On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 11:10:42AM +0100, Alan B. Pearce wrote: > >* The unit will serve both as a demo/design board and as a programmer. So > it's > > not YAPP (Yet Another PIC Programmer). It will come with a fully hooked > up > > array of peripherals (LCD,LEDs,7 segment, buttons/switches, pots, opamps, > IR) > > along with a breadboard prototyping area and I/O connector so that other > > items can be added to the design as needed. > > Could I suggest that some of these items not necessarily have the hardware > supplied, but have the necessary tracking on the PCB. I ma thinking in terms > of really keeping the "foot in the door" cost way down for the student > hobbyist. Perhaps a kit of loose parts to fill all the empty holes could be > supplied as an add-on. That's a very natural thought and would be appropriate under normal circumstances. But I believe that Sean may be able to get a fully populated and assembled product out the door at a price point that will be very attractive. The combination of large scale parts pricing, local to Taiwan, coupled with at cost assembly and shipping will hopefully make it a feasible proposition. [ Sean I'm again throwing out numbers that may have no basis in reality, ] but it's likely that the difference between completely empty and completely populated will be only $15 to $20 USD. The next aspect is psychological. It helps on all sides of the equation if we have a wide standard base target fully populated. That means that one can both be assured that anything written for the Designer (which I believe I named after this particular post) will have all the facilities available and that anything downloaded for the Designer will work with the onboard facilities. Finally whatever we do is going to be an open design. So if someone wants to hand wire a subset, or if someone wants to deliver blank PCBs, then it's no problem. But if we get the price point for the full package so that it's not much more than the cost of the parts, then we should encourage folks to sign up for the full package if possible because fracturing the base will compound the support issue. > > Also have the tracking set up so that some of the peripherals are accessible > from the breadboard area. Do not tie them totally to the chip that is > supplied on the PCB. For minimal effort this makes the peripheral devices > much more useful. Agreed. Has anyone really thought through how to attach the breadboard to the PCB? In an ideal situtation both the onboard I/O pins and the onboard peripherals will be available from the breadboard. > > > >* The unit will have a mechanism for programming other PIC parts. > > I do like this idea as well. > > > >* Both serial and USB interfaces will be available to connect the unit > > to the the host machine. > > I would suggest that it be set up as a serial system, with an FTDI chip to > do the serial to USB conversion. A set of jumpers on a header need to > changed over to select the USB interface. This would seem a much more > sensible solution than attempting to use a USB PIC for both serial and USB. That was my plan all along, treating USB as a serial interface that needed a converter chip rather than trying to find a USB PIC. > > > >* A CD will be delivered with the product that will contain development > > software and a body of tutorial style exercises that illustrates the > theory > > and practice of developing for the PIC and the common associated > periperals > > that are routinely encountered in common microcontroller projects. > > Early "exercises" should run correctly once transferred across to the > destination device, as an assurance that the whole system runs correctly, > and the end user can assemble/link/compile/program the chip correctly. Later > exercises should have deliberate errors built in that they have to find as > part of the exercise (why does the LED not have equal off/on times). That's probably too much detail. Also probably better to put a positive spin on it having exercises where the student effects a change on the system. But all of that is getting ahead of ourselves. Nailing down a hardware design is priority #1. > > > >* The primary development language will be assembly. > > Well I did suggest that PICC-Lite be included on the CD, and this would need > some exercises in that language as well. It may be that those on the list > who have done BASIC and JAL compilers/interpreters any be willing to allow > their software to also go on the distribution. > > Unfortunately many of the exercises may need to be done in multiple > languages. I can envisage people who are already competent in a high level > language on a PC or other environment, wishing to get into microcontrollers > for any of a number of reasons, but not wanting to deal with assembly > language. The availability of high level languages with the starter kit may > well make it considerably more attractive for them, even if they cannot fill > the whole ROM because it is a cut down version. Suitable pointers would be > on the CD to take them to the suppliers site to purchase full versions if > they wish. I think that's why assembly was chosen as a base target. It's simply too much to try to cover everything. BAJ -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.