I am so frustrated with Propeller 2
Andrey Demenev
Posts: 401
I had a rush to write this post for several times now, but each time I stopped and forced myself to go read more documentation and learn things. But finally the time has come.
First of all, don't take me wrong, I really admire what Parallax, and Chip personally, did with the Propeller. It is a beautiful piece of hardware.
But each time I try to approach it and do something beyond modifying code examples published on the internet, I hit a wall. Or should I say, fall into a hole? The hole of missing documentation.
Propeller 1 was a chip that felt so refreshing and innovative, I was sold immediately as I learnt about it. And the documentation was so good. All I needed to write my own VGA driver was a couple of PDF files. Everything was documented well, and a couple of missing parts were covered with application notes. The only things not documented were the RF carrier and sound subcarrier generation, but in most cases that was solvable by copying existing code, because variations in that area are limited.
I get it that P2 is much more complicated in terms of hardware. And that is the reason why it should be documented better. And it is actually worse. The most interesting parts are streamer and smart pins.
But what is the streamer? How does it work? Which instructions do I use to control it (but first I need to know wth it is)? How do I learn to use smart pins without trying all the bit combinations and figuring out how to interpret the results? Where are the application notes?
Obviously there are people who figured all this out and created outstanding pieces of software. But how do you do it without spending years on early prototypes, endlessly browsing the forums and trying all the code examples? I don't know.
Comments
The P2 IS a lot more complicated than the P1 and the documentation IS less thorough. Programming the P2 feels like playing chess, which can be exhausting, while P1 was comfortably like checkers.
I always have to refer back to the silicon documentation because I can't remember all the details, myself. Everything is in there, but it's not very elaborative.
Stephen Moraco has put together a P2 knowledge base that works with Claude AI, and it has gotten to be pretty good. It can be used to explain existing code in great detail. Stephen even uses it to generate rather complex code.
Part of Stephen's efforts have resulted in 500 pages of P2 documentation intended to bridge the gap from our sparse Parallax P2 documentation.
We are aware that we have a need for better documentation, but I think the future isn't exactly documentation as we have known it. The future may be a knowledge base that you can query by asking questions of AI. Using this knowledge base, Claude could give you great custom-tailored explanations of what the streamer does and how the various smart pin modes work. When something like that is available, I think it's a lot more useful than normal documentation, especially if you just want to know certain things without too much background detail.
The streamer might be the most complicated part…. Seems only a handful here know how to use it ( not me)
Think that could use a manual of its own…
A criticism of P1 that I read was that by the time you use cogs for things like spi uart etc, that are normally handled by hardware, you don’t really have multiple cogs left….
Think that is fair to some extent.
P2 does a better job of freeing up cogs so you can actually use them for code.
@cgracey, I’d urge you to recognize that different people have different levels of comfort with the use of AI, and choosing to not produce further traditional documentation in favor of telling people to use Claude could cost you customers.
If you believe that Claude understands the hardware quite well then maybe Claude should be engaged to make the documentation that is missing. If Claude is up to the task then it should be a fairly straightforward process, even if it produces a less useful documentation set. For those that are unconvinced by the AI proponents, or enjoy trawling through the documentation for themselves, this is better than being told to ask Claude.
Stephen Moraco has 500 pages of P2 documentation produced by Claude. We are going to be going over it in the coming weeks, making sure it's correct. If it's not, we tell Claude and Claude corrects it. There are lots of examples in this documentation.
The point is: with the P2 you have to find out, what works and documentation will be very complex too. With other microcontrollers you often have to find out, what doesn't work. In the end, the P2 is an advantage, showing positive surprises. ;-) Don't hesitate, it's a learning curve, but the knowledge acquired will not be obsolete with the next generation..