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Hands On Tech
A place for people who actually build/modify technical based stuff. Electronics (analog, digital), Computer Hardware/Software/Firmware, Microcontrollers, Audio Electronics, Solar Power, Water Treatment.
Electronics, Computers, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering etc.
Real Stuff!
Recent Messages
The Parallax Propeller Microcontroller
Very neat chip and very powerful....I hope to get my hands on one of these soon.
view link
Parallax Propeller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Parallax P8X32 Propeller, introduced in 2006, is a multi-core architecture parallel microcontroller with eight 32-bit RISC CPU cores.
The Parallax propeller, its built in SPIN programming language and bytecode interpreter, and the "Propeller Tool" integrated development environment were all designed by one person, Parallax's co-founder and president Chip Gracey.
Multi-core architecture
Each of the eight 32-bit cores (called a cog) has an elementary ALU (division is not directly supported) and access to 512 32-bit long words (2 KB) of instructions and data. Self-modifying code is possible and is used internally, for example by an instruction that is used to create a subroutine call/return mechanism without the need for a stack. Access to memory (32 KB RAM; 32 KB ROM) is controlled in round-robin fashion by an internal bus controller called the hub. Each cog also has access to two dedicated hardware counters and two special "video registers" for use in generating PAL, NTSC, VGA, servo-control, or other timing signals.
view link
Parallax Propeller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Parallax P8X32 Propeller, introduced in 2006, is a multi-core architecture parallel microcontroller with eight 32-bit RISC CPU cores.
The Parallax propeller, its built in SPIN programming language and bytecode interpreter, and the "Propeller Tool" integrated development environment were all designed by one person, Parallax's co-founder and president Chip Gracey.
Multi-core architecture
Each of the eight 32-bit cores (called a cog) has an elementary ALU (division is not directly supported) and access to 512 32-bit long words (2 KB) of instructions and data. Self-modifying code is possible and is used internally, for example by an instruction that is used to create a subroutine call/return mechanism without the need for a stack. Access to memory (32 KB RAM; 32 KB ROM) is controlled in round-robin fashion by an internal bus controller called the hub. Each cog also has access to two dedicated hardware counters and two special "video registers" for use in generating PAL, NTSC, VGA, servo-control, or other timing signals.
FreeRTOS
FreeRTOS...Linux ported to small microcontrollers and cpu's!
This is neat....for example you can run Linux on Microchip 8, 16 and 32 bit microcontrollers!
See here: view link
Hardware ports: view linkmain.html#ports
From the website:
" FreeRTOS.orgTM is a portable, open source, mini Real Time Kernel - a free to download and royalty free RTOS that can be used in commercial applications.
Ports exist for many different processor architectures and development tools. Each official port includes a pre-configured example application demonstrating the kernel features, expediting learning, and permitting 'out of the box' development."
This is neat....for example you can run Linux on Microchip 8, 16 and 32 bit microcontrollers!
See here: view link
Hardware ports: view linkmain.html#ports
From the website:
" FreeRTOS.orgTM is a portable, open source, mini Real Time Kernel - a free to download and royalty free RTOS that can be used in commercial applications.
Ports exist for many different processor architectures and development tools. Each official port includes a pre-configured example application demonstrating the kernel features, expediting learning, and permitting 'out of the box' development."
First Post
This is an experiment to see if there are many (any?) hands tech. on people out there. I'm interested in discussing and learning about many areas of practical technology and actually making them work for me. I am not talking about out of the box stuff made in china but (relatively) scratch built technical solutions to basic day to day problems or opportunities.
I am an Experimental Physicist by training and have enjoyed working with analog audio electronics (solid state and vacuum tube) for years and am now expanding my efforts into other areas and thought it might be fun to see if anyone else is into actually doing "stuff."
I'm more hardware than software but there is no way around sharpening my software skills which are currently a shallow knowledge of Linux, Unix (Solaris), C and a little Python.
I have a couple development boards for Microchip microcontrollers and they look very interesting and quite capable. Program them in C (or Basic I believe), on board ADC, DAC, lots of I/O and more than fast enough for most simple tasks.
My standard strategy is when i find something that appears to be interesting I start learning...
i'd be interested in hearing about anyone projects.
rt
I am an Experimental Physicist by training and have enjoyed working with analog audio electronics (solid state and vacuum tube) for years and am now expanding my efforts into other areas and thought it might be fun to see if anyone else is into actually doing "stuff."
I'm more hardware than software but there is no way around sharpening my software skills which are currently a shallow knowledge of Linux, Unix (Solaris), C and a little Python.
I have a couple development boards for Microchip microcontrollers and they look very interesting and quite capable. Program them in C (or Basic I believe), on board ADC, DAC, lots of I/O and more than fast enough for most simple tasks.
My standard strategy is when i find something that appears to be interesting I start learning...
i'd be interested in hearing about anyone projects.
rt
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