New iCONSOLE development system preview

Peter Jakacki

I've been pretty quiet developing new commercial Prop products and software and at this point I'd like to share a little bit more. This version is suitable as a stand-alone PC-like controller as it has a the standard VGA/KEY/MOUSE ports plus RS-232/RS-485/USB/LAN as well as RTC, audio, and dual SD slots. I will also be using this as a development system for the Propeller and doing further development on an embedded Forth OS using the SD card as a virtual memory. The commercial version includes some other features including a complementary ARM cpu mainly for the application software but I like the idea of a single Prop cpu version especially when Prop II becomes available.

The RS-485 ports are designed for 8-way IDC cables to string together and power other devices so that it is only a matter of crimping on an 8-pin connector anywhere along the cable run where a node is to be connected.

Anyway, I will be making the single Prop version available for the general community if there is any interest. As I don't do the manufacturing myself I don't normally worry about the general market but being a Propaholic it is hard to resist [noparse]:)[/noparse]

*Peter*

Paul Baker

Nice system Peter, this is by far the closest 3rd party platform to what I am presently designing for Parallax. The RS-485 is something unique to your board among the other boards around that is on the short list for my board. Theres a few extra features planed for the project (tentatively named PXB), and since it will be an exerimenters board it will have a fair size breadboard since is intented is a universal prototyping platform rather than your intergrated system.

Are you going with the XPort for your ethernet connection? I've decided to go the route of ENC28J60 and doing a port of uIP, which is what I am currently pouring through. It's a much cheaper avenue.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

Post Edited (Paul Baker (Parallax)) : 7/10/2007 6:18:04 AM GMT

Peter Jakacki

I've found the XPORT very convenient to implement a plug n play ethernet connection, it just works. I have and am looking at various Ethernet solutions but they have to be simple. The ENC28J60 is one part I have looked at but it is power hungry. There are also the CP2201 silabs parts but they need a few more I/O lines. Then there are a couple of single-chip micros around that integrate the MAC + PHY so they are also possible contenders as I can off-load a lot of work onto them and still talk to them with an SPI interface or even I2C.

It's never easy but I smile when I think of all the neat tricks I will one day be able to do with the Prop II as I imagine bit-bashing 10Mbps Ethernet and 12Mbps USB.


*Peter*

Paul Baker

The XPort is quite power hungry itself, it use to have a sticker that said "Caution Hot". Yeah some of the design ideas we're working on with the next chip is discovering where the current Prop falls just shy of being able to do and try to give it that extra ability.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

Bob the Builder on a C64

Are you going to use an SID,some sort of sound chip and/or a video chip of some sort? or are you just going to stick with bare bones?

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Realize that I am really a mad scientist··· and


Don't forget it!

http://raydillon.com/Images/Illustration/GameArt/WildIsle/WildIsle-Ink-ScientistClose.jpg

·

Peter Jakacki

Bob,
I have looked into using the VLSI chips, possibly the VS1033 or similar since I would like to be able to handle MP3s but for most applications that is not necessary. I do have another audio application where it definitely would be very nice to use the VLSI device. So this particular pcb is fairly basic although I have a version that is combined with an ethernet ARM chip that has a few extras on it but still I also want a plain prop version.

I have also investigated inserting a pcb into the SD slot much like the SDIO concept, this could have the MP3 hardware plugging in later on.

Paul,
Rather than invest in developing for other architectures such as ethernet ARM I may include the ENC28J60 on the development pcb. How are you going to port uIP seeing the source is C and designed for a conventional cpu with larger program memory than a cog can handle. I wouldn't have thought that interpreted Spin would be up to the task but please don't let me stop you though.

I would even like to get the prop bit-bashing 1.5Mbps USB so that later on I can reuse the code for Prop II. Anybody know if there are any legal ramifications in emulating a sub-set of the FT232R so that the prop can connect directly to USB and still use the FTDI host drivers?


*Peter*

QuattroRS4

Peter said...
I would even like to get the prop bit-bashing 1.5Mbps USB so that later on I can reuse the code for Prop II. Anybody know if there are any legal ramifications in emulating a sub-set of the FT232R so that the prop can connect directly to USB and still use the FTDI host drivers?

Peter - I really like that board btw...

Don't know about legal ramifications but sounds nice ..

BTW..I have previously played around with the XPORT and a demo board - it gets hot ..so too does the reg on the demo board.. as correctly pointeted out the ENC28J60 is not exactly frugal either ..so I guess its down to a tight implementation of ip stacks with the·ENC28J60 -which is where I think the Imagecraft C application will come into its own .. as there are loads of PIC C examples for ip stacks available making 'adaption' easier..


QuattroRS4

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'Necessity is the mother of invention'

Post Edited (QuattroRS4) : 7/11/2007 3:46:48 AM GMT

RinksCustoms

as far as legal ramifacations are concerned, i may be able to provide you with some pages in PDF format, scaned from a print copy on USB i have for you. I'm not sure if dotnet junk will allow me to post it, I will try before 12pm EST 6/11/07.

