I would definitely pay for a board once at least one higher-level language is under development. Being one of the few macOS users on the forum, I'll definitely be testing tools on that environment and giving as much feedback as I can.
I'd be interested in purchasing a board or 2. I'd be keen to get MicroPython ported over, since I feel that's one of the languages with real legs these days. If P2 supported Python, I think it would open up adoption, like it has for the Raspberry Pi.
MP needs 256K of code space and 16K of RAM, so with 512K RAM, it qualifies for the minimum requirements. I could see the streamer being useful, assuming one can page code in/out in some useful way.
I really haven't followed much in the last 3 years, since moving away from P2-Hot.
Once I see working silicon in my hands, then I'll pick up the "datasheet" and start exploring again.
Perry, lets make this happen. There's a strong and growing micropython community and I've previously asked Mr George a couple of questions regarding how to approach getting it onto the P2. I'm not much of a python programmer (basic Jupyter notebooks stuff) but OzPropDev is doing good things and I'd love to catch up.
There's no real need to wait for silicon, things run really well especially on the A7 and A9 fpga boards and we could get one or more of these to you (or other contributors), as well as bring you up to speed with the differences from p2-hot.
I would definitely pay for a board once at least one higher-level language is under development. Being one of the few macOS users on the forum, I'll definitely be testing tools on that environment and giving as much feedback as I can.
Thanks,
dgately
Then get your credit card out now! Eric Smith's fastspin compiler can compile Spin for the P2 today and Dave Hein's p2gcc can compile C for the P2.
I would definitely pay for a board once at least one higher-level language is under development. Being one of the few macOS users on the forum, I'll definitely be testing tools on that environment and giving as much feedback as I can.
Then get your credit card out now! Eric Smith's fastspin compiler can compile Spin for the P2 today and Dave Hein's p2gcc can compile C for the P2.
Yes, and I've been running both of those on macOS & reporting my results (for P1 at the moment!)...
I am in to help, but I don't expect it to be free. We can reduce shipping by sending to one of us here in Oz to redistribute here. I am willing.
I would rather chip(s) as I will design my own boards, or I'll use one of Peter's. I have a few ideas that need fleshing out. And I have a commercial reflow oven but my pick-n-place is getting on in years, 66 to be precise But it's capable of placing 0402 parts
I'd be in to buy a board or two, but a the speed I am "progressing" on my various projects, I might not get to actually using them until after full commercial availability...
I am in to help, but I don't expect it to be free. We can reduce shipping by sending to one of us here in Oz to redistribute here. I am willing.
I would rather chip(s) as I will design my own boards, or I'll use one of Peter's. I have a few ideas that need fleshing out. And I have a commercial reflow oven but my pick-n-place is getting on in years, 66 to be precise But it's capable of placing 0402 parts
Your P&P is over 60 years old? What did it place then, Tubes?
Your P&P is over 60 years old? What did it place then, Tubes?
Curious,
Mike
Hi msrobots
I believe I had understood what Cluso99 was trying to told us.
He is the only available picker and placer at its lab. Exactly like me, in mine!
The solely difference, when it comes to ageing, is that my P&P is four years younger, but I almost can bet, 30 years worse in focus, mainly when short distance sight is considered.
Example: I can see a fly, landing at the edge of my monitor, but can't notice how many legs does it have.
But, thaks for muscle memory, acquired during the last 51 years on hand-soldering, I can even place and reflow a 0402 resistor, diode or capacitor, but afterwards, I need to resort to a loupe (x4 or x20), in order to be ensured I had done nothing wrong.
No problem in buying a few PCB mounted P2. Both for programming and helping out with documentation, testing, Tiny Tutorials, and trade shows / Maker Fairs / hamfests. A good time for all of us to upgrade our coding skills big time. What projects can we collaborate on, to show off some of the new features the P2?
Ah, cannibals to the help, thanks. My still German thinking mind did not get that one.
Enjoy!
Mike
Guten Abend, mein Herr!
Verzeihen Sie die Verzögerung beim Antworten auf Ihren Kommentar; leider war ich von diesem alten und langsamen digitalen Freund entfernt, woher meine Worte jetzt weggehen.
Ich fühle mich befriedigt, von so einer edlen Person in meiner ganzen Essenz in Erinnerung geblieben zu sein.
Ich bin sogar noch glücklicher, weil diese 25% einheimischen Blutes (genauer gesagt, indigene Menschen mit etwas anthropophagischen Essensvorlieben, das heißt), die meine Venen passieren, aus Santa Catarina kommen, einem brasilianischen Staat, der für seine Dankbarkeit bekannt ist Kolonialisierung und Kultur mit Ursprung in Deutschland.
