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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : PIC32MZ and the Maximite
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MicroBlocks Guru  Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
Waiting indefinitely for 'new things' is certainly not a good thing. But timing things right is an art, which is difficult if not impossible to master. With some commitments maybe a run of 50 or 100 can be made for a reasonable price. I have stock of caps,crystals,resistors,headers,etc. Also have a bunch of 470,695 and 795. When looking at pick&place and reflow being done it really starts to get viable around 150-200 pieces. The smaller the board the more of them you need, as normally prices are best when using panels. When having to hand assemble then it will be way to time consuming.And the cost per piece will rise also. Doing 4-5 is a hobby doing 50-100 is a business. The 4-5 you don't need to make profit, just cover the cost and maybe some 'beer money'. For 50-100 you do need profit as risks increase especially when sold one by one. Things get lost, break down, are blown up by the user and you get the blame, credit card fraud, etc... You need 20% markup to cover only that. I do embedded projects and i sold similar boards as the ones in the picture. Not the above board but a very similar one i had made for an automotive solution. My costs was 24US$ that includes assembly.Then a case, connectors,cables and of course specific software. The final product was 75US$. But that also includes 6 man months development. 500 where made, 450 for the customer, 50 as a backup. Final profit.. Not too bad but nothing excessive. Enough to pay the bills and keep things rolling until the next project. I think MMBasic is a perfect match for the hobbyist. Making small runs of 10-20 pieces for specific solutions is the best way i think. The costs will be irrelevant as people get what they want.And everybody is smart enough to know what things are worth, adding up the few parts will quickly give a ballpark figure. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| hitsware Guru Joined: 23/11/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 535 |
> VT100 driving basic video and dealing with the keyboard and USB That would be the VT100 reprogrammed so to do composite ? |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2437 |
Bill of Materials – 32MX470 single-chip computer with VGA output 2015-02-17_140022_470_BOM.pdf $12.32 - single unit $10.35 - each for lot of 100 this pricing currently excludes: cost of PCB cost of populating SMD components misc resistors and filter caps the prices shown are fairly representative i believe. the two 'big' items being sourced from china are the SD card module and switchmode PSU assembly. cost of sockets is also kept down by using china as a source. it is quite possible i have left out some relevant components - i have just been working from memory and the occasional glance at the colour maximite schematic. also the 10uF capacitor may not be the best choice, and one may be able to improve on the cost of the RTC chip. technical question: how confident are those in the know that a 32MX470 is a usable drop-in-replacement for the 695? practical question: if i were to make this fly, would there be a firmware on the horizon to run on the hardware? an answer by pm or email would be fine. cheers, rob :-) |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10248 |
Only Geoff can answer this properly but I suspect it is not a replacement. Only 2 SPI channels rather than 4 and only 4 DMA channels rather than 8 |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2437 |
with only 2 SPI channels that limits the display to a maximum of 4 colours (including black), yes? unless one could double the pixel clock and latch pairs of bits - which would then give you 4 bits per pixel to play with (3 colours + a single intensity). i wonder if this has been considered? is only 4 DMA channels a problem for MMbasic? 8 does seem quite excessive! cheers, rob :-) |
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kiiid Guru Joined: 11/05/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 671 |
This was supposed to be a 'secret' but since it is in the air already... I am at the final stage of finishing something. Hardware is ready and the software is close. Not a single chip under $20, but not far off. Unfortunately for many people here, it won't be MM-based (number of reasons...), but it will be nice and cute. Will post an update soon. http://rittle.org -------------- |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
The 470 is not 'mature' yet. SD card and USB will be probably added as has been talked about in another topic. Until then a pcb is impossible to make. In the code it will be decided which pins will be used. So looking at a datasheet will not help. Why hamper a 470 with generating video. Video destroys usability on a lot of levels. You loose i2c,serial,spi not to memntion available memory and performance. A mono Maximite was still ok, the Color was already hampered by not having its internal peripherals available. But the CMM was not really meant as an embedded controller. Is the goal for the 470 to be a replacement of the CMM? I don't see the point at all. Save 3US$? A little bit more speed? Did the uMite not show that it is a much more popular choice and adding an lcd is after all the wonderful work that has been done now trivial. (All the above from the viewpoint of using it in embedded systems not as a general purpose computer, i already have a pc for that task) pcb and assembly will add about 5us$. Don't forget shipping and taxes,import duties. They add 10-15% easily. So around 17-18us$ if someone wants to go through all that foraround 2US$ then when selling a 100 the total profit before taxes will be 200US$.For that a lot of risk has to be taken. I am not sure someone is willing to do that. I certainly would not. Kiiid, curious what you came up with! I will await your post. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9593 |
Hi all.  Not sure it is worth the effort of trying to force the 470 to do video. That was why I suggested using a VT100 circuit to handle the video side of things. The 470 has nice speed and memory, but by the time you assign some(most!) of those resources to generating even 4-colour video, I bet most of it's memory would be gobbled up as video RAM, perhaps leaving you with less RAM then the original MM. 