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E³ = Thought

http://folding.stanford.edu/·- Donating some CPU/GPU downtime just might lead to a cure for cancer! The average PC while browsing the internet typically uses less than 30% of it's potential, why not donate a portion of the rest for cancer resaerch?

Paul Baker

Peter, I definitely understand the desire to provide a plateform that is good to go without having to provide extensive code support. The plan for uIP port is to find the critical loop (the process routine in uip.c) and convert it to assembly, if need be I will dissociate the layers and place each into a cog where they will each work on a layer. Some of the paradigms behind uIP can be relaxed because the Propeller is a multi-processor.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

ciw1973

Peter:

I've been waiting for news on availability of your noPC for quite a while now. Has this been abandoned?

The website's been saying that evaluation kits will be available "soon" for at least the last year, and the link to the manual doesn't ever seem to have worked.

I though this sounded like a great bit of kit to play around with, and one with lots of potential, so I would have liked to have been able to pick one up.

That said, a similar concept (as you've proposed above) with a Prop chip core would have so much more potential, so I could understand if the noPC has been pretty much put on hold.

Peter Jakacki

I think I need to fix that page up a bit as I was gauging the interest for this noPC board considering that it is quite a powerful little unit which includes a fully-blown Forth OS. As I said earlier since I don't handle the manufacturing myself I don't worry about the general market. Why? From an enthusiast point of view I would love to but there is a lot of hand holding to do and 'very' little market, especially here in oz. I know if it's based on PIC or AVR and it has a C library or even just examples that there would be a lot of interest. It seems that when you make a product that's too different then people play it safe, they go with the mediocre, the" tried and proven". BTW, the noPC is in production but as customer spec'd designs, you only need to hold their hand once and then it's repeat production.

The noPC manual was removed as it was incomplete plus I felt that people could be using the information for their own commercial designs without even the courtesy of sampling my hardware. An engineer needs good coffee and they don't hand that out just because you're a good guy.

I see the Propeller as superior in quite a number of ways especially the stable low-overhead video. The ARM has the program memory space and some built-in goodies but the Propeller can emulate many of those functions and is still way more flexible. Like for instance, the ARM (and many other micros) implement standard PC like uarts but for RS-485 networks I would like 9-bit uarts. Well that's no problem at all with the Propeller and I can tailor it to suit as much as I like, it's sort of like having programmable gate arrays on-chip but infinitely much easier to use. All that being said I still like the ARM because the Forth OS I wrote for it works so well and it's fast and super-compact. When I entered it into the Philips ARM design contest the complete OS including the unrolled-loop video driver, fonts etc all fitted into 32K. C compilers don't come close in this regard but then again they are only a compiler, not a real-time multi-tasking OS. I wasn't surprised though when I only got second place as sponsored contests will always favor those entries that support the sponsors in some manner, such as using a commercial C compilers and libraries, but where's the fun in that?

The iCONSOLE was designed with a specific purpose but it's starting to look like a "noPC II" and I hope to address the enthusiasts out there this time. Sure, it is an integrated design but you only have so much I/O on-board anyway. For expansion I have the powered 485 buses which I can hang all kinds of devices off from relays to TVs. Then there is the i2c bus which is available on an internal connector as well as on the spare pins of the PS/2 connectors so I can easily plug in i2c devices directly into the PS/2 which also provides +5V power.

Sometimes I just need to operate a high-current device like a solenoid or a siren which is why I have a medium-current mosfet on-board connected to a spare pin on the RS-232. Also there are the SD connectors where I can plug in SPI interfaced boards such as wireless networks (a standard 1.6mm PCB fits nicely into the standard SD connector). I don't like having any design that can't be expanded somehow so I think it is a characteristic of my designs that they have some extras in them "just in case".

In reply to Paul regarding the uIP implementation, I do believe that it can be done but it hasn't yet and will soak up limited resources. However, in the interests of promoting DIY ethernet I am integrating an ENC28J60 on the PCB so that either the XPORT module can be used or an integrated magnetics RJ45 coupled to the ENC28J60. There are no spare lines to drive this chip but I will parallel it off the second SD port. Both SDs share the SPI connections but of course have independant chip selects. It will also be an option to have a selectable link so that the ENC28J60 chip select can come from elsewhere, maybe sacrificing the RTS signal for this.

This is only a "prototype of a prototype" just to check out the operation so I will probably incorporate some other devices such as the MP3 chip at some time. But there is the lack of I/O so I am thinking of adding another prop chip in such a manner that everything can be done by a single-chip but another can be added for performance. The reason for doing it all with a single-chip is to make sure that any software objects written do not depend upon special hardware issues. This way the software is reusable and available for the community, not just this hardware.


Keep in mind that if we write software objects to work without special hardware then they can be reused far more effectively with Prop II. When Prop II starts to sample (and I do mean when) it will have a much shorter time from sampling to volume sales as it can leap-frog off the current Propeller expertise and software base.

*Peter*

ciw1973 said...
Peter:

I've been waiting for news on availability of your noPC for quite a while now. Has this been abandoned?

