[Coco] OT: Cheap controller chips

[Steve Bjork]

Hi Frank,

I too look at the 8 core Propeller chip and found it a bit of work to 
get up and running.  At the time, there was no free BASIC compiler. 
(Just a free C compiler.)  There was also a bit of weirdness with the 
I/O ports because of the 8 cores.  This kept me jumping on the Propeller 
chip back then.

The PICAXE uses a BASIC that is very much like Basic Stamp.  (Easy to 
use.)  You can run two task at once.  (Just like having two cores.)  
Build in PWM, timers ADC and servo controller hardware.  Yes, I said 
hardware.  The PWM and Servos commands start the operation for the 
hardware to drive (and refresh) the timing to the lines. (Nice.)  The 
chips can run at 32 Mhz.

For what I doing with my Halloween display, PICAXE has worked out well 
because of its low price and ease of coding.

Frank, thanks for you input on this subject.

Steve

On 9/29/2011 1:11 PM, Frank Pittel wrote:
> Steve,
>
> Very cool and thanks for the info and link. Just a month ago I bought into
> the Parallax (maker of basic stamp) Propeller. It's a nifty little microcontroller
> with 32 I/O pins (4 dedicated during startupt but general purpose after that) 8 cores
> all running at 80Mhz and is available for $7.99 in single quantities.  After I spend
> sometime with it I'll be taking a look at the picax.
>
> For now though I have a couple of projects that I'm working on that will is being built
> around the propeller which is taking up all my "puttering" time.
>
> The Other Frank
>