Propeller comparison - Help

[twesthoff]

Hi -
From time to time, I have people ask me what small micro they should use for a project. I love the Zbasic devices and almost always suggest using them. However many people have preconceived notions that are hard to overcome. I know little about the Propeller chip and it's programming, but I am currently trying to convince a guy at work to use a Zbasic native mode device.

This is what I hear:
1. But the propeller has 8 cores. (I say you can have 8 or more tasks with Zbasic.)

2. Propeller has to be faster because it has 8 cores. (I don't know if there is a speed comparison, but the newer devices are 29+ MHz so it should be fast. But by how much?)

3. I need to program in C with objects. (I think this can be done with the native mode devices.)

4. I already found code on the Internet for a Propeller I can modify... (hard to counter that one)

5. The propeller boards and chips are cheaper. (Maybe.)

6. Has anyone made a library of functions that would make porting code from the Propeller easier?

It goes on from there. Since I don't know much about the Propeller would anyone care to educate me so I can try to persuade my friend at work to give Zbasic devices a try?

Thanks,
Tom

[liam.zbasic]

For me, two main reasons why I stay away from Propellers:

1) Lack of Analog-to-Digital converters - this is huge for my robotics projects and the ability to interface with sensors.

2) Propeller "Spin" language. My brain only has so much RAM - I don't need to learn a new language that only applies to 1 chip. Visual Basic and C are ubiquitous; I use them at work, at home, and this is reinforcing. Also, help is more widespread by orders of magnitude.

The Propeller price is appealing, but if I add the cost of external ADC chips and other peripherals, and the time needed to deal with "Spin", the economics become repugnant.

[cerickson]

I have a number of propeller chips, dev boards and stuff. I also have a couple of the Spinneret web server modules. Honestly I have been appalled by the lack of software support from Parallax. The Spinneret module came out and it had virtually no software on it or with it at all. It should have at least came out with a simple, canned web server loaded, or at least one quick download away. I finally found one created by a user who was a Spinneret contest winner. It required a bunch of separate file downloads and a mess of reading to figure out how to get it all properly assembled and loaded on the Spinneret. For me, one handy way to learn a new chip is to take a well-written, existing app and tweak on it while watching its behavior change. IMHO, Parallax hasn't done a very good job of that on the Propeller chips.

They are indeed fast and have lots of promise and potential. But without really serious Parallax software support, I am not sure it is headed anywhere.

At one time Parallax was a great company with fun projects but lately it seems that they have lost their way a bit. I hope they find it again before the unwashed Arduino hoards trample them into dust.

[FFMan]

I use ZX chips and my mate is a die-hard propellor fan. We are always bantering about who has the best platform. There are pros and cons, for me his biggest issue is lack of floating point math and no persistant memory.

Plus also he doesn't appear to have I2c routines built in so has coded them all himself - which is fine once working.

Spin seems ok but it seems structures are terminated by indents in the code and this seems to be hard to follow sometimes.

But i would say that....

[stevech]

Propeller chips are one guy's good intentions, good idea. But it can't get the adoption rate needed to be more than a very good curiosity thing to fiddle with as a hobby. Maybe a professor could use it to show multi-core CPU concepts, but that's a stretch. Great idea, very much a nice'

re the comment on Arduino, above: I think Arduino is a great thing. Not for its technology, but that it's enlarged the exposure of microprocessors to more people. Kind of like a new era, non-profit Heathkit I suppose.

[liam.zbasic]

How do you suppose Arduino caught on so big? My take... LOW COST, feature rich (ADC, PWM, C-language, floating point, etc.), and open-source. The disheartening part is that it didn't happen here in California, but in Italy.

[dlh]

I think it's the modularity.

[twesthoff]

It probably is the weird non-standard names for things. They catch peoples attention and appeal to non-technical type people. What technical person would call an I/O board a shield?

[stevech]

Arduino must be giving Microchip's marketing guys fits!