If these come out for $10 or so, they'd make an interesting little thing to toy with. Wasn't aware that BT LE can reach 300', so it might be as good as/better/worse than the ESP8266 for a home mesh I'm thinking of.
Because it's been 8 years.
Because Parallax has strongly hinted that they would provide an FPGA image by this Spring.
Because Parallax needs the P2 ASAP to maintain their existence.
Because Parallax seems to need to be reminded of the commitments they've made to their customers.
Because I want the P2.
I will continue to make my "P2 Watch" posts until either the end of Spring or until the P2 FPGA image is posted. JDat, just ignore my posts if you don't like them.
Actually I don't like attitude that someone outside Parallax Inc. know better what Parallax Inc. guys must to do.
From my point of view It's not really necessary that Parallax release FPGA image. They can keep it colsed if it's Ok for business (like 8 years with P1), but I really need physical P2 chip in my hands. I I need to wait, that it's. Most important: P2 should be at least the same quality as P1. No bugs on crystal!
JDat, you seem to misunderstand Parallax's plan for developing the P2. First of all, Parallax plans on releasing only the P2 FPGA image, and not the Verilog. This is different that what they did with the P1, where they released the Verilog source, and this was done only after the P1 had been shipping for several years. The purpose for releasing the P2 FPGA image is so that the Prop community can assist in validating the design, and finding problems. This is one of the reasons that Parallax plans to manufacture and sell an FPGA board that can run the P2 FPGA image.
I also would like to have the physical P2 chip. For me the FPGA version is only good for validation, but it would be too expensive to use in practical applications. I also agree that the P2 should be bug free, which is why it is important to have as many people as possible testing the FPGA images. Even if the first FPGA image is available this Spring it will probably be a year before we see a P2 chip.
Actually I don't like attitude that someone outside Parallax Inc. know better what Parallax Inc. guys must to do.
And another thing. My opinion of what the Parallax Inc. guys must do is no different than what Parallax has already said they were going to do. I just want them to follow through with their latest commitments and succeed in producing the P2.
Since it seems to be a point, I'll say why I need P2.
I have bought my company hard into the Propeller ecosystem. We are selling products. Not a lot of them, but we don't have to sell a lot of them because it's industry. We can charge a lot. But we can only get away with this because I don't have to be an engineer with up to date dev tools to get a basic Propeller system to talk to VGA monitors, serial ports, keyboards, and SPI and IIC devices. I can roll a new product, schematic to circuit board to acrylic enclosure, all by myself in less than a day and with some confidence that the first prototype will work, and that I will be able to make more of them in five years. There is nothing else that can give me that.
One of my peeps got his hands on a RIoTboard a couple of months ago and I haven't even taken it out of the bag. What use is it to me? Sure it runs Linux and has HDMI and all kinds of peripherals, but what do I do when they stop making it and v2.0 isn't compatible? I don't really have that problem with the Propeller and I would have it with just about everything else.
But the Propeller is getting old. Last month I put in a display system at one of the busiest drilling fluid plants in the US. We took the real time weight data from all over their yard, which they had been reading manually from instrument displays and recording on a whiteboard, and put it on a 42 inch TV set in their control room updated in real time. Every element of that system is driven by Propellers, including the VGA TV display. But I didn't get to see it in full operation because the TV set didn't come with a VGA port and it took the company that provided it another week to run down a VGA to HDMI converter.
It's getting hard to find PS/2 keyboards too, and even though most consumer USB keyboards still support PS/2 with the passive adapter, a lot of them and especially the industrial ones don't. The Propeller can only barely do HID USB, when overclocked and devoting three cogs to the project.
Serial ports aren't a problem, of course, and neither is simple Ethernet via the ENC28J60 and Olimex's convenient breakout board. Of course that's going to become a problem if IPV6 ever becomes a real requirement; hopefully IPV4 support will go on at the subnet level for awhile. The Prop rocks with UDP for instrumentation data but it would be nice to have more program RAM for things like TCP.
