding of NTSC and multitasking,etc.) which means that I really need two things: a new board from Terasic and an adapter board from Parallax. I know I could wait for the silicon but I don't want to wait for the silicon the
FPGA version is just fine with me:P)II
I can buy the board from Terasic but I can't buy the adapter board from Parallax. I suppose there is enough information in the forum to build my own but is there?
Is P2 development "open" or not?
Rich
Comments
But a lot of add-ons can hide a huge amount of proprietary info. For instance, if you use Canbus, the support chip has 100 or so pages of documentation, but nothing to explain what the silicon actually does. At one time, hackers managed to get PIC and SX chips to provide a reverse-engineered CANbus solution and lawyers force the postings off the web.
So... some things are entirely open, others are not. And yet the two can often work well together.
Revisit the 1960s.
"Dogs run free, why don't we?"
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose."
Parallax made a limited run of the DE0 and DE2 adapter boards and when the FPGA image was initially made available. Enough to handle interested forumistas and a few extras. I would imagine when they are gone, they are gone, not much sense in doing another run at this point. I would think the board files and BOM should be available some place if you really wanted to make one. I assume you are talking DE2 since I think you already have a DE0 board.
Except for releasing the actual IP related to the chip, I've never seen anything so open and transparent as the P2. FPGA versions of the Chip? Interactive design and debugging discussions with the chip designer? Sharing of business details relating to the success and road blocks being faced? Open debate on rework plans and potential new features? Seems pretty open to me!
I have a few. Can't see inside that DIP package, can't make my own. The innereds are very clearly closed.
However Parallax does an amazing job of openness it it's board designs and development tools and so on. Whilst we don't expect the design of the P1 or P2 to ever be released there has been an amazingly frank and open discussion of the P2 development on the forum. Possibly a first in the world of chip design.
There must be a schematic of that FPGA adapter board somewhere. I'm sure I saw it once.
My distemper actually is about the existence and state of the add-on boards. I was around when the add-on boards were being distributed. I didn't think Parallax made enough and didn't want to waste their efforts on my own education.
I think the add-on boards could have persistent value on two grounds: first, if Chip continues along the development of the P3 with the same basic hardware, there will be a need for additional boards. I would guess that Chip will jump to the Cyclone V, but that is a weak guess. The second argument that I can make is more compelling. The add-on boards are really nice pieces of hardware. When the P2 is in silicon, I don't see why a P2 board couldn't be made to mate with the same foot print as the DE0 or DE2. So, you could just plug the add-on board into the P2 board and off you go. The new P2 board could of course be used to mate with an actual DE0 or DE2, which is very attractive and should remain attractive for some time.
The add-on boards are only throwaways by first intention. I would like like one… and I would like to buy it:)
By the time I could make a board… it would be obviated by time:)
Yes, they are very nice boards. I guess the estimate was that there would never be many people wanting to try out the P2 design on FPGA. Plus it was expected the PII was arriving "any day now" until the recent holdups.
Perhaps if you shout loud enough and find some other like minded souls to shout as well another run of those boards might happen.
Over the years, I have felt something similar... but had to admit that Parallax has had limited resources, and it has the right to choose the kind of business it wants to pursue.
It still seems that Parallax is the most informative and helpful environment for learning microcontrollers, though I am sure some would disagree with me.
We do have several vendors, like Gadget Gangster that sell add-on boards for Parallax products and seem to make a living doing so. But it almost becomes a full-time business in and of itself -- see Sparkfun and Adafruit.
If you have a demanding business, do you do what you enjoy doing or to you try to just grab the biggest chunk of the market by trying to do everything better and pleasing everyone?
It is a tough call at best.