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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Raspberry Pi enters microcontrer game with a $4 Pico
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RetroJoe Senior Member  Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
You might recall that small boxy cars were very trendy at the start of the new millennium. They were officially called "mid-sized cross-over SUVs", but most people just called them "ugly" :) Off the top of my head, the Honda Element, the Toyota Scion, the Nissan Cube, and "The Ugliest Car Ever Designed", the Pontiac Aztek, all launched in that timeframe. Wouldn't you have loved to be embedded in the design approval process at GM, and witnessed that awful Aztek concept get rubber-stamped at each milestone because no one had the guts to speak up and admit how bad it was? By the way, the market demographic all those boxy cars were going after was "active lifestyle first-time buyers", to establish brand loyalty in under-25 car buyers. The "box" design and hose-down floors were supposed to facilitate hauling sporting equipment, and to evoke the 1960s surfer station wagon and free-wheeling ethos. The only thing the marketeers failed to notice was most of those kids with "active lifestyles" were too busy being "active" and "free" to earn money to buy a new car! Edited 2021-01-27 00:01 by RetroJoe Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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| zeitfest Guru  Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 396 |
I'm wondering how many more times Hackaday is going to feature the Pico... Brit marketing again ?? getting to be overkill I think. Hackaday is losing its edge lately. |
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| RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
Until we all acknowledge the moral and technological superiority of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It's another variant of "tech wokeism". Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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lew247 Guru Joined: 23/12/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1676 |
Peter have you seen this module? schematics The main hardware features of this board are: STM32F767VIT microcontroller 216 MHz Cortex M7 CPU with double-precision hardware floating point 2048KiB internal flash ROM and 512KiB internal RAM 2MiB external QSPI flash with execute capabilities to extend internal flash Additional 2MiB external QSPI flash for user filesystem and storage Integrated, high-performance WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1 (classic and BLE) via Murata 1DX module (with CYW4343) TCP/IP and Bluetooth stacks run on the main microcontroller, fully customisable On-board fractal chip antenna for WiFi and Bluetooth uFL connector for attaching external antenna, selectable via RF switch Micro USB connector for power and serial communication Micro SD card slot, supporting standard and high capacity SD cards Real time clock with highly accurate pre-calibrated external oscillator Physical electrical connectivity via 24 through holes, and a 40+40 pin mezzanine bus connector 46 independent GPIO, with 24 available via through holes Additional 11 GPIO shared with SD card, USB, USR button, BT audio 2x I2Cs, 4x UARTs, 3x SPIs, 1x CAN interfaces 3x 12-bit analog to digital converters (ADC), available on 16 independent pins 2x 12-bit digital to analog converters (DAC), available on 2 independent pins 1x 3-colour RGB LED 1 reset and 1 user button On-board 3.3V LDO voltage regulator to supply main microcontroller Additional, user switchable, on-board 3.3V LDO voltage regulator to power SD card and external components 2 mounting points Custom DFU bootloader for easy upgrading of firmware This device has FCC, CE, IC and RCM modular certification. FCC ID: 2AT9I-PYBD, IC number: 25382-PYBD. https://store.micropython.org/product/PYBD-SF6-W4F2 Edited 2021-02-11 04:08 by lew247 |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
It is just a standard STM32 processor with a 3rd party wifi/Bluetooth module being sold for an inflated price - not interesting at all |
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Nimue Guru Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 367 |
Made me lol. Raspberry Pi Foundation and Tesla >> what a mashup that would be. N Entropy is not what it used to be |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
The following is an experiment in subliminal messaging: End of experiment. |
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Cyber Senior Member Joined: 13/01/2019 Location: UkrainePosts: 161 |
As I see it, it is just an evolvement of this one: https://store.micropython.org/product/PYBv1.1 I don't mean anything bad, it's a good evolvement. It's probably a good product for its use cases. Especially good for folks who like MicroPython. But it is what it is. |
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| lew247 Guru Joined: 23/12/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1676 |
I was looking and drooling over that last year but I can't see anyone spending the time to port MM to that, even though it would be awesome It could do with more pins though, it's only got 64 Edited 2021-02-11 18:43 by lew247 |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
No it wouldn't be, and this point also relates to the Pi chip: MMBasic is inherently single threaded and only needs and supports one processor to run. To convert MMBasic to a multithreaded version would be a complete re-write of the core language - i.e. not MMBasic. The only real scope for a multicore capability is to use a second core to handle IP networking. This is basically what the Picromite does using Linux system calls to implement things like sockets. The best option for this remains the ESP32 but it is comparatively short of memory once wifi networking is running and completely blown out if you run things like the clever RGB222 VGA. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
