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Late to the party...any of you using PSoC for anything? — Parallax Forums

Late to the party...any of you using PSoC for anything?

cbmeekscbmeeks Posts: 634
in General Discussion
I saw a video yesterday on the PSoC 4 Kit (video by Bil Herd...kit by Cypress) and how cool they are.

Heck, I thought this was some new technology but apparently, it's been out for a little while. :-D

Anyway, seemed pretty cool. Almost like an Arduino/CPLD combo for all things analog.

Any of you using one of these for anything?

Comments

  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    One of the appealing details of all the PSoC series, is the wide Vcc operation.

    We looked at PSoC (CY8C3xx) a while back, but found
    * Price was rather high, for the resource on offer
    * CPLD fabric was rather slow & limiting.

    The PSoC4 seems another re-spin with better price points, but still is an answer looking for a specific problem.

    Their Bluetooth ones do look interesting, because of the Bluetooth.
  • User NameUser Name Posts: 1,451
    I have several PSoC4 boards but haven't yet done much with them. The CY8CKIT-049 proved a little too cheap. (UART bootloader idea is cumbersome, and if your work-in-progress happens to freeze, you're expected to spend $90 to unbrick your $4 board.)

    So I got the Pioneer Kit. Much better, and with a little modification makes a fair programmer for any of the PSoC4 chips, and was only about $25.

    But then other projects got in the way, mostly P8X32A-related. Perhaps in the depths of winter I'll have time to revisit Cypress. I've seen some projects that made great use of the PSoC features. Also, the free software tools are pretty nifty. So is the tool management widget.
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    I keep my PSoC tools up to date as I figure one day I will use these devices in a project, which one I don't know yet. But as mentioned the software tools are really good and I look forward to using them too. Wish other manufacturers supplied tools to this degree as far too often they leave it all to some $$$$ compiler house. But then again I am buried up to my "arm"pits in ARMs of all sorts. You would think that ARM themselves would provide quality software tools free as they sure do make a packet out of licensing.
  • cbmeekscbmeeks Posts: 634
    That's some good information. I know it was marketing mumbo-jumbo, but the videos for the PSoC boards looked pretty cool and the tools did look nice.

    I might entertain getting one just for some tinkering.

    I agree on the ARM compilers. I feel like ARM needs to decide if they want to be a hardware company or a software company. Imagine if Intel required huge licensing fees to compile for the x86/i686 architecture.

    What's funny is just about every little "dream project" I have in the back of my head could just about be solved with one P2. Oh how I wished that thing would surface. :-D
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Peter Jakacki & cbmeeks,

    What's all this about ARM tools?

    There must be a dozen or more compilers for ARM out there. At least two of them Free and Open Source, GCC and Clang/LLVM. Then is a plethora of other tools, again free and proprietary.

    I don't know of anybody using the ARM compiler and I can't imagine it offers much benefit over the others. No doubt there is some magic source in using their vector units or whatever that get's you a little boost in performance if you really need it.

    Personally I think ARM should be folding any little tricks like that into GCC and or Clang rather than wasting money supporting their own compiler.

    ARM is indeed a software company. They don't make any hardware at all. They ship the ARM architecture as VHDL or whatever. Isn't it better they concentrate on their core competency rather than waste time building yet another compiler?

    ARM certainly does not require huge licensing fees to compile for their architecture. It can all be done for free.

    The PSoC looks interesting. I don't have the time to get into it. The fact that the tools are Windows only is a bit of a show stopper.
  • cbmeekscbmeeks Posts: 634
    Ah, that's right about ARM. I remember reading they don't actually manufacture the actual chips. And, I didn't realize there were good, quality free compilers for them.

    I stand corrected.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    There are few actual chip makers today.

    As far as I can tell Intel is the last major micro-processor manufacturer with it's own FABs. AMD sold theirs out ages ago.

  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2015-12-17 14:22
    I know that there are plenty of "tools" out there for ARM but I haven't been overly impressed with it all, and I have tried a lot of them, I've been spoilt on the Prop.

    The point I was trying to make is imagine if ARM themselves arm themselves :) with software tools like Cypress have done for instance although they use a limited Keil compiler, so however they fire these free software tools at the one-man developers who can't afford that 10k price tag (IAR), or want to spend that kind of money, and who like me aren't very impressed with the quality of the free tools.

    Despite ARM being everywhere you would think there would be umpteen million assemblers for the darn thing but not so, I can't find a nice straightforward macroassembler and I'm not thinking gas either although I will take another look at FASMARM again.

    All I want really is a P2, and maybe a cut-down baby P2 in a small package for those itty-bitty jobs.

    BTW, I run a lot of those Windows only programs in my VirtualBox WINXP.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Peter,

    In what way is GCC or Clang for the ARM not impressive?

    Maybe I'm just easily impressed.

    I'm just looking at the bare metal ARM programming tutorial here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/input01.html
    or here:
    http://thinkingeek.com/2013/01/09/arm-assembler-raspberry-pi-chapter-1/

    The assembler examples look pretty straight forward. What's wrong with that?

    Yep, done the VmWare and Virtual Box thing. Didn't like the hassle.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    Peter Jakacki wrote: »
    All I want really is a P2, and maybe a cut-down baby P2 in a small package for those itty-bitty jobs.

    I've just noticed prices on the smallest MAX10
    10M02SCE144C8G 2000LE 110592R 101io
    100+ $5.76
    and slightly less again, in BGA.
    Flash included, and lots of larger siblings, should future expansion need it.
    Should pair well with a P1, to build a system between P1 and P2 ?
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    I used the PSOC-4's for a couple of trivial projects and they worked well. I really liked their IDE, very nice compared to the junk put out by other vendors. But then the PSOC's need it. You can do the same thing three different ways with them. They are very flexible devices and if you can dig in to the documentation you'll see that.

    Ray Burnette has several easy projects based on the PSOC4.
    https://www.hackster.io/rayburne/projects

    They'll give you a taste of what they're about.

    There is also a more capable PSOC5 board out for $10.00

    At current prices they're cheap enough to buy a few and play with them.
  • cbmeekscbmeeks Posts: 634
    At current prices they're cheap enough to buy a few and play with them.

    That's what I was thinking too.

    I'll take a look at that link you provided soon. But I wonder how well they would work for video related projects?
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