But the writing is on the wall. We are going to need HDMI, soon. We're going to need HID USB without all the backflips, also pretty soon, or we're going to start looking silly. We're charging a lot of money for these little boards because we guarantee our work and we can puff out our chests and say there's no operating system, no cooling, no hard drive, can't be hacked, and certain customers can't believe they are hearing that and will throw money at us. But it was a little embarrassing to have VGA and not HDMI when we were putting up a control room display for one of the largest petrochemical industry supply companies in the world. The situation with keyboards is also becoming awkward. Fortunately the industry is conservative but we are increasingly off of the mainstream in our hardware requirements.
I'm not looking for the Sun, Moon, and stars here. The Propeller stays viable because nothing else matches its versatility, but it's ten years old now and the age is showing. We need to keep up with new interfaces and we need more program RAM. Built-in ADC and video DACs will certainly be a plus but I'd just like to be back to specifying standard HID hardware for new jobs.
Didn't Chip say that the P2 would not support HDMI directly? Still, there must be HDMI converter/driver chips available that would work with both the P1 and P2.
Because it's been 8 years.
Because Parallax has strongly hinted that they would provide an FPGA image by this Spring.
Because Parallax needs the P2 ASAP to maintain their existence.
Because Parallax seems to need to be reminded of the commitments they've made to their customers.
Because I want the P2.
I will continue to make my "P2 Watch" posts until either the end of Spring or until the P2 FPGA image is posted. JDat, just ignore my posts if you don't like them.
Agreed on all points, maybe except the one that we need to be reminded of our commitment to customers because we appreciate your role very well. I'm monitoring engineering, meeting weekly with the team (Chip, consultants), managing the Propeller 1-2-3 FPGA Board into production, planning finances, arranging very expensive tool licensing and every other detail around this project that's relevant at this stage. I'm happy to make a detailed post - beyond the pieces Chip drops here - when I have more confidence in the details and timing. An update should be coming soon.
I think there is existing code out there for the attiny that may read a regular keyboard and it should not be much work to add code to route the keyboard data to the Prop. This may be a cheap and easy solution for the need for connecting keyboards. For the time being, what about a USB host shield like this
localroger:
A very informative post. Your details of how you use the P1 (ease of use) are precisely the way a number of us are using the P1 commercially. The ones I know about, mine included, are low volume and high priced items. In fact I use 3 props on one of my products. Each one of them could have been a cheaper alternative micro, or a combined single micro. But no other solution would be so easy to do.
You are of course correct, in that the P1 doesn't really do USB. It's my hope that the P2 will do USB FS by software. IMHO it doesn't necessarily need to be fully USB compliant, as long as it works reliably. I have done quite a bit of work getting P2 to do this but stopped when the P2 hot caused a major rethink. I will complete it once the P2 FPGA code becomes stable.
Sure there are alternative solutions to the USB aspect, such as the FTDI or similar for the USB to PC interface. Same goes for Keyboards with USB only - use USB Host chip(s). Same goes for converting/driving HDMI.
re P2:
It's now become quite obvious that the P2 aimed too high. We all thought that the P2 would be here long long ago. What we all really needed was a faster P1 with more hub RAM, more I/O, better/easier ADC, and preferably with security. There is a list of Parallax's customer requirements - I think there are 5 points on the list. All of these would be met with this faster P1.
I have to say, and I have said it before, IMHO it would be better to see the P2 be a faster P1 with those additions to meet those 5 points sooner, than the P2 which is just blowing out the timeline and costing a fortune. Just how long will the commercial P1 users who need the P2 (in some form) now wait before jumping ship.
I would also rather see if the boot Flash/Eeprom could be integrated in the new P2 (surely OnSemi have the technology to do this) and also an internal 1% oscillator (again lots of micros are doing this). These are the little things that would make an updated P1 great.
We have verified a few changes to the P1 by using the P1V, and the security was worked out long ago on the P2 together with a new boot monitor. The security would benefit from Flash/Eeprom, even if it was OTP.
All this would have less risk to Parallax than the now complex P2 which is going to require some extensive FPGA testing. And then there are going to be all the software tools which an updated P1 would not require. Coupled to this, Chip has learnt a few things to reduce power that could be implemented on an extended P1 design, such as using blocks of ram in the hub so that only part is selected each time the hub is accessed.