Aber seien Sie vorsichtig, und ich glaube, dass Sie sich immer noch daran erinnern müssen, dass die anderen 25%, obwohl sie auf demselben geografischen Weg zu mir gekommen sind, tatsächlich baskischen Ursprungs sind. Und soweit ich mich erinnere, neigen die Deutschen dazu, sich in der Gegenwart eines Baskischen etwas unwohl zu fühlen, auch wenn ich nur teilweise bin.
Für mich ist es jedoch immer eine Ehre, daran erinnert zu werden, und wie meine Urgroßmutter mütterlicherseits (sie selbst, Aborigine) sagte; "Essen hat immer seine Existenzgründe, auch wenn diese (die Gründe) über sich hinausreichen."
Perry, lets make this happen. There's a strong and growing micropython community and I've previously asked Mr George a couple of questions regarding how to approach getting it onto the P2. I'm not much of a python programmer (basic Jupyter notebooks stuff) but OzPropDev is doing good things and I'd love to catch up.
There's no real need to wait for silicon, things run really well especially on the A7 and A9 fpga boards and we could get one or more of these to you (or other contributors), as well as bring you up to speed with the differences from p2-hot.
At the moment I'm busy with my house being built. By the time they are ready to ship some variant of a P2 carrier board, I'll have time available to focus on the P2. I've been out of the P2 ecosystem for so long that I need to get sorted with the gcc toolchain and getting code running on a P2. Since MP seems to imply the usage of an SD based filesystem, I would want to focus on that. I'm also interested in dynamic loading of modules, to free up memory, potentially paging in on-demand with the streamer. Anyway, there is lots to consider how to best implement Python on the P2, to best take advantage of the P2 hidden gems.
recht altertuemlich das deutsch, doch erstaunlich gut verstaendlich. I'd rather be eaten by a Brazilian then by a French speaking person.
I am waiting with great interest for @"Peter Jakacki"'s developer Board to mount his P2D2, even if younger then both of you my pick and place ability ends with thru hole parts, and ever there I have trouble.
So YES I would like to have some P2 boards, but I need to wait for more simple to handle boards, I am in no hurry there.
@"Ken Gracey", I know this isn't exactly what you're asking for, but what I'd like is the P2 in a package that would excite anyone I showed it to. In other words, I want to be able to proselytize my co-workers, my customers, the local maker community, etc. Real silicon is a lot more persuasive than the FPGA, but it still needs to look appealing (a lot of first impressions are made on looks alone). I'm not sure what form it would take, but "shock and awe" should be the goal. It doesn't need to do anything practical, just something that people would immediately recognize as hard/impossible to achieve with the typical Atmel/Arduino, Microchip, etc. I'm not asking for the killer app, but the killer sales "sample".
@"Ken Gracey", I know this isn't exactly what you're asking for, but what I'd like is the P2 in a package that would excite anyone I showed it to. In other words, I want to be able to proselytize my co-workers, my customers, the local maker community, etc. Real silicon is a lot more persuasive than the FPGA, but it still needs to look appealing (a lot of first impressions are made on looks alone). I'm not sure what form it would take, but "shock and awe" should be the goal. It doesn't need to do anything practical, just something that people would immediately recognize as hard/impossible to achieve with the typical Atmel/Arduino, Microchip, etc. I'm not asking for the killer app, but the killer sales "sample".
Hmm, sounds a tough ask - do you mean 'show', as in some whizz-bang visual display, or 'show' as in some spec table docs, that shows what a P2 can do ?
The P2 can do many PWM, many UART, and could drive many LED strings.
I think it is well worth doing example programs that show just how many, but on an eval board, there is never much to actually see ?
A whole circle of ~ 30 UARTS would get some attention, but not everyone has a need for 30 uarts...
Next, could be how many LED strings could a single P2 Core support ?
With a smart pin in PWM mode, the core serves up 1 of 2 PWM choices, to as many pins as it can pack inside the timing windows.
I'd guess 10~30 strings could pack into one or 2 cores, leaving 6 free to do anything else at all, and that's getting quite compelling, as their AVR/PIC cannot get close to that level of 'real time'.
LCD displays are visual, but with RaspPi driving HDMI, it's hard to think of a LCD app where P2 can outshine RaspPi ?
Multi-axis machine control, is something most could understand, so maybe 2-DACs microstepping, with Quadrature counter verify, repeat N time, moves P2 into pioneer territory ?
