stand alone woofer tester
hitsware
Posts: 156
Could a stand alone woofer tester be done with the kit with the little lcd screen and keyboard? Using a flash memory (like for a digital camera) on the usb port (and boot up on it ?)
http://fullrangedriver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1570
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 3/28/2007 3:14:02 PM GMT
http://fullrangedriver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1570
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 3/28/2007 3:14:02 PM GMT
Comments
Try to be a little more specific and someone may have a better answer. There is a method to boot up on an SD card, and new things in the works for booting off a USB drive, although I don't quite see what the purpose is yet to do that, as the board has an EEPROM already to boot from.
Post Edited (TChapman) : 3/28/2007 2:33:18 AM GMT
2) By "kit with the little lcd screen and keyboard", do you mean the Propeller Starter Kit? Most Propeller setups have a small (32K or 64K) flash EEPROM that stores the initial boot program and is initialized using the Propeller Tool (IDE). The USB port is a USB to serial adapter only and won't work with a USB flash drive. There are 3rd party devices that can be attached (FTDI's Vinculum VDrive and GHI Electronics' USBwiz) that will let you read from a USB flash drive. You can attach an SD Card socket and there is a driver that will let you read and write PC compatible files and load other programs from the card, but not boot directly from it.
produce a clean sinewave at incremented frequencies
(flat response) through a 1kOhm resistor in series with a speaker.
measure the voltage across the speaker.
calculate from the f/v (impedometer)
>There is a method to boot up on an SD card
What's a "SD" card?
>and new things in the works for booting off a USB drive
I could use my windows pc to save the os on external 'e' drive
and then take the flashcard and plug it into the usb on the kit?
>although I don't quite see what he purpose is yet to do that, as the board has >an EEPROM already to boot from.
Boots into what? Spin?
Again, the USB connector on the Propeller Demo Board (and Hydra) is slave-only and can only be connected to a PC. If you plug a USB device into it like a "USB thumb drive", nothing will happen. There are 3rd party devices you can buy pretty cheaply ($30) that can act as USB hosts and would connect to I/O pins on the Propeller.
The Spin interpreter is in ROM on the Propeller chip. The included boot EEPROM is used to hold a Spin program (possibly with included assembly routines) that is loaded automatically and started on a reset (or power up).
The Propeller can indeed synthesize a clean sine wave in the audio range. There is a demonstration program of this contributed in the Propeller Object Exchange (see ww1.parallax.com/Default.aspx?tabid=65 and www.parallax.com/dl/appnt/prop/AN001-PropellerCounters-v1.0.zip). The application note also discusses the Propeller's ability to do analog to digital conversions.
If what you are getting at is the ability to "data log" the test freq response, then yes you can store this data on a USB drive or SD flash drive, and plug that into a PC for future use, graphing etc.
Mike may be referring to the "Frequency Synthesis" object:
Post Edited (TChapman) : 3/28/2007 3:11:45 AM GMT
Another version of the same answers stated differently:
You would use your pc to program the Prop in the Spin Language/Environment... your testing program can then be permanently stored on the EEPROM.
The Prop could then be completely disconnected from your PC and only attached to the woofer to be tested...
To start the test you would push a button to reset the prop and start the test program running from the eeprom...
If this is a pass-fail test with a few failure modes... then you could use an LED on the DEMO board to indicate pass or fail status.
If you want to record the exact results of each test (frequency/response data)... those results could be stored to an SD card... which could then be removed and looked at on your PC.
Any help you might need along the way is more than available in this forum. Simple questions are the best... everybody learns something from them.
Everything you describe would be consider normal usage for the Prop.
Rich
If you can imagine IT... one or more Props can do IT... and the guys here can help you make it HAPPEN[noparse]:)[/noparse]
>Windows XP (or Windows 2000).
LOL. Thanks. To transcend Bill Gates you gotta pay him.
>that can act as USB hosts and would connect to I/O pins on the Propeller.
This is the thing (adaptor?) that I plug into the USB port (on my PC)
And accepts (on the other end)
The flashcard out of my wifes camera?
In this case:
external drive:/e
Or something like that?
Not quite. You're talking about a "memory card reader". This is indeed a thing that plugs into a USB port on a PC (or other USB "host") and accepts a flashcard from some digital camera. These come in several varieties depending on the kind of flashcard involved. Some of these "reader"s will accept several different varieties of flashcard. The most common varieties are: Secure Digital card, Compact Flash card, Smart Media card, and miniature versions of the SD card.
I was talking about a device that can act like a PC with a USB port, but is designed to be controlled from a Stamp or Propeller or similar microcontroller.