Meanwhile, I will just wait on the sidelines until something is announced.
I haven't been here in a while so I'm not sure if I'm entitled to say anything, but here's my two cents.
I'm still not entirely sure what the p2's complete feature set is, aside from this thread's title. I doubt anyone would actually be able to read through all 130 pages of this thread and find some random post with updates on this. Considering the fact that it's been 8 years and all we have with info on this is a sub-forum, there are two possibilities:
1: Parallax doesn't consider the P2 a high priority.
2: Someone in Parallax messed up.
I'm not sure about 1, but I'm starting to think it's 2. Obviously, designing an 8/16/IDK-core IC is extremely difficult. Even so, or rather, ESPECIALLY so, a rigid timeframe should have been made and stuck to. Even if it's one person and a huge project, that's no excuse for sloppy planning. Now, I know complex IC design is difficult, yes, especially for a one-person development team. So take that into consideration. For example, year one, decide on a definite feature set and make a _dedicated web page_ for it. After that, make monthly posts on progress, and give a time frame of x years. Pretty much the absolute worst way to do this would be to announce a great product, announce a sequel, and give almost no details on it. For an open-source IC, the propeller's development seems to be very closed.
Like I said, I just came back here after a very long hiatus, so maybe everyone knows something I don't. But where is there a feature set for the P2? Was there any openness about development, aside from random updates? I don't mean open-source verilog or whatever, I mean open-source _development_. Meaning we know what's going on. Then again, maybe I'm just out of some loop.
Has parallax considered hiring someone to work alongside Chip, so he's not the only designer of your flagship product?
Regarding the HDMI, have a look at the range of "AV2HDMI" converters, these range from around $11 to $80 and there are several different designs. There are VGA versions too. They typically are powered by a USB Mini B connection that makes them easy to power on the back of a standard monitor, using the monitor's USB A ports. Watch out for "HDMI2AV" which are not what you need, are generally slightly cheaper, but pollute the listings of the "AV2HDMI"
I have been using them successfully with the P2, but am thinking seriously about mounting a P1 in the ~4mm free headspace on the inside of the enclosure, picking up power from the convenient 5v unused holes, and driving the AV signals onto the RCA pins (from inside the enclosure).
It would be fairly trivial to add some additional functionality without compromising the case - eg
- 12 touch pads on the back of the prop PCB would allow some interactivity (numeric keypad or navigation)
- diverting the data pins from the mini USB to an FTDI chip on the prop board
- physically cutting the RCA signal pins to allow 3 external grounded I/O to be connected via the yellow/red/white RCA jacks (since the prop can inject its signals to the AV2HDMI pcb)
- incorporating a ESP8266 or BLE for wireless serial comms
We're using one of the more expensive variety of these AV2HDMI converters, but I have some other cheapies on order to see how much variation there is from one model to another, and see if a universal-ish pcb is possible
I'm also interested in an HID (usb host) solution for commercial touch/multitouch screens. Hope to have an OpenVizsla soon to poke around at the protocol.
Interesting link, and shows more of what is likely in that Curie.with the 384KF and 80KB RAM
What intel calls a MCU here is
* The Minute Intel architecture is based on the 486 with Pentium IA ISA compatibility added.
* Fully active CPU @ 100 MHz; ; “active idle” sleep states @ 38.4 MHz.
* SRAM: 192 KB SRAM for both code and data.
* Runs on Viper*, a real-time operating system provided by Wind River
The Limitation sections also says
* There is no floating point support in MCU.
This will be FLASH boots into RAM silicon, the same as P2 (but on much smaller geometries than P2).
Packages and Prices will be very interesting to see...
For an open-source IC, the propeller's development seems to be very closed.
The Propeller 2 is not an open source design.
Was there any openness about development...?
Clearly you were not around for the months (years?) that the development was discussed here in quite some detail. With feature suggestions from forum members being adopted into the design on what seemed like a daily basis. That resulted in a design that was too complex and power hungry and ultimately scrapped.
