I took the plunge
PatM
Posts: 72
Ordered a Hydra from www.hvwtech.com here in Canuckleland just a few minutes ago and it should arrive Friday.
I've been trying to find a way to get decent looking colour graphics from an 8 bit micro to a 240x128 to 320x200 LCD for something like two years now. Most 8 bits are too slow to drive a VGA LCD directly, so you have to find a controller board AND lcd combo that your microcontroller can talk to. These exist but start somewhere around $150 US for a small screen, around $500 for 5-6 inch screens, and the price goes bonkers from there.
This is why I just ordered a Hydra. The Prop's ability to generate low-res, low color VGA seems perfect for my requirements, the hydra board takes all the (hardware) pain out of prototyping and the book should go a long way toward cutting down the learning curve for programming.
From here, I can buy surplus analog RGB LCDs with touchscreens for MUCH less and just have to deal with connecting the prop and the LCD. Thankfully, several places are now selling the itsy bitsy connectors many LCDs seem to require.
I'm still skeptical of being able to fit the programming I require onto the propeller (just a feeling, we'll see eventually). But after some thought I realized that doesn't matter. If the worst case comes true, I can just use the prop as a serial LCD controller and use an Atmel chip for the brains.
Of course, I'll never play games on the Hydra, this computer is just for business applications.
No, really.
Really really.
err, no, thats not Donky Kong... Its umm... errr.
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I've been trying to find a way to get decent looking colour graphics from an 8 bit micro to a 240x128 to 320x200 LCD for something like two years now. Most 8 bits are too slow to drive a VGA LCD directly, so you have to find a controller board AND lcd combo that your microcontroller can talk to. These exist but start somewhere around $150 US for a small screen, around $500 for 5-6 inch screens, and the price goes bonkers from there.
This is why I just ordered a Hydra. The Prop's ability to generate low-res, low color VGA seems perfect for my requirements, the hydra board takes all the (hardware) pain out of prototyping and the book should go a long way toward cutting down the learning curve for programming.
From here, I can buy surplus analog RGB LCDs with touchscreens for MUCH less and just have to deal with connecting the prop and the LCD. Thankfully, several places are now selling the itsy bitsy connectors many LCDs seem to require.
I'm still skeptical of being able to fit the programming I require onto the propeller (just a feeling, we'll see eventually). But after some thought I realized that doesn't matter. If the worst case comes true, I can just use the prop as a serial LCD controller and use an Atmel chip for the brains.
Of course, I'll never play games on the Hydra, this computer is just for business applications.
No, really.
Really really.
err, no, thats not Donky Kong... Its umm... errr.
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Comments
If you're worried about fitting the program into RAM on the Propeller, perhaps you can get an SRAM card to increase the amount of memory.
Just picked it up from the post office and plugged it into my 1982 sanyo TV. Gawd, I remember playing with the Apple ][noparse][[/noparse]+ and C64 on TV. We're spoiled with our 1280x1024 desktops!
Just ran the TV demos on disk, now I'm coming looking for Donky Kong!
Tomorrow I'll hook up to the spare VGA monitor and start learning how to program this thingmewhatsit.
Andre'
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I have it hooked up to VGA now. Took a bit to figure out how to get the non-hydra VGA demos to display but in the end it was simply setting the _clkmode and _xinfreq to the same as the hydra demos. Luckily, they used the same pins - I haven't quite figured out how to change those around yet.
My only complaint so far is the quality of the manual binding. I picked up the Hydra at the post office, went to a restaraunt and sat down to read as I ate. I flipped open the manual and *CRACK*, the binding split; within 5 minutes I had about 30 loose pages. This morning, after reading for another half hour, I have twice as many loose pages and the manual is now split into 7 different sections. It wont be long before I have a cover and 812 pieces of paper...
P.S. You should really consider going to a ring binder or spiral binding. Both allow the manual to lay flat without pages flipping by themselves - a must for reading and typing at the same time.