On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 11:37:27AM -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote: > > Olin, that's so on the mark. But I'm sure if I remember if you offered > your > > opinion on the prototyping board issue. Do you think that hobbyist can > benefit > > from having more project infrastructure support? > > Yes. The question is what will that infrastructure be and how will it be > supported? And, in the end, will hobbyists be willing to pay for it? I think there are two categories of hobbyist, both of which we have identified: * The ones that you've referred to, who will spend as little as possible. Frankly I believe this is a null market, for even if you had a complete programmer for say $20+shipping, that would be too much to invest. * The ones who will invest if the benefits can be explained. This is the same market that starts with Basic Stamps and OOPICs. > > > Especially if that support > > can be purchased in that $100 ballpark for the Developer's PS+ or the > Warp-13? > > I'm not so sure about this, which is one reason I've been staying out of the > PBK definition discussion. > > It's hard for me to imagine myself in the hobbyist's place. For a > professional situation, I'd spend $100 very easily if I thought a "Designer" > type product would be useful. Heck, that's less than 1 hour billable time. > However, I don't imagine buying one because I don't see what it does for me. > It seems to be aimed at problems I don't have. > > There has been a lot of talk about alleviating the drudgery of hooking up > all the basic circuitry around the PIC. What circuitry!? I have many times > plugged a PIC into a protoboard to test something. The "basic circuitry" is > one crystal, 3 caps, and a connection to a +5V bench supply. Come on Olin, there has to be some other devices in the mix. So the vast majority of your projects have no external interfaces, not even temporary ones? > This is the > part I don't understand about the PICbase. What else would it contain? I'm with you on that. That's why I've been arguing to offer more. > After that, every circuit is different. A few buttons or LEDs are > occasionally (not that often, really) useful. Other than just to learn > about PICs and blink an LED and the like, very little on the Designer board > will be useful for any one project. Practically by definition, you are > trying to do something NEW. Actually this topic of conversation is new. And is worthy of discussion. It's the issue of design style. While I do agree with you that each project is different, they almost all of the time have the elements of: * Detecting the state of the world * Performing some computation to create a transformation of the state * Actuating some change on the state of the world. Much of the time there is human interaction on one end or the other. > > Here's an example. See the attached photograph. This is something personal > I have been screwing around with. I was trying to get 6V accross that motor > (with the propeller on it) by using just one 2.5 to 4V NiMH battery pack. > The chip on the left is a 16LF628 that was handy for testing out some ideas > I had for controlling the boost converter. The time I spent plugging in the > crystal and caps was nothing compared to thinking about the circuit, writing > the PIC code to drive it, testing, making changes, more tweaking, measuring, > etc. Note that there are no LEDs, buttons, or any other "standard" > peripheral that would likely be included on a Designer product. (By the > way, this circuit works. It keeps a constant 6V accross the motor until the > battery is really drained. Right now the efficiency is 74%, which I'm not > happy with yet, but I've got a bunch of ideas to try out when there is > time). Interesting project. While it has no human interactive features, it clearly has to measure the voltage across the motor, compute the correct duty cycle, then drive the boost converter at that duty cycle. So what do you use to measure and test your device? While I'm sure that you wouldn't normally take the time to wire an A/D to the test point and then display the output voltage on an LCD or LED, wouldn't it be good for testing if you could? I see that it's a difference in development styles. I'd have a couple of visual indicators coming off the project showing what's going on simply because I never trust my assumptions about how my code is performing. And while those indicators wouldn't end up on the final board, I'd find them helpful during development. > > Anyway, I don't want to rain on your parade. I only responded because you > specifically asked me, and I'm not your target market. However, in my > opinion, there are two basic mistakes being made with the Designer: > > 1 - Most hobbyists aren't going to spring for the cost. Even if it might > save them some time and trouble, they will look at the price and figure they > can do what they really need themselves. There may be an educational > market. You may be right. If that's the case then we're already done. > > 2 - Byron, you have said that the Designer should not impose anyone's > development style onto the user. However, that's exactly what you are > doing. You personally seem to place a very high value on not having to plug > the chip into a programmer, then back into the target. I think you're a bit > off the deep end on this one. You pretty much ARE cramming a bootloader and > in-circuit programming down the user's throat. That's YOU'RE style. It only seems that way because I always respond to the traditional programmer suggestion. The best list of counterarguments I've seen actually was your list. I really think we need a system that's flexible enought that it incorporates each of the styles. However I feel like if I don't speak up for the other non traditional methods, all we'll end up with is another glorified traditional programmer, which frankly we don't need. > > Again, you asked. I'll shut up now unless someone asks my opinion again. Thanks for the input. It's helpful as usual. BAJ -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body