That's not the idea. MMBasic would continue to be single threaded and would reside in the "hub" The other processors would be soft peripherals or separately running functions. There is nothing multi-threaded about the Prop unless you write your code in such a way. "I need more:" -ADC -DAC -High speed counters -VGA -SPI -UART -PWM Well, if 64 pins will suffice, you can have whatever you want. "I'm having problems with interrupts" So get rid of them and let one of the other processors handle the task. "I need more speed but c functions are a bit daunting" Anyone who can write MMBasic can handle FlexBasic which compiles to Propeller assembly. Again, stick the task in another processor. MMBasic simply needs to grab the results which magically appear in shared memory. The Prop is not a me-too MCU, it's a different approach altogether. |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
MMBasic is blocking on nearly all I/O. I restate: it is a major rewrite to use multiple cores in any useful way. Otherwise I give something to a spoke and then wait for it to return - no gain |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Not much waiting when each processor is doing 120MIPS+ and who says you have to wait...the result will be there for when it's needed. No different to checking for data in a UART RX buffer. SPIN is the official Parallax language but the community has come up with Forth which Parallax have incorporated in the ROM, there is C, BASIC, uPython is almost done and Mike Green is now porting his "FemtoBASIC" interpreter. None of these are multi-threaded. |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
I'm not criticising the propeller, merely saying that it isn't necessarily a good fit for MMBasic and that a simple port would give little or no advantage over any of the other MMbasic versions. In any case the discussion is moot since I'm not going to look at it and no-one else has every ported MMBasic (except kiid) Edited 2021-02-11 21:47 by matherp |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Makes no difference to me because I have no problem with using the micromite PIC as a front end to my Props. I only mentioned it because there is a constant rumble of "if only this device had what the other device has". I have to disagree with the "no advantage" bit though. Robotics is a big area of interest in the MCU world and when we start talking real robots, we aren't talking about a bunch of open-loop stepper motors. So I have an upcoming project that is a 6-axis anthropomorphic robot, running on a linear slide (7th axis). I need to read 7 quadrature encoders and run 7 PID motion loops, each @ 250 usecs. Not to mention forward/inverse kinematics. So, hypothetically speaking, MMbasic on a Prop as the front end coordinator, could handle this without breaking a sweat. AFAIK, the CMM2 can't handle even a single quadrature encoder, right? In fact, in the MCU world, I have found only a dsp-PIC with a QEI (quadrature encoder interface) and it can only handle 2 encoders. Parallax has unwittingly created what is potentially the most powerful motion control chip in existence and it's a general purpose MCU. Motion control and robotics is a huge and growing industry. This is what my grand kids will be learning...not retro gaming. |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
The STM32H743IIT6 used in the CMM2 supports up to 6 H/W encoder inputs (2 pins per input). You could add up to another 16 using H/W interrupts. MMBasic does not use this capability. Edited 2021-02-11 22:59 by matherp |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
And the spec? In my case: 6,000 RPM motor with 4,096 line encoder IOW, 100 revs/sec and 16,384 quadrature counts/rev = 1.6M quad counts/sec If I used only 60 pins of the P2, I could handle 30 encoders up to sysclk (can be 300MHz+) Interrupts? This is not even using a processor. Ridiculous numbers in the real world...even my 1.6M is considered high because most standard encoders are rated at 500kHz. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I actually like the fact that the Prop isn't main stream; I often read posts on engineering forums where people are struggling with cellar-step-thick manuals, to make something work. I just shake my head...give me a Propeller and a couple of hours and it will be done and dusted...they don't wanna hear it  |
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MustardMan Senior Member Joined: 30/08/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 175 |
I've been interested in the Propeller for some while, but have so far always been able to solve a problem by writing sometimes rather convoluted code on a single core machine. While looking for potential solutions to design problems I've occasionally run searches for 'parallax propeller' in the past, but none have ever returned anything useful. Most of the hits are presentations, or marketing crap on the 'great new chip' (now quite old really), and sometimes a pretty weak example. But nothing that really shines for running a couple/few cores, doing something that would be really hard to do with a single core (even with interrupts). As a result I've simply moved on and used more megahertz to solve otherwise difficult problems. Got any pointers to good examples? Cheers, PS: And I do find that even a fast implementation of MMBASIC could do with 'subprocessing' to deal with menial tasks. A weak example might be, here processor number two, I have this big array I want this calculation run over. I have to look after real-time task X, which can't wait while I fiddle around with some stupid array. Just tell me when it's done and I'll get to it in good time! PS2: I even had an example today, oversampling an ADC to extend resolution. Running the ADC and calculating the result would have been a great use case for a second core, instead it was done with interrupts (stealing precious time from other tasks). The original system designer had... guess what... solved it with a faster processor! |
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| lew247 Guru Joined: 23/12/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1676 |
One thing I just noticed after doing some research is it has libraries for HDMI and vga output, both video and images and esp32 which seems to make it better than the Pi as it not only has better video capability but more free pins as well. I just wish it was easy to learn to program |
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