You are of course correct, in that the P1 doesn't really do USB. It's my hope that the P2 will do USB FS by software. IMHO it doesn't necessarily need to be fully USB compliant, as long as it works reliably. I have done quite a bit of work getting P2 to do this but stopped when the P2 hot caused a major rethink. I will complete it once the P2 FPGA code becomes stable.
It could be worth looking at what helper-code in Verilog, is needed to have USB work on P1V ?
Because P2 is not looking like having Split clocks on COGS, it will be important to push down the MHz that P2 needs to run USB.
USB on P2 is much less attractive if it mandates a high clock to all COGS
Sure there are alternative solutions to the USB aspect, such as the FTDI or similar for the USB to PC interface. Same goes for Keyboards with USB only - use USB Host chip(s).
As time marches on, those alternative solutions for USB become cheaper.
How can they that "MCU" a 486? It has no floating point. Integrating the FPU onto the device was the main point of the 486 at the time rather than it being a separate coprocessor. Perhaps they should call it "386".
What we all really needed was a faster P1 with more hub RAM, more I/O, better/easier ADC, and preferably with security. There is a list of Parallax's customer requirements - I think there are 5 points on the list. All of these would be met with this faster P1.
I have to say, and I have said it before, IMHO it would be better to see the P2 be a faster P1 with those additions to meet those 5 points sooner, than the P2 which is just blowing out the timeline and costing a fortune. Just how long will the commercial P1 users who need the P2 (in some form) now wait before jumping ship.
The problem there, is the custom design portions of a Prop. Verilog scales and slices and dices very easily, not so the custom parts.
I would also rather see if the boot Flash/Eeprom could be integrated in the new P2 (surely OnSemi have the technology to do this)
Do you mean stacked die ? - that's a small part chip design (to include the bonding resource), and most-parts packaging decisions.
One hopes Parallax at least allow for this, even if the first devices do not have in-package -flash/
and also an internal 1% oscillator (again lots of micros are doing this). These are the little things that would make an updated P1 great.
That is a custom cell, and 1% oscillators are not trivial, and mostly have some trim-elements in them.
- suddenly you increase risk, add costs and delays... but then claim ?
How can they that "MCU" a 486? It has no floating point. Integrating the FPU onto the device was the main point of the 486 at the time rather than it being a separate coprocessor. Perhaps they should call it "386".
Yes, it certainly looks a mish-mash..... yet they also claim "with Pentium IA ISA compatibility added." - err ? with no FPU ?
Still, intel owns wind-river, so they can roll any skewed support they like into tools.
I think there is existing code out there for the attiny that may read a regular keyboard and it should not be much work to add code to route the keyboard data to the Prop. This may be a cheap and easy solution for the need for connecting keyboards.
If the FT51 ever comes out of FTDI, it could provide a useful USB HOST Bridge type solution.
FTDI do have VNC2 that can do this now.
Didn't Chip say that the P2 would not support HDMI directly? Still, there must be HDMI converter/driver chips available that would work with both the P1 and P2.
When the VNC2 is programmed, the user simply passes data from the HID class device connected
to the USB port 1 of the VNC2. The VNC2 will process this data
to pass it out to UART port of the
chip.
There are no additional commands required, it is a simple data bridge.
The project default set the UART to 9600
Well, as a solution for connecting a keyboard to a Prop those FTDI concerns are not an issue. For programming a Prop I would not use FTDI at all. Nevermind the malware, the issues with getting FTDI drivers to actually work on client systems all over the country is where the pain is.
Comments
If these come out for $10 or so, they'd make an interesting little thing to toy with. Wasn't aware that BT LE can reach 300', so it might be as good as/better/worse than the ESP8266 for a home mesh I'm thinking of.
May June Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa -- -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 -- -- -- 31Because Parallax has strongly hinted that they would provide an FPGA image by this Spring.
Because Parallax needs the P2 ASAP to maintain their existence.
Because Parallax seems to need to be reminded of the commitments they've made to their customers.
Because I want the P2.
I will continue to make my "P2 Watch" posts until either the end of Spring or until the P2 FPGA image is posted. JDat, just ignore my posts if you don't like them.
