I want a P2! And how are we going to get these to you?
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,395
Chip and I had a brief discussion last night about how we'll get chips out to the early adopters. Of course, there's much to be accomplished before this happens. Chip needs to test out all the features, finish the Spin interpreter concurrent with our planning. 1,500 fully packaged parts are coming to Parallax in coming weeks. I'd like to share a few thoughts on what we're thinking and seek your input. The role of the Propeller community is absolutely imperative to the success of the product - times have changed since 2006 and we won't succeed if we're the only people making boards, software, etc.
In regards to getting P2 chips in your hands, here are a couple of thoughts:
- We need to get P2s quickly to a handful of people who contributed to the design (with PCBs, testing, etc.) as soon as possible. These will likely be from the first batch of packaged parts (maybe not the 10 chips we received yesterday, unless Chip says otherwise).
- An initial early adopter release could include the P2 mounted on a simple breakout PCB with USB like Peter produced, off our SMT line. Perhaps customers could choose one of the following: (1) place an order for FREE delivery, because you wish to contribute to the project; or (2) BUY the product because you want to start coding, but prefer not to be committed to any development efforts. You choose!
Expectations would need to be reasonable for this first phase. Customers wouldn't expect a plug-and-play, load-and-go experience on every imaginable operating system, for example. Parallax would need to communicate the plan and manage expectations so we don't wind up getting commercial reviews as part of an early adopter release.
Share your thoughts on this distribution approach (not the PCB design), and provide any new ideas too.
Thanks,
Ken Gracey
In regards to getting P2 chips in your hands, here are a couple of thoughts:
- We need to get P2s quickly to a handful of people who contributed to the design (with PCBs, testing, etc.) as soon as possible. These will likely be from the first batch of packaged parts (maybe not the 10 chips we received yesterday, unless Chip says otherwise).
- An initial early adopter release could include the P2 mounted on a simple breakout PCB with USB like Peter produced, off our SMT line. Perhaps customers could choose one of the following: (1) place an order for FREE delivery, because you wish to contribute to the project; or (2) BUY the product because you want to start coding, but prefer not to be committed to any development efforts. You choose!
Expectations would need to be reasonable for this first phase. Customers wouldn't expect a plug-and-play, load-and-go experience on every imaginable operating system, for example. Parallax would need to communicate the plan and manage expectations so we don't wind up getting commercial reviews as part of an early adopter release.
Share your thoughts on this distribution approach (not the PCB design), and provide any new ideas too.
Thanks,
Ken Gracey
Comments
For home: Maybe I'll beg for a free board...
I like this a lot. I'd love a "free" board (who wouldn't?) but would feel much better about taking said free board if I'm committed to some deliverable. Also, committing to some deliverable will make me feel better knowing, "hey, I did something that Parallax actually cares about."
Sounds like a lot of (very worthwhile) work for Parallax to put together that list of deliverables though.
I would like to purchase two boards. I cannot commit to anything, but I would probably be able to assist in some sort of documentation/getting started guide.
BTW I watch all of the stream last night (TLH Productions) and I was so happy when it finally was working. I was expecting you guys to dance around the building...LOL.
Bean
I would want these only if all of the developers had their requests filled first. I suspect that it might be a while before I'd be able to contribute anything other than potential issues until I'm up to speed on all of the fantastic features of the P2. Might just be a while...
Walter
The P2 has always been the target for my project and I have been "making due" with my P1 board.
Even though I will be buying the board and understand that I have no obligation towards P2 development, I will still contribute anything that I see as useful to the forums.
As an additional thought, this phase is also a great opportunity to gather a list of what a "first time P2 user" needs (regardless of coding experience). This can be an outline for documentation but can also be a list of code modules that help get certain features or external hardware up and running quickly. For example, I will need to control a Feedback 360 servo, display info on a small touch screen and use many pins for PWM. What code modules might become available that I could use (OBEX?) ? What should be coded on a core vs implemented on a smart pin?
Anyway, I look forward to having a P2 in-hand !! :-)
j
Also, I'm totally a tool builder (in the vein of CLI that is). Willing to help there.
So, freakin' excited. Thanks for embracing this fantastic community.
Oh, also... for my day job, I'm a huge proponent of documenting projects via Markdown/PlantUML... not sure this is the right forum to start that debate, but mention it here, as I'm open to demonstrate/help/foster/opinions on that topic.
Ken mentioned an ePaper display as a possible Parallax product. I think it's a great idea for both P1 and P2 use. I would also like to see something similar for inputting small to moderate amounts of data ... small, low power, few I/O resources needed, possibly wireless.
Of course, I'll be doing an OpenSpin for P2, and if you want, I'll finish up my basic proptool like editor written using Qt (so cross platform). I can do these without the real chip since you provided me with an FPGA board, but perhaps a real chip for validation would be good? I dunno.
I would like to get an early one or two (not the initial 10 prototypes) for use in my hobby projects, one would go on an ARLO and another would be for experimenting with sound/music stuff. Also, I am fine with paying for these ones.
In general, I think it's a fine idea to offer the early ones to contributors who will use them right away and accept that the tools are not in production state. It's also common for hardware vendors to do this and restrict people from being able to do published reviews or in many cases even discuss that they have it at all. I think you want people to be able to talk about them and share their projects with them, you just want to avoid articles being published (online or in magazines) reviewing these things in the early access phase. Most companies would have at least a minimal NDA requirement, you should consider that.
I'm more than happy to pay for one - wouldn't want it any other way. Also don't want/expect hand-holding or a product guarantee or anything of that nature. Just a P2 on a header board would be divine!
C.W.
I would be perfectly happy with just a chip and no development board.
If a board could be developed similar to this Schmartboard adapter, that would be ideal for me.
No support expected. Just me, a chip, and time to go figure it out.
Potentially. As usual, we try to error on behalf of supporting honest people. We will have some abusers but I doubt that'll be more than 20% of the free requesters. We've never wanted our sales/warranty/transparency to be dictated by those who may wish to violate our openness.
It's possible that after this idea bakes for a while and gets shared with our team the process for free boards could be entirely different. They're rightfully protective of their company.
Ken Gracey
Probably not with the initial run, as we wouldn't want any production projects made with these chips. But I'm not sure. This is something we'd have to talk about a bit and it's too early to say. With limited chips, it's to our benefit to get as many as possible in the hands of individual developers vs. committed to PCBs. I suppose you might only want a few chips, as you are building a few boards. Let's wait on figuring this out for a while.
Ken Gracey
Somehow, we managed to make this happen in time for a potential product evaluation / switch! Super eager to pursue doing that.
Chip is going to be really busy, another approach is to support/help things that fall in his domain (tools? docs?), so that he can do the official testing of things that we're interested in such as Goertzel. It was so good to see that clean sine production at modest current consumption yesterday.
I believe that there are 100,000 chips to a tray.
There you go Ken, funded(!)
Oh, and I have a prop plug and I know which way to plug it in as long as the signals are not inverted.
Mike
btw - do we have a simulator for the P2? I'm seen a spin2 sim, but curious about something that can take images so I can start playing with ASM.