Pi in the sky

[AlanBeckett]

I stand by what I said; the RP is an over-hyped SBC which will have negligible impact on Schools.

However, I've been wrong many times. Come the Autumn sales might take off; there'll be reports of thousands if not tens of thousands sold - to put that into context Samsung shipped 93 Million Mobile Phones in the second quarter of this year; the Stock Exchange will rise on the strength of it; IT Teachers will demand more pay; Schools will demand extra budgets to cope; Colleges and Universities will be overwhelmed by demand for Computer Science courses; the Conservatives will call a snap General Election on the strength of the rising euphoria and win an overall majority. The Lib/Dems will sink without trace.

On the other hand it might quietly fade away or be overtaken by alternatives now there's seen to be some sort of market.

I've been using PICs since they started - not my choice, the Company. First with Assembler and a miserable Software Simulator and later with C and an ICE. It's not, and never was, my favourite processor, but they work.

Alan

[pwdrive]

Cor, that's a gloomy prediction!!

Lawrence.

[Mark Hennessy]

Alan, you really are grumpy about this

Already, more than 200,000 have been sold. Production is currently ~4000 units a day. Yes, there was the initial demand, and it remains to be seen how the sales keep going over the next year, but what separates this from all the other SBCs (all of which are aimed at the industrial sectors, unlike the Pi) is the community behind it. Take 10 minutes to investigate this yourself - don't just take my word for it.

PICs very definitely have their place, as do AVRs, which many people prefer - AVRs have the benefit of being a much later design, so some of the idiosyncrasies that PICs have inherited from their original incarnation back in the 1970s aren't present in the AVRs. PIC development was horrible if you used the tools provided by Microchip, but it's easy to create a good text IDE using freeware, as I've detailed on my website. As stated, I really like the assembly language - only ~30 instructions to learn, and it's actually pretty elegant. For the sorts of projects I've used them for, they've been perfect - anything more sophisticated would have been overkill. Of course, in industry, most people use C or worse, but that's because it's expensive to programme properly. Don't start me on Arduinos!

Cheers,

Mark

[pwdrive]

Oh No, does that mean the you know whos are going to get in (I won't mention that anymore)

I would like to know wether this device could do the biz for IQ demod a la SSB ?

Lawrence.

[Mark Hennessy]

A basic explanation of what they are and what you can do with them would be a good start. From the negligible amount I know they seem to expensive and complicated for the sort of things I do but I'm ready to learn otherwise.

You could do worse than start at my site: http://www.mhennessy.f9.co.uk/pic/index.htm

For example of projects that use them, have a look at these:

http://www.mhennessy.f9.co.uk/preamp/index.htm
http://www.mhennessy2.f9.co.uk/a4/index.htm

In terms of when to use them, if you're designing a logic circuit with more than half a dozen chips, then it's worth considering a micro-controller, or perhaps a programmable logic array. For an example of something that falls into this category, have a look here:

http://www.mhennessy1.f9.co.uk/nicam/index.htm

The logic board (bottom left) uses 2 big special ICs and a whole load of CMOS logic. Everything on that board would fit into a single PIC. Not that I was able to use PICs back in 1991 - indeed, back then, PICs didn't come with flash memory, so you needed rather more expensive hardware to use them...

Regarding cost, PICs are pretty cheap. Comfortably less than £5 for a basic chip - more like half that really. Microchip do offer samples, though sample requests tend to vary in their success. I could send you a couple if you like. Next, you'll need to build a programmer to connect to the serial port of your Win98 machine, then you'll need to install some free software.

The final point you make is complexity, and yes, depending on what you'd like to achieve, a PIC might be overkill. You wouldn't use a PIC to make a light flash, although making a light flash might be your first "hello, World" programme. You might use one to make a single-chip tape counter IC:

http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showt...hp?t=73694

The best way to learn anything - well, for me at least - is to have a project. When I did that hi-fi preamp, I knew that I wanted to decode an IR remote, I knew that I wanted to use a display of some sort, and I knew that I'd be controlling relays and a volume control. All of that might have been possible using conventional logic, especially as there used to be a nice Philips IC that decoded the IR. That IC went obsolete just as I was getting my act together, so that forced me down the micro-controller route. Later, as I made final decisions about how I was going to control the volume, I decided on those PGA2310 ICs, but these needed a simple serial control signal - which turned out to be very easy to code on a PIC. That's just one example, but the further I got into the design, the more glad I was that I'd chosen to use a PIC.

Basically, if you're even half-interested, give it a go!

All the best,

Mark

[AlanBeckett]

I'm not grumpy about it Mark, just an old cynic who's seen all sorts of over-hyped technology flower and die.
It might well be a success, and good luck to it, but I remain unconvinced.

Alan

[Mark R]

Just to bring this to life again,
Maplin are offering a Pi bundle for £80, I got a user guide been the other day, any further thoughts?

cheers Mark

[Nick]

Just to bring this to life again,
Maplin are offering a Pi bundle for £80, I got a user guide been the other day, any further thoughts?

Yeh - go the the source, Luke...

The suppliers are actually RS or Farnell - Maplin are just a reseller - have a look at http://piregistration.element14.com/rasp....html?none, click on the "Order Now" button, the "United Kingdom", then "Consumer" (don't worry, it just shows you what's available).

80 smackers sounds like a lot to me - I also hate Maplin (completely irrational, I know, but they offend me!) . I pre-registered with both Farnell & RS last year and got two to play with - not done much with them for a few months as too much else on - if you want a loan of one to play with first, let me know - they are just sitting in the workshop ATM...

Cheers

[Mark R]

Nick, thanks for the kind offer, it may be worth borrowing one just to have a play about and to see what they can/ can not do.
I always fancied trying programming. I started with C++ many years ago but never really had the time or inclination.

cheers Mark

[Yorkie]

I don't know what's in the Mapln 'bundle' but on Amazon a Raspberry Pi 'starter kit' is £59.95 post free and consists of:

• Raspberry Pi 512Mb Model B board
• Clear two piece case
• 4GB SD Card pre-loaded with the Debian Squeeze Linux operating system
• 5V 1A micro USB power supply to power your Raspberry Pi board

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-PI-D4R...=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1358878564&sr=1-5

A bare Raspberry Pi Model B, 512Mb Latest Version,is £30.92 inc free delivery:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-512Mb-..._1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358878509&sr=8-1

I'm not in the market for one - it would only make me feel even more inadequate and befuddled, but thought I'd just mention the above for anyone interested.

(FWIW, I consider Maplin to be a 'supplier of last resort').