From my point of view It's not really necessary that Parallax release FPGA image. They can keep it colsed if it's Ok for business (like 8 years with P1), but I really need physical P2 chip in my hands. I I need to wait, that it's. Most important: P2 should be at least the same quality as P1. No bugs on crystal!
I also would like to have the physical P2 chip. For me the FPGA version is only good for validation, but it would be too expensive to use in practical applications. I also agree that the P2 should be bug free, which is why it is important to have as many people as possible testing the FPGA images. Even if the first FPGA image is available this Spring it will probably be a year before we see a P2 chip.
I have bought my company hard into the Propeller ecosystem. We are selling products. Not a lot of them, but we don't have to sell a lot of them because it's industry. We can charge a lot. But we can only get away with this because I don't have to be an engineer with up to date dev tools to get a basic Propeller system to talk to VGA monitors, serial ports, keyboards, and SPI and IIC devices. I can roll a new product, schematic to circuit board to acrylic enclosure, all by myself in less than a day and with some confidence that the first prototype will work, and that I will be able to make more of them in five years. There is nothing else that can give me that.
One of my peeps got his hands on a RIoTboard a couple of months ago and I haven't even taken it out of the bag. What use is it to me? Sure it runs Linux and has HDMI and all kinds of peripherals, but what do I do when they stop making it and v2.0 isn't compatible? I don't really have that problem with the Propeller and I would have it with just about everything else.
But the Propeller is getting old. Last month I put in a display system at one of the busiest drilling fluid plants in the US. We took the real time weight data from all over their yard, which they had been reading manually from instrument displays and recording on a whiteboard, and put it on a 42 inch TV set in their control room updated in real time. Every element of that system is driven by Propellers, including the VGA TV display. But I didn't get to see it in full operation because the TV set didn't come with a VGA port and it took the company that provided it another week to run down a VGA to HDMI converter.
It's getting hard to find PS/2 keyboards too, and even though most consumer USB keyboards still support PS/2 with the passive adapter, a lot of them and especially the industrial ones don't. The Propeller can only barely do HID USB, when overclocked and devoting three cogs to the project.
Serial ports aren't a problem, of course, and neither is simple Ethernet via the ENC28J60 and Olimex's convenient breakout board. Of course that's going to become a problem if IPV6 ever becomes a real requirement; hopefully IPV4 support will go on at the subnet level for awhile. The Prop rocks with UDP for instrumentation data but it would be nice to have more program RAM for things like TCP.
But the writing is on the wall. We are going to need HDMI, soon. We're going to need HID USB without all the backflips, also pretty soon, or we're going to start looking silly. We're charging a lot of money for these little boards because we guarantee our work and we can puff out our chests and say there's no operating system, no cooling, no hard drive, can't be hacked, and certain customers can't believe they are hearing that and will throw money at us. But it was a little embarrassing to have VGA and not HDMI when we were putting up a control room display for one of the largest petrochemical industry supply companies in the world. The situation with keyboards is also becoming awkward. Fortunately the industry is conservative but we are increasingly off of the mainstream in our hardware requirements.
I'm not looking for the Sun, Moon, and stars here. The Propeller stays viable because nothing else matches its versatility, but it's ten years old now and the age is showing. We need to keep up with new interfaces and we need more program RAM. Built-in ADC and video DACs will certainly be a plus but I'd just like to be back to specifying standard HID hardware for new jobs.
-Phil
Agreed on all points, maybe except the one that we need to be reminded of our commitment to customers because we appreciate your role very well. I'm monitoring engineering, meeting weekly with the team (Chip, consultants), managing the Propeller 1-2-3 FPGA Board into production, planning finances, arranging very expensive tool licensing and every other detail around this project that's relevant at this stage. I'm happy to make a detailed post - beyond the pieces Chip drops here - when I have more confidence in the details and timing. An update should be coming soon.
Ken Gracey
https://www.circuitsathome.com/products-page/arduino-shields/usb-host-shield-2-0-for-arduino
http://www.robotshop.com/en/usb-host-shield-arduino.html
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9947?gclid=CjwKEAjwg7yqBRCu5NmlgMm6i08SJADDEudZOmkUBwNRaN9kXIlVFVitTg6DFePhS-gTBOwgJKW3lxoC1ofw_wcB
or some other USB host concept with the Prop1 for connecting newer keyboards?
