Re: Beginner needs help choosing microcontroller platform & software

I think as a beginner, you don't have enough information to evaluate an
advanced product, no offense.
The embedded market covers the a very wide range of customers. Many advanced
products are better funded, have better documentation, because their market
is a professional one that must produce good results quickly.

The IsoPod is applicable to all, but is not limited to, the following:

Rank beginner who is willing to sit down, learn forth, and program in an
atypical paradigm compared to a lot of the embedded industry.
A user who wants to have an OS, without paying the performance penalty. (
yes, forth is an OS in effect.)
Someone who has a project that requires a LOT of hardware interfacing, but
does not wish to tackle it with a PC.
Someone who wants to use a lot of R/C servos.
Someone who wants to read a lot of encoders or analog signals.
Someone who wants to use FSM architecture to control behavior in order to
avoid rats nest conditionals.

My experience includes programming in C, assy on the 6502 & PIC, C on the
ARM, AVR, Python, and forth. I generally prefer forth and Python for work
related stuff.

I worked for many years on a motion control crane using PCs but got it
working really well using forth. It reads 5 quadrature encoders, does high
resolution velocity calculations on 3 of them in addition, using additional
timers, reads a serial stream, outputs a serial stream, and does a hell of a
lot of calculus. This is a real time motion control system, so all maths
must be done in a fixed period time. The IsoPod does this, and leaves
processor time enough to allow the forground task for other functions.

Just because it tackles something of that massive complexity, doesn't mean
it is a complex product however, just powerful.

Additionally, I have done the following:
I have also wired up 6 mini pods on CANBUS to build a robotic centipede.
Built a 6 leg, 3 axis per leg hexapod using one ServoPod that does complete
inverse kinematics solutions per ler leg at 60 hz
More 3 wheeled bots than I cane to remember with PlugaPods

When I came aboard my new job, Feb 2005, I was quite pleased to find many
IsoPod related products in use by a majority of the embedded programmers
there. I work at a think tank with many clients that demand good results
quickly. We are able to do this with IsoPods because its language is fast,
the hardware is powerful, and the programming paradigm is fast and
efficient.

Mike




"MrMJPEG" <mrmjpeg@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1134394162.859363.35860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I guess I'm kind of confused who the customer is for the Isopod(TM;).
> It sounds good to me, but as a beginner I get this feeling, "Don't mess
> with this unless you're REALLY serious, need something powerful and
> know what you are doing." Which is fine! If that's what it is
> supposed to be.
>
> I think the problem is that the industry only caters to two extremes.
> One is the novice who has plenty of money and low ambitions, the other
> is the techno-geek who's either comfortable enough with the programming
> or with the electronics to get them beyond all the user-unfriendliness
> you have to wade through.
>
> I'm in the middle.
>


.

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