The website's been saying that evaluation kits will be available "soon" for at least the last year, and the link to the manual doesn't ever seem to have worked.

I though this sounded like a great bit of kit to play around with, and one with lots of potential, so I would have liked to have been able to pick one up.

That said, a similar concept (as you've proposed above) with a Prop chip core would have so much more potential, so I could understand if the noPC has been pretty much put on hold.

RinksCustoms

·Well, my HP PSC 1200 series is being obstinant, so i will type the only reference i could find about legal ramifacations:

(BTW - this book was published in 2001 so i don't know how usefull this'll all be)

"Fees
The USB Implementors Forum provides the USB specifacation, related documents, software for compliance testing, and much more, all for free on it's website. Anyone can develope USB software without paying a licensing fee.

However, anyone who sells a device with a·USB interface must obtain legal access to use a Vendor ID. The administrative fee for obtaining a Vendor ID from the forum is $1500. Or if you join the forum at $2500/yr, the vendor ID fee is free, along with many other benifits such as compliance workshops. The Vendor ID·& a Product ID assigned by the vendor are embeded in each device to identify it to the operating system. The fee is no problem for developers of high volume products, but it can be an impediment to developers for the hobbyist market who expect to sell only small quantities of inexpensive devices. Some chip manufacturers will assign their Vendor ID and a block of Product ID's to customers for use with the manufacturers chips."

That's all the book goes into about legal ramifacations, I'm not sure on how much volume you expect to produce, but this shouldn't be a problem for like 10 or 20 boards. The part about the Vendor ID and Product ID being embedded into the USB chip raises an interesting question. I also am developing a board see the post on the TwinProp.

I'm curious as to what would happen if we put USB chips on our boards and didn't embed any Vendor ID or Product ID's, would windows just detect it as an unknown device and let you assign it to a driver? Or would windows not do anything at all?

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E³ = Thought

http://folding.stanford.edu/·- Donating some CPU/GPU downtime just might lead to a cure for cancer! The average PC while browsing the internet typically uses less than 30% of it's potential, why not donate a portion of the rest for cancer resaerch?

Paul Baker

Rinks, Peter is asking about the legal ramafications of using FTDI's drivers if he were able to use the Propeller to emulate the USB to serial conversion thier chips perform.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

RinksCustoms

oh, my bad, i didn't read the whole post.

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E³ = Thought

http://folding.stanford.edu/·- Donating some CPU/GPU downtime just might lead to a cure for cancer! The average PC while browsing the internet typically uses less than 30% of it's potential, why not donate a portion of the rest for cancer resaerch?

mirror

I suspect that the biggest problem would be that part of the simulation would involve emulating the FTDI Vendor ID & Product ID. I expect FTDI would get upset (possibly in a legal sort of way) if you made commercial gain from something they've paid for.

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Franz Achatz

about the ENC28J60:

I am playing with this Ethernet-Chip together with a MagJack and a ATMEGA168.
Its a complete 2-Chip Webserver
But the Microchip Data Sheet tells me that the operation current is about 250mA.
Thats a LOT but not true !!!!
The compete board takes 150mA, still a lot, but i think its ok.
The ENC28J60 is not getting hot but warm.

have fun
Franz

Peter Jakacki

I've had my pcbs back for some weeks now and they have been running very well. This is an shot of my proto "as is". Currently I am working with a modified version of Mike's FemtoBasic (thanks Mike) and integrating other drivers such as coms, sound, and ethernet.



*Peter*

Fred Hawkins

Very spare -- in a good way. Interesting how the 470 µf looks as massive as a grain silo. How about a block diagram?
And what's the black bobbin that looks like an old fashioned telephone ringer on the right side?

Peter Jakacki

Hi Fred,
The pcb is designed as a commercial product (as well as for development) and of course is in a metal case. Unlike a hackers board the indicators come out at the front and all the connectors out the back bar the SD/SDIO slots and audio jack.

When it comes to large caps I prefer the standard through-hole radial electros and the connectors end up dictating the maximum component height anyway, so as you can see it doesn't hurt none. The power supply is a switched mode supply so I can run it up to over 30V input without any worries or overheating. Because it's a SMPS the telephone ringer is actually the SMD inductor .

The final product will probably allow for tightly-coupled twin propellers as well as for a single prop.

*Peter*

Here's a mock-up of the case

Fred Hawkins

Ok, I see how the LED's will go now, mislead by the red and yellow ones probably. Also I missed the stacked LED pair in your photo. They're nifty -- where do you get them?

Peter Jakacki

As I had originally said, the proto is "as is" as protos tend to be, therefore the lack of some cosmetics. The dual led is from HJE and the part number is H5/2Y2G1H-13 I believe but there are usually many others making the same thing.

I've included a block diagram of the iCONSOLE.

*Peter*

computer guy

Peter,

I like the design. I am making an irrigation system that will go in a similar case.
Are you getting the case/front panel made professionally? If so, where from?

Thank you

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Ym2413a

Very nice. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
I like the dual SD card drives.
They remind me of the dual Floppy Drive computers.

The case looks nice as well.

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