Yeah, I like his reminders, too. Perhaps he's a bit bold, but I think his approach has merit. Thanks for saying what many of us are thinking, Dave.
Thanks for touching base with us, Ken. We're looking forward to the update when things come together a bit more. Keep up the great work!
A very informative post. Your details of how you use the P1 (ease of use) are precisely the way a number of us are using the P1 commercially. The ones I know about, mine included, are low volume and high priced items. In fact I use 3 props on one of my products. Each one of them could have been a cheaper alternative micro, or a combined single micro. But no other solution would be so easy to do.
You are of course correct, in that the P1 doesn't really do USB. It's my hope that the P2 will do USB FS by software. IMHO it doesn't necessarily need to be fully USB compliant, as long as it works reliably. I have done quite a bit of work getting P2 to do this but stopped when the P2 hot caused a major rethink. I will complete it once the P2 FPGA code becomes stable.
Sure there are alternative solutions to the USB aspect, such as the FTDI or similar for the USB to PC interface. Same goes for Keyboards with USB only - use USB Host chip(s). Same goes for converting/driving HDMI.
re P2:
It's now become quite obvious that the P2 aimed too high. We all thought that the P2 would be here long long ago. What we all really needed was a faster P1 with more hub RAM, more I/O, better/easier ADC, and preferably with security. There is a list of Parallax's customer requirements - I think there are 5 points on the list. All of these would be met with this faster P1.
I have to say, and I have said it before, IMHO it would be better to see the P2 be a faster P1 with those additions to meet those 5 points sooner, than the P2 which is just blowing out the timeline and costing a fortune. Just how long will the commercial P1 users who need the P2 (in some form) now wait before jumping ship.
I would also rather see if the boot Flash/Eeprom could be integrated in the new P2 (surely OnSemi have the technology to do this) and also an internal 1% oscillator (again lots of micros are doing this). These are the little things that would make an updated P1 great.
We have verified a few changes to the P1 by using the P1V, and the security was worked out long ago on the P2 together with a new boot monitor. The security would benefit from Flash/Eeprom, even if it was OTP.
All this would have less risk to Parallax than the now complex P2 which is going to require some extensive FPGA testing. And then there are going to be all the software tools which an updated P1 would not require. Coupled to this, Chip has learnt a few things to reduce power that could be implemented on an extended P1 design, such as using blocks of ram in the hub so that only part is selected each time the hub is accessed.
Meanwhile, I will just wait on the sidelines until something is announced.
I'm still not entirely sure what the p2's complete feature set is, aside from this thread's title. I doubt anyone would actually be able to read through all 130 pages of this thread and find some random post with updates on this. Considering the fact that it's been 8 years and all we have with info on this is a sub-forum, there are two possibilities:
1: Parallax doesn't consider the P2 a high priority.
2: Someone in Parallax messed up.
I'm not sure about 1, but I'm starting to think it's 2. Obviously, designing an 8/16/IDK-core IC is extremely difficult. Even so, or rather, ESPECIALLY so, a rigid timeframe should have been made and stuck to. Even if it's one person and a huge project, that's no excuse for sloppy planning. Now, I know complex IC design is difficult, yes, especially for a one-person development team. So take that into consideration. For example, year one, decide on a definite feature set and make a _dedicated web page_ for it. After that, make monthly posts on progress, and give a time frame of x years. Pretty much the absolute worst way to do this would be to announce a great product, announce a sequel, and give almost no details on it. For an open-source IC, the propeller's development seems to be very closed.
Like I said, I just came back here after a very long hiatus, so maybe everyone knows something I don't. But where is there a feature set for the P2? Was there any openness about development, aside from random updates? I don't mean open-source verilog or whatever, I mean open-source _development_. Meaning we know what's going on. Then again, maybe I'm just out of some loop.
Has parallax considered hiring someone to work alongside Chip, so he's not the only designer of your flagship product?
