On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 10:30:09AM +0200, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
> Hello design committeee - take care that you don't end up designing both
> COBOL and ANSI C/C++ in a single package!

It's treacherous territory for sure. I do believe though that we have a
fundamental consensus on the primary design points.

>
> I think there are differents 'needs' for beginners/starts products. BTW
> for most of these suitable products probably already exists. The main
> drivers for the different needs are:
> - cost associated with the users time (aka 'professionalism')
> - electronics knowledge and/or desire to do electronics work
> - just wanting to program some uC versus wanting to develop for all PICs
> (or even wider)
>
> A professional with little electronics knowledge should start with a
> demo board. Next probably a good programmer with support for lots of
> PICs. Think PS+, Promate, ICDs, maybe Warp (13?) programmer. This is not
> the group you should aim at.

They will end up being a secondary target.

>
> A hobbyist (less money to spare) can take an f877 with bootloader (but
> where to get a programmed f877, or where to get an f877 at all?), or a
> serial port powered HVP programmer, or a parallel port HVP programmer
> with external power (both will work with a 16x84) or parallel port LVP
> programmer (sorry, not for x84's).

Now here's where it gets interesting. The truth of the matter which James
as pointed out and you just echoed is that if we're only talking about the
above, then there are myraid of products already out there that fill the
niche and we're wasting our time.

But I think there's an unique opportunity here: An inexpensive demo board
that's targeted for novice users. Unique because we have in the person of
Sean both the facilities to have a cost effective assembled product available
and an infrastructure that doesn't have a profit motive for the product.
A professional grade product at a hobby price.

Let do an off the cuff price/feature comparison. And since as usual Wouter
you won't talk about your own products. I will.

For starters let's talk about two of the high end programmers listed above:
the PS+ ($199 at www.digikey.com) and the Warp-13 ($109 at www.dontronics.com
and I couldn't find a instant US distributor). Both are excellent products,
well made, and integrate very well with MPLAB. However from a novice
prospective they are pretty much high priced hunting licenses as they come
with no chips, no target boards or peripherals, and no significant novice
targeted tutorials or documentation. While eventually they will be of
service, out of the box that have very little value add.

Now Wouter's stuff has much more bang to the buck. From the WISP628 (kit at
$21, assembled for $65) to a 16F877 preloaded with Wloader ($13) along with
$3 in misc interface parts (crystal, MAX232 and caps) one can get rolling
quite quickly. Plus with the latter solution you get a programmer/chip combo.
The only missing parts are the peripherals and the actual target boards. But
it's farther up the ladder than a raw programmer.

Check out Wouter's stuff at http://www.voti.nl/shop/products.html

BTW folks I'm pretty sure that Wouter gets annoyed when I tout his stuff. But
I'm a longtime satified customer. So I feel entitled. ;-)

In searching for Warp-13 prices I ran across a product that's in the ballpark.
Check it out here: http://www.ccsinfo.com/spb.shtml

Now this is in the ballpark of what I envison the designer to be. Onboard
peripherals, a breadboard prototyping area, and a plug and go interface.
It still doesn't hit the mark because it's missing LCD (optional) /7 segment
interfaces and the prototyping breadboard is a bit small. But it's moving
in the right direction. But HOOBOY! look at the price! $145 for the board and
$45 extra for the LCD and keypad! OUCH! And I'm pretty sure you don't even
get the 16F877 to get started with it. ;-)

[ An aside. Sean I'm pulling numbers from my nether region. You of course have
no obligations whatsoever. Just ignore them. It's for the
sake of argument only.]

The PICLIST Designer will be an amalgam of all the above tools:

* Like the programmers it will program PICs.
* Like the Wloaded 16F877 it will contain a preprogrammed bootloader and will
  come with the actual target chip.
* Like the prototyping board it will contain onboard peripherals and
  infrastructure to get started right away.
* Like most of the above it will come fully assembled.

But it has a value add over everything listed:

* Unlike the programmers, it'll come with the target chip, target board, and
  target peripherals.
* Unlike the bootloaded chip, it'll come fully assembled.
* We'll have more onboard peripherals than the prototyping board, plus it'll
  be able to program other chips, unlike the prototyping board.
* Unlike all of the others (except for Wouter) it'll come with a
  project/tutorial CD (we're not publishing anything right?)
* Standard code snippets will quickly follow too.

Now say for the sake of argument you could get into one of these babies for
$100 US? I'd say that represents a unique opportunity for hobbyist and
professionals alike.


>
> I think most PCs are likely to have at least a serial port, so that
> would be my bet. As a fallback make sure that the programmer works with
> an off-the-shelve USB->serial converter. I think it is a little too
> early to go for USB only. Personally I would not put my money on the
> future serial ports prviding suitable voltages for 'direct' HVP
> programming, so supply the HVP volatage externally.

It's kind of a catch 22 at this point. It almost seems the best way to have
full coverage is to offer both USB and serial interfaces and let the end user
choose the appropriate one.

A quick glance at Don's USB chip page shows that getting high speed USB
using the FT232... product will be less than $10 US. A worthy investment to
have onboard I believe.

>
> Now I will switch to more important work, like porting my Wisp628
> programmer PC software to Python...

Are you serious? Cool! Then I'll be able to run it on my Linux boxes.

BAJ

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