Me, and some other colleagues, found the ENC... class very frustrating, some
might have not.
The fact is that at the beginning the presenter said that the silicon still
had some bugs they where trying to solve. That's fine.
We had a very good first half of the presentation, all the theory and
related stuff, but when we moved to the hands on (with another guy) we saw
that the things where working very sporadically. We had the web server
running on the PIC and when we hit F5 on explorer (refresh) it only really
work 1 time out of 10...
The presenter was really nervous and sweating, some people leave the class.
CONCLUSION
Personally, preciously knowing the fact that the chip had bugs and also that
I've never worked with PIC+Ethernet found the class very interesting. Even
if the chip is not working at the moment I will certainly try to use it on
some of my projects (when it does) I think they said it will be released on
November or so... That class really teached me what can be done with
Ethernet... Bottom line, I think the ENC... is a very promising chip. I have
a couple and I will run some test on them, so yes, I think you can count on
them for your projects.
We experienced the exact same problem, maybe we were in the same class on Friday, we left the class disappointed in demo of the new chip coming out later in the year, but we will maybe still consider trying to use it once they get all the bugs worked out. Yes it's true, the demos had a major sync issue which was a major annoyance, we had to continue to reset the demo board and hit f5 on explorer to re-connect. I don't know if I should regret leaving early or not, but it doesn't sound like I missed much.
I left the class early and took a nap, the schedule was so tight as it was, I missed dinner on the previous night after trying to get answers from the ask the experts table in the Micorchip store for over 3 hours, even the experts didn't know their own products. Anybody want a free meal ticket? Somebody was finally able to track down the teacher and find out that that the demo board I wanted was being offered for sale. It appeared to be a very popular item especially, after hearing them tell nearly 50+ people, while I waited that the exact board was not available for purchase, persistence pays off I guess, I got the part I wanted anyway.
>From what I heard the overall conference was better then last year, but some of the class descriptions were deceiving, especially one that said hands-on in the class description when we signed up for it and never actually had any and hands-on until the last 5 minutes before class was over and there were no tools to do the hands on experiment. The teacher claimed that he was unaware of the class description stating any hands-on in the in the first place.
I strongly recommend the Mechatronics Demonstration Kit demo board, its got a lot of useful features for a beginner, I think it is new, it was one of the most popular demo boards and it was readily available.
Next year if I go, I will have to do more research on the classes before I sign up for them, unfortunately, most of the classes I really wanted to take conflicted with others and we were forced to take classes that were of no interest to us.
Best of all, I sat down and ate breakfast with the CEO, Steve and I had a great conversation about how to improve the conference next near, he seemed very attentive and down to earth. He really is a great CEO.
No, my class was on Thursday... so they were all that bad...
I also really liked to see many familiar names from microchip walking around
the place and talking to everyone without any problems.
I filled out the survey and I only said that I didn't quite like the level.
For example, I took class "913 HTC: Hi-Tech C Compiler for PICmicroR MCUs",
it was the first one ever.... I stay there for the first half hearing about
the Cromwell, the compiler, the parser... bla bla bla... things that are
already on the hitech manual. So I went to some other class, I don't
remember the name, where they introduced the dsPIC33 and the PIC24, VERY
interesting stuff...
It did seem that most of the classes I took were too basic and never got in to any thing too new. Some classes were a waste of time, I thought many would be over my head and most didn't teach me anything I didn't already know.
Well for the first time to the Masters and not knowing what to expect, I will try to choose classes more wisely next time.
I must say that the wafer fab tour was most impressive and very clean, best wafer fab area I've ever toured. Microchip's clean room makes some of the other clean room tours I've toured in the past a joke. Everything is up to date and currently all migrated on to 8" wafers, Microchip seems to be heading in the right direction. They mentioned possible 12" wafers in the future.
I won't need to do that tour again, no more bunny suits, trying to fit the tour into my schedule messed up my desired schedule in the first place. Next conference should be more productive, too bad they are changing locations, they out grew the Westin Resort with over 900 people attending. Attendance has been growing by about 100 people per year I was told. They expect over 1000 people next year.
It was my first time too, unfortunally I didn't win any of the prizes at the
casino night as you did :) (I was right behind you that night).
Anyway, I thought that the average level was higher. I actually select all
classes ranking 4 or 5 (out of 5) but was surprised to see that that ranking
was not as I expected...
You were right behind me? Wish I knew.. we should have had PIC-list pins on our badges. I know we have talked in the past, several months ago, but I wasn't sure who was really from the PIC-list or not. There were too many people there.
Actually I won one of the prizes, the IPod, which my wife stole from me, then my wife who also attended the conference, won the other item, which she gave to me, She was too shy to go up and get it. I never expected to win anything, it was pure luck! I actually wish they were giving away Microchip tools and dev boards, but the IPod and the other prize was cool. The prizes were not cheap that's for sure. We did good, it sure did seem that most people who won stuff were chosen more than once on most occasions. They changed the rules about winning twice shortly after they thought I won twice and then the person after me got away with it for real.
All the other evening events were great too, the beer boat races, the two robot wars, casino night and several others.. They kept us busy, I rarely went to bed before 2AM every night and then classes came really early the next day. We had a great time!
The conference was well worth the trip regardless of any complaints.
We drove 3000 miles round trip and left a week and a half early.
It's too bad the conference is already over, but I am glad to be back home, sure don't miss the 115 deg. weather.
Nope, it's organized at a hotel, there you have all the accommodations, plus
meals, plus classrooms. The regular price is $1000 , and you can have a $100
discount if you buy it with months ahead.
Ohh, whish I knew... I know you where from the PIClist, but I just thought
that I saw your name around, didn't remember talking personally... now,
using my memory (meaning outlook's search tool) I found that you asked me
about the consultant program and a PM3, remember?
Well, too bad we didn't spoke much. I travel all the 14 hs flight from
Argentina to Phoenix, so next time I'll try to talk to as much people as I
can... I do met Olin Lathrop there and bought him one of his ProProgs, which
is working fine till now...
Well, if you need anything just contact me, I'll be glad to help.
You can also have a substantial discount if you share a room with another person attending with you. It's well worth the price just to go to the resort alone, then add the free great buffets during the days of all the classes (3 meals a day, snacks all day during the classes, the after hour activities, open bar every night and it goes on and on. Many other benefits.. Also register early and you are getting $100.00 per person discount too. Well worth your money even if you don't even go to the classes. Microchip pretty much takes over the entire hotel. In fact, they are moving to a bigger hotel next year, they over booked this hotel and had to shuttle people to other hotels this year.
Isn't it so Ironic! I should have contacted you before the conference to meet, sorry we missed each other, I had actually thought about you while I was there and hoped to bump into you, but there were just too many faces and names to try and remember and so much to do. Maybe we will meet next year!
> You can also have a substantial discount if you share a room
> with another person attending with you. It's well worth the
> price just to go to the resort alone, then add the free great
> buffets during the days of all the classes (3 meals a day,
> snacks all day during the classes, the after hour activities,
> open bar every night and it goes on and on. Many other
> benefits..
SO how about if I just hang out in the lobby, eat the free food, and sell
PICList t-shirts? Think I could make back the several hundred dollars it
would cost me? <grin>
janso.com.ar