I may well be wrong, but the video RAM has to come from somewhere.... With matherp's fantastic work on LCD drivers for the MM, perhaps what we need to do, is design a parallel or SPI module to generate VGA video from THAT, then if you NEED VGA for a big screen, it could be added optionally, taking the burden totally away from the 470's need to do it. @ hitsware - VGA only for the editor - does not work in composite mode, and I don't think it would be easy to make it co-operate as the MicroMite itself is the part that is outputting the VT100 codes when you invoke the editor - the VT100 circuit and chip is just interpreting those commands. Changing the VT100 so that it would ignore VT100 codes in composite mode still would not make the editor side of things work, me thinks, as the screen layout would still be all wrong without the codes - please prove me wrong. I'm inclined to agree with TZA's post above on several points at this stage. @ Rob - Perhaps PM me, and we could discuss this away from the public forums, but only for mock-up purposes at this stage. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2437 |
1. the 470 is a shipping chunk of silicon that (as far as i am aware) is being used in manufactured products. this would seem to be quite 'mature' to me, as long as there are not unknown silicon bugs out there. 2. i have been taking my lead from the title of this thread, "Topic: PIC32MZ and the Maximite". a maximite, by definition has video output. no maximite has ever existed that did not have video output. a device that lacks video output is a micromite. i have just been following geoff's lead in my train of thought, his desire to create a successor to the 695-based maximite that has mentioned variously over the last year. i had assumed that everyone else was on the same page, but it seems i may have been a tad mistaken. 3. shipping, taxes, and duties only apply in the country of destination, where the final consumer of the built product resides. the consumer is always responsible for all taxes and duties, as well as covering shipping costs. cheers, rob :-) |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9593 |
Re. Point #2 - you have a point.
Maybe it is as simple as there never being a Maximite MK.2 now that the MZ concept has fallen over? Modular Maximite-ish clone-thing perhaps? Use a MicroMite 470 as the CPU, and add whatever modules you want for video/sound/network etc. I still like the two-chip idea - use a 470 as the CPU, and perhaps one of those Propeller chips for VGA, as they seem to be able to do very nice full-colour VGA... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| hitsware Guru Joined: 23/11/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 535 |
" The problem with the Micromite's EDIT command and the VT100 terminal is that the Micromite expected all displays to be 80 characters wide - which is not the case with the VT100 terminal in composite mode. When the editor tried sending lines longer than the display width the result was a messed up display. To fix this I have created an interim version of the Micromite MkII firmware (ver 4.6A) and it is attached. 2015-01-11_050958_Micromite_V4.6a.zip It has only two minor changes since the "official" 4.6 release so I am not planning full release (just release it on the Back Shed). The changes are: - Removed OPTION LINES and replaced it with OPTION DISPLAY. This new command allows you to specify both the display height in lines and the width in characters. The syntax is OPTION DISPLAY lines [, chars] (the width is optional). - Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a comparison between two integers to return an invalid result when the value of either integer was greater than 30 bits. While I was testing the OPTION DISPLAY command I discovered an error in the specifications for the composite video output of the VT100 terminal - the horizontal resolution was wrong. The correct specs are: - Composite PAL : 288 x 218 pixels or 48 chars x 18 lines - Composite NTSC: 264 x 180 pixels or 44 chars x 15 lines So, if you are using the above firmware with the VT100 Terminal in composite mode, you should use OPTION DISPLAY 18, 48 for PAL or OPTION DISPLAY 15, 44 for NTSC. Geoff " Am I mixing apples with pomegranites ? |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9593 |
I stand corrected. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| kiiid Guru Joined: 11/05/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 671 |
470 is a dead end for the maximite, or at least it was before. Check out this post from 2013 where I tried (unsuccessfully) to suggest its use. Of course the little fact of not enough SPI ports is a major factor if the video is generated this way, but there are other ways too for that. http://rittle.org -------------- |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
The 470 is a great chip, skip the video requirement and the chip will be enough for most projects. A pity it does not have CAN though. In that case 795 to the rescue. When i said 'the 470 is not mature yet' i meant to say MMBasic for the 470 is not mature yet. Sorry if that was not clear. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2437 |
has anyone made serious use of CAN on the maximite to date, beyond verifying that it works? cheers, rob :-) |
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| Bizzie Senior Member  Joined: 06/07/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 192 |
Two CAN projects are on my To-Do list! Rob White |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4038 |
CAN was certainly being used with DMBasic and I suspect is with MMBasic if it's supported in MMBasic on DuinoMite boards. John |
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CircuitGizmos Guru Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1427 |
I've sold a bunch of the CAN interface chips with the CGCOLORMAX2. See below for the CAN interface board area. 
Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2437 |
yes, but has anyone out there actually made use of the maximite's CAN to control or talk to a device? for instance talking to a car EMU, interfacing to trimble machine control sensors, communicating through a harsh environment between two maximites, etc. and not just an 'i plan to', a real 'i have written code that' :-) i'm afraid that being on to-do list doesn't really count... i have many things on my own personal to-do list that will quite certainly never make it into the light of day. rob :-) |
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| CircuitGizmos Guru Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1427 |
Right here on The Back Shed Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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