Can you build your own Hydra Board?

TonyA

I just discovered the Propeller chip and the Hydra Dev. Kit.

1. I was wondering if they offer a kit which allows you to build your own Hydra Board?

2. Should I get started on the Hydra Kit, or the Propeller Edu. Kit?

Thanks.

epmoyer

The Hydra is an excellent piece of hardware and I prefer it to the Prop board because of all the I/O and peripherals that come along with it, but the Hydra manual (812 pages) and demos are the real prize. Lots and lots of great material and examples there; well worth it.

There is no un-assembled version Hydra kit today.

JT Cook

I have built a Hydra type board from the $25 proto board that parallax sells and it worked pretty well. The only thing is after you get the board, the ac adapter, the nes pad, usb to serial programmer, connectors, parts, and the book, there is maybe a $50 difference. And I had to order parts from another supplier too, so after more shipping you cut into that, and if you don't have a spare keyboard and mouse then there is even less of·a difference. Also you will not find NES ports anywhere unless you hack them off an NES.

The educational kit is not bad if you are just looking to mess around with prop, but you would still need to buy extra parts to hook it up to·a TV, VGA, keyboard, and/or mouse.

Really there isn't big cost difference between building one from parts and buying one complete, except less of a headache if you buy the Hydra kit.

TonyA

Hi,

Thanks for the info I appreciate it.

Tony

deSilva

I have got a DIP (plain vanilla), a Spin-Stamp (nice but expensive, and 12 I/Os unusable), and a Hydra.

Of course the Hydra board just consists of the usual chips, resistors and connectors, lots of connectors to be precise. A mouse and keyboard should not be an issue, though times will come when it will be no easy task to acquire a PS/2 mouse Then there is an amazing book....

The Hydra is a "Convenience Pack" aimed at newcomers without shelves full of boxes heavily filled with electronic spare parts and the weaklings who shy hours of stupid soldering - like me.
Thus it is priced according to the standard calculation practice "ingredients times 3" (some use "pi")

Nothing to say against it.

I see a great advantage in the standardization of I/O-Ports for the exchange of programs.
Main shortcomming is the missing SD-card connector and not a single free I/Os pin to play with...

Forrest

If you don't mind soldering, lack of NES joystick ports and don't mind changing I/O pin assignements in the source code - then you can start with the less expensive Propeller Protoboard, PropStick or PropStamp. If you want to do video on the Propeller, the Hydra Book/CD is worth it's weight in gold - it IS heavy [noparse];)[/noparse] And if you're thinking of writing the next Doom - you'll probably want the Hydra Xtreme 512K SRAM card www.xgamestation.com/view_product.php?id=43 plus the Hydra.

TonyA

How are the Pico and Micro editions of the XGS systems? Is it worth learning ASM?

Forrest

Yes, it's worth learning Assembly.

If you want to generate video - it's a LOT simpler with the Propeller because the video generators are built into the chip. With the SX, there is NO video generation hardware - it's all done with carefully timed loops on the Pico XGS and the Micro edition has some hardware to help but it's still difficult.

Chris Kraft

It all depends on what your goals are.

If you want to build the Hydra to save some money, well, I wouldn't bother. By the time you track down all the parts and put together a board and thats assuming you don't make any mistakes, well, I doubt you would save a lot of money.

Plus you wouldn't get the book, and the book is a well done and a fantastic resource.

If you are interested in building it yourself as a learning experience, well, maybe you should look at the Pico kit. Thats a great kit if you are more interested in building something and learning from the ground up.

I have the Pico and I have the Hydra and I think they are both great devices. I look at it this way:

The Hydra is great if you want to dive in and start developing, if you want to focus on writing code and making games. The others are great if you want to start from the bottom and work your way up. Another advantage of the Hydra is you know you can share your projects with other Hydra users and they should have minimal problems with compatibility. With anything else you can't be sure.

I started building something myself using a 6502 and a old Vic-II chip I got my hands on. I love the old C-64 and I wanted to create some retro games. At some point though I decided I wanted to move on to programming quicker so I got the Pico, then the Hydra came along and I decided that was the way to go because I could dive right in and start coding and not have to work on building anything myself.

Eventually I will go back to hardware hacking but for now I am happy to have the Hydra and be able to focus on writing code.

