Demo board out!!

A.C. fishing · 2006-05-11 23:14

HUUUUUUUURRRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Somebody said...
-Never Underestimate the power of human stupidity.

·

Eric R · 2006-05-12 01:25

Impressive!

And here I just got done assembling my PropSTICK

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-12 03:36

The PropStick has more I/O, more flexibility, and RS-232 programing or port. There are 32 pins versus 8.
You can use both in different ways.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Chris Savage · 2006-05-12 15:05

Kramer,

·· OTOH, the Demo Board provides all the more advanced I/O ports that you would otherwise have to connect yourself.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Tech Support
csavage@parallax.com

inaki · 2006-05-12 15:56

Boy I am expending a lot of money lately on Parallax stuff. Do they give away purchase·coupons or something ?

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Post Edited (inaki) : 5/12/2006 4:01:01 PM GMT

Charlie Johnson · 2006-05-12 16:31

inaki said...
Boy I am expending a lot of money lately on Parallax stuff. Do they give away purchase·coupons or something ?

I know what you mean.

Ordered 4 Propeller Chips, shortly after release -- Still waiting
Ordered 2 PropSticks, 1 May -- Still waiting
Ordered Demo board yesterday.

As you can see, I am very excited about the propeller and have big plans for them.... Just waiting to get my hands on one.

Charlie

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-12 17:33

Chris,

I agree, it would be a disaster for me to put all that into one breadboard. and it never would be only 3"x3".· I just think that both have their own appeal and utility.· If I wanted to do a huge blinking light marqee, I might want nearly all the 32 pins for that purpose, though alot could be done with synchonous serial outputs. [noparse][[/noparse]Any Las Vegas sign makers out there?]

You can easily use 5 or 6 Propellers in different formats·as the easy·interfacing with the power makes almost 'instant applications'.

1. O scope; 2. Logic Analyser; 3. Midi applicaton; 4. RS-232 terminal; 5. Video gamer; 6. and so on.

Posponed the vacation to Bali this year. Will play with a Propeller instead and learn something useful. ·Who needs the mosquitoes and coconuts?·· Waiting a bit to buy two Propeller demo boards [noparse][[/noparse]I want to give these to people and I need a complete package], the 2.5 video display, and maybe Andre LaMothe's creation.

After I·purchase all·that, I suspect Parallax will launch·the 64 pin version [noparse][[/noparse]a TurboPropeller?] and I will be wondering what to do.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 5/12/2006 5:51:56 PM GMT

Bean · 2006-05-12 18:45

I'm using my propeller with nothing more than a USB2SER. No xtal, no EEPROM. Just propeller and USB2SER adapter.
But of course I ordered a demo board already [noparse];)[/noparse]
Bean.

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Cheap 4-digit LED display with driver IC·www.hc4led.com

COMING SOON "SD DATA LOGGER" www.sddatalogger.com

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." Mythbusters
·

Gadgetman · 2006-05-12 19:13

Eric R said...
And here I just got done assembling my PropSTICK

Me, too...

Found the package waiting for me when I got home at 17:00
(nice surprise after spending 2 hours at the dentist...)

Now I'm hoping for bad weather tomorrow so that I have an excuse NOT to fix my car, and instead tinker with the propeller...

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Don't visit my new website...

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-13 07:28

I give up.
I am ordering 3 Propeller Demo Boards today and the 2.5" monitor.

Ouch.
Yikes. Whoopee! ! !
{I can print my own documents and make my own CDs later for the ones to gift to people}.

BTW, has anyone found a way to use Bean's 4-digit SPI numerical LEDs with the Propeller yet?

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-13 08:40

Erhm........
·FREE SHIPPING on big orders [noparse][[/noparse]over $200USD] for Continental USA only

You lucky guys.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 5/13/2006 8:58:01 AM GMT

Bean · 2006-05-13 12:13

Kramer said...

BTW, has anyone found a way to use Bean's 4-digit SPI numerical LEDs with the Propeller yet?

Kramer,
· It's next on my list...
Bean.

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Cheap 4-digit LED display with driver IC·www.hc4led.com

COMING SOON "SD DATA LOGGER" www.sddatalogger.com

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." Mythbusters
·

Bean · 2006-05-14 02:49

Kramer (and others with the HC4LED display),
Here is the HC4LED object to control the displays.

I'm not sure if this is appropriete to submit since it is useful only for my display module ?
Comments welcome, I've only had the propeller for a couple days. If·I have gone astray please let me know.

Edit: Fixed cnt rollover

Bean.

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Cheap 4-digit LED display with driver IC·www.hc4led.com

COMING SOON "SD DATA LOGGER" www.sddatalogger.com

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." Mythbusters

Post Edited (Bean (Hitt Consulting)) : 5/14/2006 1:06:09 PM GMT

Brian Riley · 2006-05-14 05:26

I am curious, the Demo Board is clearly marked, between the power connector and the power switch "6-9vdc" and the order page for the board says you get a 12vdc power brick with it. I notice that no brick comes with the 2.5" monitor which needs 12v @ 180ma. Did somebody get confusd or what. I realize that the 3/5 v regulators can take 12v but why thermally stress them if a 7.5 or 9 v brick will do it?

