Does Anyone Else Remember Their First Parallax Encounter? When Was It?
AwesomeCronk
Posts: 1,055
4th grade, 9 yrs old, 2013;
I remember very clearly, at the end of my first reading breakout class, seeing a couple of robots on top of my teacher’s shelf. I asked her what it was, and she told me about how she used to teach a robotics class.
At the end of the school year, she let me borrow one BOE Bot kit for the summer. I was mesmerized, because I could look at the pcb while I put it together! It was not until two years later of borrowing that thing over the summer breaks, that Mrs Golden moved schools. She messaged my mom on Facebook, and told me to keep the ‘Bot! 5 years later, I still have everything but the BOE itself, which burned out and quit after serving a classroom for several years. I have since then used Parallax robotics with much joy!
I remember very clearly, at the end of my first reading breakout class, seeing a couple of robots on top of my teacher’s shelf. I asked her what it was, and she told me about how she used to teach a robotics class.
At the end of the school year, she let me borrow one BOE Bot kit for the summer. I was mesmerized, because I could look at the pcb while I put it together! It was not until two years later of borrowing that thing over the summer breaks, that Mrs Golden moved schools. She messaged my mom on Facebook, and told me to keep the ‘Bot! 5 years later, I still have everything but the BOE itself, which burned out and quit after serving a classroom for several years. I have since then used Parallax robotics with much joy!
Comments
A 32 bit multi-processor, each processor having it's own, private memory, etc...
?!?
Are you kidding? Yeah, I ordered a board right away and jumped in.
Then a few years later we purchased $2k worth of BS2's sight unseen based on the BS1 track record we experienced
See https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/131992/a-bit-of-early-parallax-history-from-1985-isepic-for-the-c64
Jim
Who wouldn’t!
I had heard of the Basic Stamp, but knew nothing about it or who made it. Coming from a mostly software background (hardware coding had been mostly limited to writing device drivers), and having worked with PICs for the couple years prior, the Propeller was a breath of fresh air. I've been hooked on Parallax ever since.
Over the past several years, I've tried to bring more Propeller (and therefore Parallax) fans into the fold, but wasn't very successful. My coworkers either already had a favorite microcontroller, or balked at the unorthodox design of the Propeller. It didn't help that the chip lacked analog features and interrupts, that there wasn't enough they could recognize to feel comfortable dipping their toes into those waters. Maybe I was lucky, in that my software background meant that I wasn't as opinionated when it came to hardware, allowing me to learn the Propeller without having to fight many biases (though, having just worked on PICs might have been a bias in my favor).
And now there's the P2. Despite having taken a decade to come to fruition, the result has been worth the wait and is something truly remarkable to behold. It'll definitely keep me a Parallax fan for years to come. And with its host of new capabilities (and hopefully a great software development ecosystem to go with it), I think this will be the chip that finally convinces my coworkers why they should be Parallax fans as well.
And I had a scale I needed to connect to the PC but the scale had no serial. I was in Germany and found a company in Bonn, selling a product called basic stamp. My first experience with Micro Controllers.
So I drove to Bonn, and talked to some guy who looked like a younger version of @pullmoll, but maybe it wasn't him, I never asked him, later.
I was able to read the data send to the display of the scale and replicate it as a serial output. Sadly I was not able to get it certified by the 'Bundestechnische Pruefanstalt' because of the ability to manipulate the data of a weighted, certified and sealed scale by software.
Something I could have done on the PC side also, but a Cash register did not get certified so they did not care, but a scale has to, at least in Germany.
Some decade++ later (I was already in the US) I had a project in need and googled for Basic Stamp. What a major mistake. There I found Parallax and stumbled over the Propeller. I read the Datasheet. I ordered a What's a Microcontroller together with a PE-Kit.
What a blast. Over the next couple of weeks I almost lost my daytime job, I was glued to the Breadboard.
A 32-bit multi-core processor and I can put it together on a Breadboard. Just fascinating.
Since then I am hooked to the Propeller and this forum. It is some sort of addiction.
Mike
I needed a means of controlling a 144 relay cross-point matrix. A coworker suggested that I look into a company called Parallax and the BS2 product. Been hanging with it ever since.
The first exposure to Parallax that comes to mind was when Parallax had a booth at Robothon in Seattle. Not sure what year that was.
We never built the programmer, choosing instead to develop industrial linescan cameras. That led us to Jack Berlien at TI's optoelectronics division, with whom we consulted frequently regarding their TSL1401 imager.
Jack later hooked me up with Ken Gracey at Parallax to design a color sensor using their TCS320 chip that would work with the BASIC Stamp. It turned out to be a very synergistic relationship (although Ken once described it as an "unhealthy codependence."
In the meantime, TI sold their opto division to a group of employees who formed TAOS (Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions), which was later sold to AMS (Austria Micro Systems). AMS chips are still used in Parallax's TSL1401-DB and TCS3200-DB products.