FTDI makes a series of such devices under the Vinculum name (see: www.vinculum.com). GHI Electronics (see: www.ghielectronics.com) makes the USBwiz.
I.E. Is the 'USB' connector on the propellor board
a conventional 'USB' connector?
What Mike has suggested to you is, that you CAN interface a whole lot of external devices to the Propeller, one such device is called the VDRIVE2, which IS a USB slave port that the Propeller can communicate with to read and write data. You have to buy it for under $30, and hook it up with a few pins to your Prop board. This particular device is new, and there is not a lot of code(objects rather) floating around for it as of yet, that will change soon.
There is a fully functional object posted for another type of Flash card called an SD card, which is a memory card with various sizes available. This card also requires that you buy a card reader for it, and attach the reader to the Propeller board. Once connected, you can read and write data to it, then remove the card and take it to any PC that has a proper card reader attached(usually a dongle reader like what comes with cameras). You can dump the contents into the PC and read it just like a USB card. It appears just like a drive as you descibed.
Post Edited (TChapman) : 3/29/2007 8:43:29 AM GMT
Now you know that you don't need a card to store the program are you just looking for something to store your results on?
You can use a flash card with the propeller almost directly, you just need a socket and some code, it would not be worth trying to interface with a PC card reader:
http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=162235
Or you could get a vdrive from FTDI like Mike mentioned and plug a little USB drive into it to store the data on. Then you can just plug it straight into your PC afterwards and read the data from a file.
Graham
Backing up a little.
Forget the 'woofer tester'.
(refering to a thread linked to above(thanks)) [noparse]:)[/noparse] :
What I would actually like is a stand alone 'computer'
with a hardwired OS and accessible programmability.
Like a C-64 (boots up in Basic (also the original IBM pc))
My main emphasis being music.
So I need fairly comprehensive 'sound' commands.
At least 3 or 4 'voices'
Definately a way to save programs.
(I do algorhythmic pieces so not much memory required)
I was thinking of the camera type flashcard (with attendant 'reader/writer')
I.E. the gizmo on the end of a usb cable that I use to get pictures
onto the pc from my wifes camera
As a drive (to save files) (like the cassette with the C-64)
Perhaps there's enough available memory on the Propellor
to not need an external drive?
It is non-volitile right?
Obviously a newbie [noparse]:)[/noparse]
You really have to be much more specific with what you are wanting to accomplish. If you say "fairly comprehensive 'sound' command", that doesn't translate very well to what the real functional goal is. Do you want to use the Prop as a multi voice synth, a sampler? There's no way to offer a suggestion with such limited info. Compared to many other processors, the Prop can offer a lot of capability with minimal external hardware. I'd suggest you just dive in and start learning. You will absolutely find applications for the Propeller.
Post Edited (TChapman) : 3/30/2007 2:34:05 AM GMT
Does the 'Hydra' do VGA?
Or would it work with the little 2.5" LCD monitor?
From the thread linked above it appears that on the Hydra the sound comes off pin 7 ?
Can this be stereo ?
On the Propellor board the sound comes off of 2 pins through attendant passive LP
network ......
To the 'headphone amp' [noparse]:)[/noparse] ???
Is this more 'stereo' than the Hydra ?
Somebody ought to do a DOS version of the 'Propeller Tool' [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Someday there might be a Spin compiler library like those available for the Stamps so that you could take a Spin source
file and get a compiled binary file from it. I wouldn't count on it any time soon. You might get a compiler that actually
runs on the Propeller first. You won't see anything for DOS unless you write it yourself. There just isn't a large enough
market.
Seems like maybe the Hydra (book anyways) is geared more towards sound?
What would be the best way to get a 'feel' for if I could handle 'Spin' without actually having the Propellor Tool installed? (sans Win2000)
I'd go ahead and get one of the boards, but it appears I'd need to upgrade to Win2000 (and maybe my pc to handle the bloat), and that's quite an outlay for something that I may not be able to program. (plus the security issues with 2000)
Thanks again for the help. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
reading from the bottom of the pcb
1 ea. BS2-1C
1 ea. " NX-1000 " (a protoboard )
1 ea. " Microcontroller projects with Basic Stamps " per Al Williams ....
I've lost the software I had to go with it ...
I ran ((may)run) it on a pc with no hardrive
So I need to do bootable floopies ....
I can download on my Win98 (and copy a floppy)
BUT! ......
Floppies with OS included .... dos 'system files'
I did IIRC download (the floppy(lest system files)) from this site ?
·
maybe thats where I got the .exe ?