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Back to UF - User Diary Index
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The Lurker Returns! | by LongFist | 2008-08-28 13:11:45 |
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Thread jack: regarding post | by EnzoMatrix | 2011-11-07 23:55:38 |
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Thanks. Let me tell you about it... | by LongFist | 2011-11-08 08:46:33 |
| A few comments from a EE who hacks firmware... |
by AndyA |
2011-11-08 09:37:32 |
I hadn't seen the basic stamp until this summer when an intern was using it for a simple little project.
My first impression was that it was a neat way of simplifying things for beginners.
My second impression was that it was massively crippled and limited, we kept hitting memory space limits.
The thing that really killed it was the massively indeterminate response time to an external input since you have to poll it in a loop.
In the end I dug out an old atmel AVR XMega demo board. And helped him port his code to c.
Same unit price but with A/D, PWM outputs, real serial ports, usable timers and interrupt support. The demo board with buttons, connectors, power supply etc... cost the same as a stamp and ran at 20MHz. Forget once per second, logging data at 1kHz would be trivial.
Since I had a jtag debugger sitting around ($200) we also had real debug capability with break points and full access to all the internal CPU state. And if you then want to make more than one the CPU itself is only a couple of bucks.
The big downside is that a CPU datasheet and register description is a massively intimidating document when you first pick one up, the initial learning curve is fairly steep.
I've never looked at the propeller parts but based on the stamp I'm not impressed with their products. Good for hobby stuff since they hide the hardware interface but slow, limited and overpriced in comparison to other options. And I've always disliked proprietary languages.
If you have time for the learning curve then something like an AVR (atmel), PIC (microchip) or MSP (TI) will give you far more flexibility and speed for less power and cost.
Of course I'm an EE so I'd be tempted to just do the thing in a PLD or FPGA ;-) |
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[ Reply ] |
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'only' 1 KHz..? =) | by EnzoMatrix | 2011-11-09 00:53:29 |
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A/D converts speed would be the limiting issue ;-) | by AndyA | 2011-11-09 10:03:32 |
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Ah, to play with the real thing... | by LongFist | 2011-11-10 09:58:41 |
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So far anything analog I've done on | by EnzoMatrix | 2011-11-11 00:13:33 |
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Well, this project is really straightforward, | by LongFist | 2011-11-11 07:02:17 |
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They actually invented a chip to read thermo- | by EnzoMatrix | 2011-11-14 00:02:36 |
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