-Phil
I wanted to build a digital tachometer in my car over winter break and was using the PIC16 that I learned about in the previous semester of college. I found out that, to do what I really wanted (with my limited programming knowledge), I thought I would need two microcontrollers. Someone mentioned this crazy thing called the "Propeller":
For those unaware, Saab started as an airplane manufacturer (long before the jet engine), so the name "Propeller" was a great choice for anything going into a Saab.
https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-200582.html
Then I decided I needed to interface my computer to the boat electronics so I ordered a PIC Kit to start - I had chucked most of my electronics and computers (6 tons I sold as scrap which would be shipped to China for gold recovery).
While waiting for my PIC Kit I accidentally discovered the Propeller Chip (2008). Ordered immediately by Fedex and started programming and then designing P1 boards. Never unpacked the PIC Kit and never looked back
Then I went away, finished university and returned in 1997 after working with environmental analysis and development in California. Specifically air quality, noise, and permit processing of all types.
I've been taking care of Chip ever since. Ahem, I guess we sorta take care of one another.
Many of the experiences described above I'm quite familiar with, too. The RadioShack era was a tremendous boost to Parallax. RadioShack's purchase of Boe-Bots fueled the production run of the Propeller 1 and associated FIB/e-beam prober equipment. RadioShack also brought a huge number of customers to Parallax with the "What's a Microcontroller?" Kit from Andy Lindsay.
Ken Gracey
Egad!
After a brief foray away from Parallax, my return was fueled by one of your kits that Andy Lindsay designed. You know the one, "What's a Microcontroller?" Kit . And I still rely on the Stamp for simple controlling of stuff.
And was one of the firm's staunchest defenders when the subject came up on Hack A Day not too long ago.
----
And this message is being sponsored by the Wookiees for a bigger forest committee. Head rubs our specialty.
Shame you didn't do an Electronics, Computing or Accounting Degree. Obviously the crystal ball was not working at the time
BTW we really appreciate you taking care of Chip
I didn't start using the Propeller until it had been out for 2 or 3 years. I was very busy at work at the time, and I was concerned that the propeller would take too much time away from work. I finally bought the Propeller Education Chip, and I was surprised how easy it was to use the propeller. I eventually used the Propeller to build some test equipment that I used at work.
I was a little turned off by the Spin language when I first started using the propeller. However, I was able to master Spin in about 2 months. Then I spent a lot of time tinkering with the Spin interpreter, and learning how it work. I was amazed that Chip could develop the Spin language from scratch, and cram the whole interpreter into the cog memory. Since then I have developed an appreciation for Spin. I now see it as a great language for beginners.
I learnt spin at the same time. Again, I found it pleasingly simple and I loved the indentation regime.
What rounded out the Prop was the use of cogs(cores) for both soft peripherals and to avoid Interrupts. I had previously designed lots of hardware using multiple micros to simplify software. The Prop fell into place so nicely here. Only wish I had it 25 years earlier
I picked up my first Propeller chip in early 2009 and was hooked. Spin was such a beautiful language and I could really see the potential of the Propeller's unique approach. PASM was also fairly easy to learn. I'm very excited to see where the P2 takes us over the next decade!
So everything I've written here is supported in doubles.
John Abshier
That would've been about 1998/1999. You've been patiently working with us ever since, even trekking to California for a Propeller Expo.
Ken Gracey
Whoa, we have a record holder here. It doesn't get much earlier than this, unless you count Chip's Apple II Choplifter "hacks" that were traded around on BBSs in the Sacramento area.
I'd say zappman's ISEPIC claim is probably the earliest recorded record of Parallax fandom ever established.
The stories I could tell about those times are worthy of a book. Chip and I had our own room, above the garage, far away from our parents. People would come and go, sometimes staying for many days at a time and only making minimal contact with our folks. We'd get guests from different states or countries, and they'd just hang around. I was always afraid to fall asleep in the same room as Chip, possibly being the subject of various experiments related to temperature, water or heat.
Chip would miss days of school because he could hardly get out of bed. Our bedroom was really a shop - loaded with tools of all kinds from soldering irons to Dremels and balsa wood to acrylic. One wall was used as a Crossman pump gun ballistics test area for shooting BBs.
Prior to this, Chip talked a bunch about jet packs - how they worked, whether one could be made at home, and so on. Even earlier, he had this little blue pocket book with physics problems. He'd bring it on long driving trips to the area where he currently lives, asking my dad questions along the way. Last time I asked Chip about that little book he didn't remember it, almost as if it were a figment of my imagination.
There's much more, and most of it is in our parent's attic. I'll have to save it for a $9.95 paperback to fund the next P2 revision.
Ken Gracey
Wow!
My kid brother played a heck of a lot of Choplifter. As I recall it got spawned by the insanity regarding a country better known for rugs and cats. But that's besides the point.
For my part he's someone I do want to meet, one day. Ken I'd swear on a stack of data books that I might have met yourself, and perhaps Chip back when Parallax was at Maker Faire.