Regarding the HDMI, have a look at the range of "AV2HDMI" converters, these range from around $11 to $80 and there are several different designs. There are VGA versions too. They typically are powered by a USB Mini B connection that makes them easy to power on the back of a standard monitor, using the monitor's USB A ports. Watch out for "HDMI2AV" which are not what you need, are generally slightly cheaper, but pollute the listings of the "AV2HDMI"
I have been using them successfully with the P2, but am thinking seriously about mounting a P1 in the ~4mm free headspace on the inside of the enclosure, picking up power from the convenient 5v unused holes, and driving the AV signals onto the RCA pins (from inside the enclosure).
It would be fairly trivial to add some additional functionality without compromising the case - eg
- 12 touch pads on the back of the prop PCB would allow some interactivity (numeric keypad or navigation)
- diverting the data pins from the mini USB to an FTDI chip on the prop board
- physically cutting the RCA signal pins to allow 3 external grounded I/O to be connected via the yellow/red/white RCA jacks (since the prop can inject its signals to the AV2HDMI pcb)
- incorporating a ESP8266 or BLE for wireless serial comms
We're using one of the more expensive variety of these AV2HDMI converters, but I have some other cheapies on order to see how much variation there is from one model to another, and see if a universal-ish pcb is possible
I'm also interested in an HID (usb host) solution for commercial touch/multitouch screens. Hope to have an OpenVizsla soon to poke around at the protocol.
Interesting link, and shows more of what is likely in that Curie.with the 384KF and 80KB RAM
What intel calls a MCU here is
* The Minute Intel architecture is based on the 486 with Pentium IA ISA compatibility added.
* Fully active CPU @ 100 MHz; ; “active idle” sleep states @ 38.4 MHz.
* SRAM: 192 KB SRAM for both code and data.
* Runs on Viper*, a real-time operating system provided by Wind River
The Limitation sections also says
* There is no floating point support in MCU.
This will be FLASH boots into RAM silicon, the same as P2 (but on much smaller geometries than P2).
Packages and Prices will be very interesting to see...
It could be worth looking at what helper-code in Verilog, is needed to have USB work on P1V ?
Because P2 is not looking like having Split clocks on COGS, it will be important to push down the MHz that P2 needs to run USB.
USB on P2 is much less attractive if it mandates a high clock to all COGS
As time marches on, those alternative solutions for USB become cheaper.
Mouser show
EFM8UB10F8G-B-QFN20 MCU USB, 8kB/2304B RAM 12b ADC, Chgr detect
1 $0.81 500 $0.617
How can they that "MCU" a 486? It has no floating point. Integrating the FPU onto the device was the main point of the 486 at the time rather than it being a separate coprocessor. Perhaps they should call it "386".
The problem there, is the custom design portions of a Prop. Verilog scales and slices and dices very easily, not so the custom parts.
Do you mean stacked die ? - that's a small part chip design (to include the bonding resource), and most-parts packaging decisions.
One hopes Parallax at least allow for this, even if the first devices do not have in-package -flash/
That is a custom cell, and 1% oscillators are not trivial, and mostly have some trim-elements in them.
- suddenly you increase risk, add costs and delays... but then claim ?
ANY new device will require some extensive FPGA testing - but not only that, it also requires testing of the full-custom portions of the design too.
Parallax are fortunate in that extensive FPGA testing is getting easier to do, every quarter.
Still, intel owns wind-river, so they can roll any skewed support they like into tools.
FTDI do have VNC2 that can do this now.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/160980-9-Chip-Computer-the-Next-RasPi
about a $9 Processor Module (roughly ~~ 1st Gen RaspPi )
that intends add-on HDMI and add-on VGA.
Thanks for the info, I have some boards with the VNC2 on it but had forgotten about all the ROMs that exist.
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/AppNotes/AN_185_Vinculum-II_UART_to_HID_Class_Host_Bridge.pdf
When the VNC2 is programmed, the user simply passes data from the HID class device connected
to the USB port 1 of the VNC2. The VNC2 will process this data
to pass it out to UART port of the
chip.
There are no additional commands required, it is a simple data bridge.
The project default set the UART to 9600
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innocent-users-chips-in-silent-update/
-Phil