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P1 DIY minimal dev board - a weekend project (completed). - Page 3 — Parallax Forums

P1 DIY minimal dev board - a weekend project (completed).

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  • MaciekMaciek Posts: 668
    edited 2020-08-25 20:20
    @mpark I'm flattered. Thank you.
    But, frankly, it won't be for long before I officially declare the end of it :). Looking back at my project goals stated up front at the beginning I think, save the deadline which I didn't make due to poor planning obviously, the other goals are pretty much accomplished, no ?

    The board is working perfectly and the issue I'm having is, in my view, unrelated to anything on that ugly board ;) .
    (edit)
    But what do I know ? I also confessed truthfully I'm a noob here.
  • Here's my first Prop "board". It's from the Propeller Development Kit that I bought at Radio Shack in 2009. I soldered a header onto an SD adapter to serve as a uSD socket. It took me a few hours to track down my Prop Plug. The last time I used the Prop Plug was with the DE112 FPGA board about the time the first P2 chip was available.
    PropEdKit.jpg
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  • Wuerfel_21Wuerfel_21 Posts: 4,370
    edited 2020-08-25 20:49
    Might as well post my first board.
    It's a custom PCB (first and so far only one I designed...), so it's obviously quite clean (except when you look on the underside and see my terrible soldering). It's also not exactly minimal - lots of goodies on-board, but only one free I/O pin.
    1496 x 974 - 2M
    1305 x 1403 - 143K
    2000 x 2000 - 80K
  • Yesterday my daughter did a splendid cleen up job on her desk and threw many things away to be disposed off properly by me (she is very "eco"). Among those things I found something that could serve me here to conclude my project gracefully once the easy part (the hardware) is done.

    Just look at the attached picture (of a paper notebook cover) and you'll see it's time for me to move on to some more challenging tasks like programming the actual thing to do exactly what I need it to be doing.

    Once again, thanks everyone for your support, advice and time.

    I thereby officially announce this project as completed.
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  • So the moral of the story is "if you are going to get in a flap about something, you may as well do it properly and fly!"
  • Having the luxury of not being a native English speaker I must not hesitate to ask what do you mean by what you've just written ?
    I mean, I do understand the phrase but can't grasp your intention :).
    Whatever the answer, I'm glad I did it although it is fair to say that buying a ready made board would be a lot easier. But I dismissed that at the very beginning and chose the not so easy path. No regrets, whatsoever.
  • I was trying to be funny, but obviously failed :)

    People tend to worry and get over-excited much like a bird flapping its wings, so we say to get "in a flap". But the card tells me that when we are "in a flap" that perhaps what we are missing is remembering that we have "wings", that is abilities that can help us "fly" in a figurative way, rather than just flap about :)
  • The term "get in a flap" means to get excited or angry. I think in this case Peter is using the "excited" definition. The word "flap" is also used to describe the motion of a bird's wings when flying.

    So I think Peter is saying that if you're really excited about your P1 DIY minimal dev board you should move your arms up and down like an angry bird.

    Or maybe he's just trying to make a pun from the word "flap". :)
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    Humor generally does not translate well.
  • @"Peter Jakacki" That ! I'm home now.

    @"Dave Hein" Thanks for making an effort to explain. I'm not excited at all. Glad it works, yes, but frankly speaking, I was confident I could deliver on this little project. After all, it's just a tool and a simple one at that.
  • @kwinn No, it does.
    Look at this "Life is unpredictable. Eat dessert first." I could digest both the sentence in bold print and the desert itself if I only was presented with one. :)
  • Oh, I can't leave this one alone. I think you misspelled dessert the second time, but maybe you did it intentionally. All I know is that you can never starve in a desert because of the sand-which-is there.

    And don't forget you should never spell desserts backwards or you'll get stressed!

    Sorry, but Peter started it. :)
  • @"Dave Hein" My bad. There was no intent on my side to eat the desert but the dessert. In case of the former I could as easily bite the dust, while we are at the ground level. Nice catch. People tend to be sloppy with their writing these days. I stand corrected. I'm no match to you, English speakers.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    Maciek wrote: »
    @kwinn No, it does.
    Look at this "Life is unpredictable. Eat dessert first." I could digest both the sentence in bold print and the desert itself if I only was presented with one. :)
    Unless you call it pudding ;)
    (for UK people)
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    Maciek wrote: »
    @kwinn No, it does.
    Look at this "Life is unpredictable. Eat dessert first." I could digest both the sentence in bold print and the desert itself if I only was presented with one. :)

    Well, perhaps "generally" was a poor word choice, but I have noticed that I end up explaining jokes, particularly puns to friends who are relatively new ESL speakers.
  • Wow... it is hard to take a picture like this using a cell phone... but I wanted to join the fun and share my last design. This is version 3. I am working on version 4 now. Version 1 and 2 were smaller, but I kept needing the same things, so I decided to add them to the board rather than have a dozen daughter boards dangling off.

    And yes, I know I need to clean the flux.
    2698 x 1762 - 7M
  • @Seeker Nice one. Out of curiosity, how long did you spend on designing this board ? I must give KiCad a try but just can't make myself start. I preferred Eagle before it was acquired by Autodesk.
  • Maciek wrote: »
    @Seeker Nice one. Out of curiosity, how long did you spend on designing this board ? I must give KiCad a try but just can't make myself start. I preferred Eagle before it was acquired by Autodesk.

    The initial design took about 2 days of working in between family obligations and wife's honey-do list. ;)

    It helps that I started with a base design and keep building off of it. The basics (Prop, Xtal, memory, etc.) were already laid out.

    I use DipTrace. I used to use Eagle, but after playing a bit with DipTrace switched over. It is just more intuitive for me.
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2020-08-30 19:43
    For anyone who wants to take a good board shot, you can do it with any camera at all, and most phones these days have very good cameras. Here are a couple of tips to help with taking better board shots.

    - Place the board on a sheet of paper or a plain background

    - Do not ever use flash or strong lights. Soft indirect diffuse lighting is best.

    - Don't have the camera so close that it can't focus properly or creates a shadow. You can always zoom, or just crop later.

    - Keep the phone steady during the shot. It can help to use a timer so you can hold it with both hands.

    - Take several shots and different angles too, then pick the best one later

    @Seeker - it didn't help you had a red pcb on a dark wood table with a Flash. No flash or a sheet of paper and it would be much better already.
  • Good tips.
    I've always found these to be effective.
    Looks like you were in macro photography perhaps, in the past.
  • MJBMJB Posts: 1,235
    Maciek wrote: »
    Back to business ....

    Now, I'd appreciate if somebody here could give me a friendly hint on how to properly load a Tachyon binary ?
    The ones I tried were initially preconfigured to use 10 or 6 MHz and my board uses 5MHz crystal and
    that might be a cause for failure to load if the Prop tool verifies if these frequencies match.
    Just guessing here. I'm sure Peters' binaries are good and it's just me doing something stupid.
    Thanks.

    after many posts nobody seemed to reply to this ...

    the 6 MHz one will not work with 5 MHz crystal
    but the 5/10 one does outoselect and SHOULD work
  • @MJB Thanks, but in fact @Wuerfel_21 gave me some advice and, though I didn't use the solution he suggested, I managed to eventually run Tachyon on my ugly board (and even described it in my posts about building FTDI 232 usb>uart).
    I'm having fun already with it and expect it to continue for a foreseeable future while waiting for Peter's P2 boards to be available to have even more fun with TAQOS.
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