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Post by bender on Apr 14, 2007 19:01:28 GMT 10
ohh i just got the Your order has been shipped! email. wow that took a long time but who cares its free here comes my free random parts
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Post by Robotman on May 9, 2007 13:39:37 GMT 10
I got mine this morning! Wow, there's a whole neat package of stuff in the box. It must cost them a fortune to send it all out for free. Can't wait to get home and see if the catch is like Dingo said about the software not being free - maybe it's only demo version software. But they included a programmer adaptor, usb cable, CD, circuit boards, some resistors, 2 chips, and a Duracell 9V battery too! Thank you Cypress. I just hope the chippies are half decent!!! But that's what this evaluation package is for I think I'll try this free samples stuff a bit more. Who's next? Microchip, Atmel, National, Texas. And then there's Cypress again (for their CapSense jobbies). I may never need to fork out for parts ever again... I feel so happy. Cheers for now!
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Post by bender on May 9, 2007 22:51:53 GMT 10
mine turned up today. they must of been on the same boat or something its fun to play with and the software seems free. the express software is like lego mindstorms where you get nice pictures of buttons and whatnot. its only flashing leds and that kind of stuff atm i havent even looked at the i2c part yet.
so are there any ideas what we should make with these ?
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Post by Robotman on May 11, 2007 14:11:24 GMT 10
I've got twiddly squat ideas on what to do with my "free random parts", bender. I'm sure to think of something soon, I hope... I figured out the catch with all this free stuff is that the PSoC Express software that comes with the eval kit which is used to build "code" for the uC is graphical only - does this mean what can be done is going to be very limited? There's no assembler or compiler at all - these come with PSoC Designer, which is where we pay the moolah. As Bones would say: "Bastards! They're all bastards!!!" I plan to do some tinkering this weekend - with "plan" being the operative word here. I still haven't got around to flashing my PICkit2 programmer yet, nor building a basic circuit to try out ICSP (the El-Cheapo wasn't in-circuit serial programming: it was standalone and used a 13V MCLR voltage). Just need more Time. And why can't Cypress give away their dev tools? I reckon I should email them and state the blasted obvious: "Free tools = more chippies sold and used in products". Why should I have to pay for tools when I've just bought their damn chips? Sucks big time (Not of course that I've actually bought any chips from them yet, but ya all get my point, yeh?) ----- I like the processor in the Cypress CY8C chips (using the M8C core). It's got a "look alike" 6800 instruction set with, I think, some 6502 ideas thrown in, and some bits from ARM7 (i.e. multiply and accumulate). The core clocks at 24 MHz only (the digital blocks can go at up to 48 MHz), the datasheet says this gives 4 MIPS which is pathetic compared to your basic ATmega8 AVR with up to 8 MIPS at 8 MHz - but this don't matter if the ana and digi blocks are offloading some work from the core... Maybe these chips have some merit yet and can justify themselves to allow me to purchase PSoC Designer. Time and experimentation will tell. Should I decide to do this then everyone who received "free random parts" can email me... ----- Ah, to those days when I was young and before marriage, with children, when I could stay up all night smokin' and drinkin' and programmin' - and then still get myself to work that next morning...
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Post by Bones on May 11, 2007 16:27:35 GMT 10
Bastards! They're all bastards!!!
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Post by Bones on May 11, 2007 16:29:11 GMT 10
Salvage the connector and make wall art out what is left.
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Post by Robotman on May 14, 2007 13:40:52 GMT 10
I did some LED flashing, just like Bender did. I was pleased with how simple it all seems except I will have to read through the App Notes to figure out how to do the I2C demo stuff because the tutorial that is for the actual EXP EVAL1 is el-crappo big time. The first video tutorial (flashing LEDS and reading BUTTONS and a POT) is really good. Thankfully it works with the EXP EVAL1 gear. Anyhow, it's all free and so I can forgive them - a little. If I can get the I2C stuff working I will be happy. However, I will be even more happier if I can figure out how to make the DB-9 (which is on the main EVAL1 board) talk to HyperTerminal. Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be any UART device ("Interface" in PSoC Express terms) available. It could definitely be done in PSoC Designer, but I haven't tried running that yet. And me thinks that's gonna need an activation key before it will compile and build anything. Blarrrrr... There is the ubiquitous 44780 LCD interface on the main EVAL1 board and this is soon going to have my spare LCD module connected to it - then I have to figure out how to send text to it from within PSoC Express. Oh, I'm getting excited here! ----------- On other (sub) topics: I flashed my PICkit2 and it wailed in horror at the sight... Erm, that should be: it worked perfectly fine, but I still wouldn't know if it can actually program parts because I haven't built a test circuit yet. Goodness, I was lucky to squeeze in time for the PSoC stuff, let alone build anything... Maybe that will be this coming weekend! I ordered some PIC18F samples from Microchip (thank you) and so they will be here soon, hopefully. I'm looking forward to using them in a new project I've got cooking up. Ciao Botman
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Post by Robotman on May 14, 2007 13:44:42 GMT 10
Sorry there Bones, I forgot to let you know my thoughts about the wall art. I think you should take a pic of yours that's up on the wall and post it here for all of us to see. I'm guessing that your free random parts just didn't do it for you?
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Post by Bones on May 15, 2007 14:56:10 GMT 10
lol. I haven't artisized mine yet. I'll have a play with the board when I get back.
bones
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Post by Robotman on Oct 5, 2007 16:32:34 GMT 10
Hi everybody Been a bit quiet around here lately... I've given myself a project for the PSoC CY8C29x66 (the chip that came with the free EVAL kit), but I want to make it into a commercial product so I can't give you details yet - I trust you guys, but I don't trust all the other spies out there in www land. I bit the bullet and purchased the ImageCraft C compiler licence for PSoC Designer. I really couldn't justify doing the whole job in assembler. There's a forum www.psocdeveloper.com/forums/ for PSoC development. There's plenty of good info there, and a lot of "help me, I'm too stupid to read the manual" stuff as well. It's a steep learning curve for the PSoC, but I reckon this chip's got everything needed for analog audio frequency I/O and low MHz digital I/O, as well as a built-in switchmode pump for running off 2 AA batteries, so that I hardly need any external parts. People seem to moan about the low CPU speed, but looking at what the analog and digital blocks can do, the CPU only just has to do first time configuration and respond to the occasional interrupt - the hardware does the rest. So I think that the CPU is fast enough. Cheers Rod P.S. Another forum (but not supporting the PSoC) is www.embeddedrelated.com/P.P.S. Where is Dingo? Why is the "New AAR" broken? And why has it been broken for so long? What has happened - does anybody know?
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Post by bender on Oct 9, 2007 22:00:10 GMT 10
I have no idea whats happened to this place I check in about once a week or so just don't seem like much is going on. My eval kit is under a big pile of junk atm I should really do something with it.
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