Usually that's a 4 pin system solution, but I'm guessing you could re-map the Quad pins onto the DACs to get a 'coarse but working' functional example with nothing connected ?
That needs schmitt-In on the digital signals, and > logic swing on the DACs, & both working at the same time ?
It's great to see so much interest in the P2. Hopefully there will be enough chips from the first batch to go to everyone that wants it. Keep in mind that anybody who get's a P2 at this point should be considered a beta tester. Currently there are not a lot a development tools available, and they don't all have nice shiny graphical user interfaces. Some of the tools have to be run from the command line. Anybody that gets a P2 chip at this point should be expected to run lots of code on it, and try out the various features of the chip. Beta testers should provide feedback to Parallax and the forum about things that they have tried, and any issues that they find.
I'm in the buyer camp as well. I have had a little project planned for the P2 for a long time now. It doesn't need NTSC (or indeed much analog), so the current IQ issue is of no consequence for me.
Hmm, sounds a tough ask - do you mean 'show', as in some whizz-bang visual display, or 'show' as in some spec table docs, that shows what a P2 can do ?
Yeah, it is a tough ask. What I mean by "show" is "demonstrate how the P2 has the potential to address a hobbyist's needs, an engineer's needs, etc." I do not think a whizz-bang visual display is the answer (unless that's precisely what an engineer is looking for, maybe). Instead, I'm looking for something that would elicit an "I can't do that with my favorite chip..." kind of response. It seems to me that the most impressive thing we can convey visually is the sheer variety of possibilities, and the ease with which those possibilities can be achieved. This doesn't mean "put everything we can imagine on a giant demo board," rather "make a Grove-like board with a representative set of daughter boards that can be arbitrarily plugged in to any slot." Make sure the daughter boards include analog and digital functions, USB (without a TTL serial interface chip), etc.
Done right, this same board could be used to help the community develop support software, drivers, etc. And, eventually, we could add a lot more daughter board types to make this usable as a rapid prototyping tool for hobbyists and professionals. (Making the P2 enticing as a prototyping tool is, I believe, critical to getting professionals to adopt it for production as well.)
The second option of buying the chip is fine for me, because I want to experiment but I cannot contribute (lack of knowledge). However, I would buy the chip only, as I have all the necessary equipment to solder it.
Comments
Some of us, Chip too, wondered how many we had lost on this journey. Apparently not many!
The forum will live as it once did. Missed a lot of you. Learned a lot, looking forward to more.
John Abshier
Thanks,
dgately
Perry, lets make this happen. There's a strong and growing micropython community and I've previously asked Mr George a couple of questions regarding how to approach getting it onto the P2. I'm not much of a python programmer (basic Jupyter notebooks stuff) but OzPropDev is doing good things and I'd love to catch up.
There's no real need to wait for silicon, things run really well especially on the A7 and A9 fpga boards and we could get one or more of these to you (or other contributors), as well as bring you up to speed with the differences from p2-hot.
dgately
Really nice ideas!
I am in to help, but I don't expect it to be free. We can reduce shipping by sending to one of us here in Oz to redistribute here. I am willing.
I would rather chip(s) as I will design my own boards, or I'll use one of Peter's. I have a few ideas that need fleshing out. And I have a commercial reflow oven but my pick-n-place is getting on in years, 66 to be precise
Is Parallax planning on building a board? What will it contain?
Your P&P is over 60 years old? What did it place then, Tubes?
Curious,
Mike
Hi msrobots
I believe I had understood what Cluso99 was trying to told us.
He is the only available picker and placer at its lab. Exactly like me, in mine!
The solely difference, when it comes to ageing, is that my P&P is four years younger, but I almost can bet, 30 years worse in focus, mainly when short distance sight is considered.
Example: I can see a fly, landing at the edge of my monitor, but can't notice how many legs does it have.
But, thaks for muscle memory, acquired during the last 51 years on hand-soldering, I can even place and reflow a 0402 resistor, diode or capacitor, but afterwards, I need to resort to a loupe (x4 or x20), in order to be ensured I had done nothing wrong.
Henrique
Enjoy!
Mike
Guten Abend, mein Herr!
Verzeihen Sie die Verzögerung beim Antworten auf Ihren Kommentar; leider war ich von diesem alten und langsamen digitalen Freund entfernt, woher meine Worte jetzt weggehen.
Ich fühle mich befriedigt, von so einer edlen Person in meiner ganzen Essenz in Erinnerung geblieben zu sein.
