The first question
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Posts: 46,084
Hey, I'm new to microcontroller world.
Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about Basic
Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.
Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about Basic
Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.
Comments
yangcn@y... writes:
> Hey, I'm new to microcontroller world.
> Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about Basic
> Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.
>
Don't know about the microchip but.......You will likely be hard pressed to
find a microcontroller that is as easy to program as the basic stamp, resulting
in minimal development time for your projects. You WILL NOT find better
support, the people from Parallax want your return business and this is
reflected
in the support of their products.
This forum is also an excellent source for support not only for your stamp,
but just about anything including water pipes leaking (sometimes users get off
topic....entertaining at times, like when one guy wanted to use a stamp to
remind him yearly to change a filter in his home....etc.).
Possibly the drawback to the Stamp MIGHT be cost......
[noparse][[/noparse]Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
the stamp may be cost prohibitive in a production environment (in most
cases) but it sure is nice to develop on. If you hit it big, move to an
AVR or something, but nothing better than starting with the stamp! It just
has to be the best for a hobbyist.
-John
At 09:03 PM 5/26/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 5/26/2003 4:49:25 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>yangcn@y... writes:
>
> > Hey, I'm new to microcontroller world.
> > Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about Basic
> > Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.
> >
>
>Don't know about the microchip but.......You will likely be hard pressed to
>find a microcontroller that is as easy to program as the basic stamp,
>resulting
>in minimal development time for your projects. You WILL NOT find better
>support, the people from Parallax want your return business and this is
>reflected
>in the support of their products.
>
>This forum is also an excellent source for support not only for your stamp,
>but just about anything including water pipes leaking (sometimes users get
>off
>topic....entertaining at times, like when one guy wanted to use a stamp to
>remind him yearly to change a filter in his home....etc.).
>
>Possibly the drawback to the Stamp MIGHT be cost......
>
>
>[noparse][[/noparse]Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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>
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the first time and the documentation it's best of all, buy a BS2 or bigger, the
BS1 is too small for any serious work, then when you think you have a product,
and you start thinking of producing it at the lowest cost you can migrate your
design to a PIC with PicBasic Pro from http://www.microengineeringlabs.com/ , it
works for me.
Original Message
From: "yangcn" <yangcn@y...>
To: <basicstamps@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 7:48 PM
Subject: [noparse][[/noparse]basicstamps] The first question
> Hey, I'm new to microcontroller world.
> Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about Basic
> Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.
>
>
>
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> from the same email address that you subscribed. Text in the Subject and Body
of the message will be ignored.
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
1. The BS2 (Basic Stamp 2 -- don't go with the 1, the '2' is MUCH
more capable) is a module, with a PIC, a 2K EEPROM, some 232
driver/receiver circuitry (transistors), a brown-out detector, a
voltage regulator, and a 'Resonator' (oscillator) on one 24 pin wide
DIP board. The PIC is pre-programmed internally with the PBasic
(parallax proprietary) language interpreter. When you compile,
download, test and debug your program with the Stamp IDE (free from
Parallax), your code is compiled into PBasic 'tokens' (an 8-bit value
for each Basic keyword) and then downloaded into the on-module EEPROM.
When your program runs, the BS2 gets its instructions from the on-
module EEPROM, and then does what it says.
2. The advantage of all this is a fully debugged hardware platform,
with most of the sticky problems of power, oscillator, brown-outs,
RAM, EPROM, all taken care of for you. You plug it in, and it works,
for $50.00 per module. This supports a very simple and very fast
Program/Compile/Runit/Debug cycle. The disadvantage of this approach
is that it is slow compared to a 'native' PIC approach, and you CAN'T
multi-task a BS2.
3. The PIC approach uses on-chip 'FLASH' memory to download PIC
assembly code. Each chip is cheaper ($3.00, I think), but you must
design and build your board with Oscillator, 232 interface circuit,
and Voltage Regulator. This is not too hard with PIC, and possibly
you can buy small boards off-the-shelf. The other problem is
programming them. Since they don't have a native 232 port, you must
buy some programming platform or interface to download the code into
them. Then you must code them in PIC assembly, or pay $1,000 or so
for a 'C' compiler (there do exist PICBasic compilers), and perhaps a
small Real Time Operating System.
Then you must debug them.
The end result is that for education, testing interfaces (how DOES
that DS1302 Real-Time-Clock chip work really? Try it out with a
Stamp!) and small production runs with short turn-around (I need one
widget, and I need it yesterday! And it MUST be reliable, of course)
the Stamp wins hands down.
If you're building 1,000 widgets, and building your own board is
second nature to you, and your employer has no problem buying all the
development hardware and software, then the PIC wins on speed and
price per chip.
--- In basicstamps@yahoogroups.com, "yangcn" <yangcn@y...> wrote:
> Hey, I'm new to microcontroller world.
> Can someone tell me what's the advantage and disadvantage about
Basic
> Stamp compared to the product from Microchip? Thanks.