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cheers ... brian riley, n1bq, underhill center, vermont
See the K107 Serial LCD Controller at
www.wulfden.org/k107/

cgracey · 2006-05-14 05:31

Yeah, this was a boo-boo! The power supply we actually ship is 7.5VDC @ 1A. You're right that higher voltage would work, but it's thermally stressful. The web page will be corrected on Monday morning. Sorry about this.

Brian Riley said...
I am curious, the Demo Board is clearly marked, between the power connector and the power switch "6-9vdc" and the order page for the board says you get a 12vdc power brick with it. I notice that no brick comes with the 2.5" monitor which needs 12v @ 180ma. Did somebody get confusd or what. I realize that the 3/5 v regulators can take 12v but why thermally stress them if a 7.5 or 9 v brick will do it?

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Chip Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Brian Riley · 2006-05-14 19:26

Thanks Chip. While we are on the subject of my curiosity, I will ask about pull-up resistors. I see 10K and 4.7K used almost interchangeably. One circuit will show 10K pullups and another 4.7k in the same place. The DemoRevC board has 10K all over the place. Why use one value or the other?

The same for LED series current limiting resistors. I see values from 220 ohms through 1K. On the newly released demo board the values are 240 ohms, which makes some sense to me in that your are limiting for a 3.3 volt system not 5 volts. But again, what considerations are there in this range of possible values.

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cheers ... brian riley, n1bq, underhill center, vermont
See the K107 Serial LCD Controller at
www.wulfden.org/k107/

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-15 08:50

In the world of electronics, exponential math is often the deciding factor.
The different between 5K and 10k is almost nothing logrhymically.

I believe the choice of using the 4.7K on the PropSTICK was because people may use more than one I2C device and less pull-up resistance would be less tempermental. But, if you really do all the mathimatical comparison, it really doesn't amount to anything significant.

Technically, there is a co-relation between the pullup resistor and the speed of the circuit., but since I2C is not very fast there is likely little concern. I would have to think a bit or go read which direction does what. This has been discussed many times, in many threads.

The reason to use 4.7K is that manufactures of resistors don't generally provide a 5K at 5% tolerance. It is hard to buy certain sizes exactly. The usual reason for selection choice of something this close is that the supplier or your cupboard has a huge pile of one or the other.

I find myself using anywhere from 220 to 510 ohms on LEDs for similar reasons.

330ohm is generally considered the safe limit for 5V LEDs, but different colors are electrically different. The 3.3volts allows for a lower current limiting resistor [noparse][[/noparse]so the 240ohm is used], but many times I am not too concerned about the welfare of an LED. I usually wear out the leads before I burn them up on breadboards.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Kaos Kidd · 2006-05-15 19:02

I went out and got from RS 1K 15 turn pots so I can get to the 240s needed for the vga connection.
Does this mean I can use the more common (and locally available) 220?

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Just tossing my two bits worth into the bit bucket

KK
·

cgracey · 2006-05-15 21:05

Brian, this is true:

Kramer said...
In the world of electronics, exponential math is often the deciding factor.
The different between 5K and 10k is almost nothing logrhymically.

The one exception you might note to the 240 ohm LED current-limit resistors on the Demo Board is the 100 ohm resistor used on the USB indicator LEDs. This low value was used because the blue·LED drops 3.5V, leaving 1.5V (from 5V) on the resistor. This translates to 15mA for the blue LED and 30mA for the red LED (which drops 2.0V, leaving 3.0V). This pushed the red LED to its spec limit, while still providing 15mA for the blue LED.

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Chip Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

LoopyByteloose · 2006-05-21 13:59

As Chip points out, the new LEDs that have more colors and that are brighter are playing havoc with the rule of thumb.
I even have some new blue/white LEDs that work fine at +5 without any·resistors. Still, the 470 ohms is a good start when guessing and you don't know the color.

Kaos Kidd,
you could try 220ohms as Chip has mentioned several times that 5% tolerence on the video resistors is okay. But you are reaching closer to 10%. Can you find two 120ohms and put them end to end?

Be aware that when you have a voltage divider circuit of any sort, it might be more prudent to go UP [noparse][[/noparse]say 270 ohms] rather than down as you may suddenly find yourself burning up resistors [noparse][[/noparse]and maybe something else].

I found that I could not buy the 5% 240 ohms, but that it is easy to buy 1% 240 ohms. This is a double inventory thing. Why should retailers carry all those odd numbers in low tolerances when the buyer wants a more exact number?

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 5/21/2006 2:02:31 PM GMT

DeveloperZero · 2006-06-14 10:28

Where did you find free shipping? I can't find any mention of that anywhere on the site, nor on the checkout page.

Kramer said...
Erhm........
·FREE SHIPPING on big orders [noparse][[/noparse]over $200USD] for Continental USA only

You lucky guys.

Kaos Kidd · 2006-06-14 20:25

Kramer:
Sorry, I missed your reply... I ordered the exact ones as used on the dev board... it just took some time to get here... I'm using the pots for temp / expierments when I don't have the correct size resistors..
THanks for the info.. I heed to do all that I can to prevent "hardware" errors from working into what I try...

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Just tossing my two bits worth into the bit bucket

KK
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