--Chris

TonyA

Can I use the Hydra manual and create video and sound with just a Propeller chip proto board, or edu board? Or would the Propeller Manual be more appropriate?

Does the Propeller Manual contain examples for creating sound and video?

CardboardGuru

TonyA said...
Does the Propeller Manual contain examples for creating sound and video?

Take a look at the propeller manual PDF for free. As far as I'm aware it's the exact same thing as the printed version you can buy.
www.parallax.com/propeller/downloads.asp

For material on creating sound and video you want the Hydra manual. You can buy it separately, and adapt the examples for the various Parallax boards. But I'd recommend just going for the whole Hydra package which includes the manual. It's well worth it.

TonyA

I see.

So programs are stored on the Hydra memory cards and you can swap cards (games/programs) with other Hydra system owners?

What percentage of the prgramming is "Spin" and ASM?

Can you do the same thing with the tinyBasic it comes with, or would you need Spin and ASM to do the cool stuff?

CardboardGuru

In theory you could swap game cards with friends. In practice, you're unlikely to have anyone else with a Hydra nearby. We swap games aand other apps as souce code here on these forums instead.

If you do absolutely every bit of programming for everything that goes into a game. For the Donkey Kong remake I did, 80% Spin, 20% assembler. But you can use software objects that others have written to do the low level stuff, and program in 100% Spin if you want.

Depends where your interests lie though. If you wanted to you could do much more of the game in assembler.

I haven't played with the TinyBASIC, but yes, you're bound to be restricted in what you can do compared to native Spin and Assembler. Spin isn't too hard to learn if you know BASIC though.

TonyA

Thanks again, I appreciate all of the info.

JT Cook

Just to note, Tiny Basic does not really have any video, audio, or input routines so you can't make any games for it (save maybe some really simple basic games using text display).

Also with the Hydra book you get code for video and sound routines that aren't available freely otherwise.

Chris Kraft

Keep in mind that if you don't buy the Hydra but instead buy the Proto Board you will need to get a Prop Plug or some other mechanism for programming the Propeller.

If you buy the Proto Board, the Proto Board Accessory kit, The Prop Plug and the Manual you are looking at roughly $110. That is less than the Hydra but you also will not have the connectors, mouse, keyboard, power supply, sample carts.

If none of that extra stuff is important to you then I guess you could save some by going with the individual pieces.

What is your goal for doing this? I think we all could be much more helpful if we understood what you wished to accomplish. If you just want to write games and don't care about the messing around with microcontrollers or learning Assembler or stuff like that you might be better served by just getting your hands on one of the PC based game programming kits. I've seen some impressive stuff done with DarkBasic and stuff like that.

--Chris

TonyA

Thanks again.

I'm leaning towards the Hydra.

I am interested in experimenting with sound, making a synthesizer that accompanies video. The video would either be a simple user interface display (showing the sound controls or properties on a TV), or video effects that go along with the sounds generated. This is not a new idea I know, but seems fun for people who are more into music, than games.

These are just my initial, ideas. I really have no clue yet. But this is what I think I would like to try to do.

Also, was wondering if the Hydra book will help to understand the ASM involved. I have no experience with asm, only PBasic and a little Java.

Oh, and I was wondering if the Hydra could also accept custom peripherals (custom made joystick), or say a potentiometer?

Post Edited (TonyA) : 6/18/2007 3:40:22 PM GMT

Steph Lindsay

Hi Tony,

Like the Propeller Manual, the PE Kit's Labs are free downloads, so you can make use of the information in the beginner's tutorials regardless of which hardware platform you go with. I'm sure you will have fun either way.

PE Labs:http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=617192

-Stephanie Lindsay

Editor, Parallax Inc.

Mike Green

The Hydra book will help you to understand the assembly instructions. Either download or buy the paper version of the Propeller manual for reference (I strongly suggest you get a paper copy). The Hydra's interface to the game controller is all handled in software so you could make your own joystick and modify the software as needed. For a potentiometer, you would need to add a resistor and capacitor the same as done with the Stamps. In fact, there is a library of routines for the Propeller that provides many of the PBasic functions (like RCTIME) in Spin code.

TonyA

Sounds great. (I'm taking my wallet out now)

Is it easy to create sounds based on joystick, keyboard or mouse events, and sync that with video "effects"?
Does the Hydra or Propeller book contain info about doing this?

Thanks again.