Ich bin sogar noch glücklicher, weil diese 25% einheimischen Blutes (genauer gesagt, indigene Menschen mit etwas anthropophagischen Essensvorlieben, das heißt), die meine Venen passieren, aus Santa Catarina kommen, einem brasilianischen Staat, der für seine Dankbarkeit bekannt ist Kolonialisierung und Kultur mit Ursprung in Deutschland.
Aber seien Sie vorsichtig, und ich glaube, dass Sie sich immer noch daran erinnern müssen, dass die anderen 25%, obwohl sie auf demselben geografischen Weg zu mir gekommen sind, tatsächlich baskischen Ursprungs sind. Und soweit ich mich erinnere, neigen die Deutschen dazu, sich in der Gegenwart eines Baskischen etwas unwohl zu fühlen, auch wenn ich nur teilweise bin.
Für mich ist es jedoch immer eine Ehre, daran erinnert zu werden, und wie meine Urgroßmutter mütterlicherseits (sie selbst, Aborigine) sagte; "Essen hat immer seine Existenzgründe, auch wenn diese (die Gründe) über sich hinausreichen."
At the moment I'm busy with my house being built. By the time they are ready to ship some variant of a P2 carrier board, I'll have time available to focus on the P2. I've been out of the P2 ecosystem for so long that I need to get sorted with the gcc toolchain and getting code running on a P2. Since MP seems to imply the usage of an SD based filesystem, I would want to focus on that. I'm also interested in dynamic loading of modules, to free up memory, potentially paging in on-demand with the streamer. Anyway, there is lots to consider how to best implement Python on the P2, to best take advantage of the P2 hidden gems.
recht altertuemlich das deutsch, doch erstaunlich gut verstaendlich. I'd rather be eaten by a Brazilian then by a French speaking person.
I am waiting with great interest for @"Peter Jakacki"'s developer Board to mount his P2D2, even if younger then both of you my pick and place ability ends with thru hole parts, and ever there I have trouble.
So YES I would like to have some P2 boards, but I need to wait for more simple to handle boards, I am in no hurry there.
Mike
https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/157850/a-de2-115-propeller-retromachine-1920x1080-enabled/p1
Also no hurry there, I have no time to play now.
I suspect we will see some things come from this first round of, what I am gonna call beta chips, suitable for wowing others.
The P2 can do many PWM, many UART, and could drive many LED strings.
I think it is well worth doing example programs that show just how many, but on an eval board, there is never much to actually see ?
A whole circle of ~ 30 UARTS would get some attention, but not everyone has a need for 30 uarts...
Next, could be how many LED strings could a single P2 Core support ?
With a smart pin in PWM mode, the core serves up 1 of 2 PWM choices, to as many pins as it can pack inside the timing windows.
I'd guess 10~30 strings could pack into one or 2 cores, leaving 6 free to do anything else at all, and that's getting quite compelling, as their AVR/PIC cannot get close to that level of 'real time'.
LCD displays are visual, but with RaspPi driving HDMI, it's hard to think of a LCD app where P2 can outshine RaspPi ?
Multi-axis machine control, is something most could understand, so maybe 2-DACs microstepping, with Quadrature counter verify, repeat N time, moves P2 into pioneer territory ?
Usually that's a 4 pin system solution, but I'm guessing you could re-map the Quad pins onto the DACs to get a 'coarse but working' functional example with nothing connected ?
That needs schmitt-In on the digital signals, and > logic swing on the DACs, & both working at the same time ?
Yeah, it is a tough ask. What I mean by "show" is "demonstrate how the P2 has the potential to address a hobbyist's needs, an engineer's needs, etc." I do not think a whizz-bang visual display is the answer (unless that's precisely what an engineer is looking for, maybe). Instead, I'm looking for something that would elicit an "I can't do that with my favorite chip..." kind of response. It seems to me that the most impressive thing we can convey visually is the sheer variety of possibilities, and the ease with which those possibilities can be achieved. This doesn't mean "put everything we can imagine on a giant demo board," rather "make a Grove-like board with a representative set of daughter boards that can be arbitrarily plugged in to any slot." Make sure the daughter boards include analog and digital functions, USB (without a TTL serial interface chip), etc.
Done right, this same board could be used to help the community develop support software, drivers, etc. And, eventually, we could add a lot more daughter board types to make this usable as a rapid prototyping tool for hobbyists and professionals. (Making the P2 enticing as a prototyping tool is, I believe, critical to getting professionals to adopt it for production as well.)
We can always send them out for free, upon request. We don't have any big filters or follow-up hassles in place for sending free product out.
Chip is already talking about the PCB. Will report back.
Ken Gracey
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço