Post by thread:PSOC design contest "Invention board"

'PSOC design contest "Invention board"'

The subject item arrived today, and I gotta say it's pretty a pretty

neat idea.  Cypress has combined one of their SMT PSOC chips with one

of their smt USB chips on a tiny little board approximately the size

of a wide 28pin DIP.  With pins, so you can plug it into a 28pin socket.

So what you have is essentially a 28pin PSOC chip that you can program

by plugging it into a USB port; no other programmer required.  It 

reminds

me of those Z8s with piggyback eprom sockets, only this is neater.

It's also clever marketing-wise, perhaps.  It's a 'chip' genuinely 

useful

for evaluation, but not so useful for actual projects (even for a 

hobbyist.)

Now, to figure out what it can do!

BillW

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William Chops Westfield writes:

> The subject item arrived today, and I gotta say it's pretty a pretty

> neat idea.  Cypress has combined one of their SMT PSOC chips with one

> of their smt USB chips on a tiny little board approximately the size

> of a wide 28pin DIP.  With pins, so you can plug it into a 28pin socket.

One of the first things I did when I decided to get back into hardware

(microcontrollers in particular) was to pick up a copy of Circuit

Cellar -- #169 with the PSoC article and advert.  Just for shits and

giggles I applied for contest sample and it arrived in less than a

week!  I *did* submit a pretty good proposal, which is actually a

re-implementation of a circuit I built using discrete components many

years back.  Unfortunately, I've been too busy getting up to speed

with the SX to to actually play with the PSoC yet.

> So what you have is essentially a 28pin PSOC chip that you can program

> by plugging it into a USB port; no other programmer required.  It 

> reminds

> me of those Z8s with piggyback eprom sockets, only this is neater.

> 

> It's also clever marketing-wise, perhaps.  It's a 'chip' genuinely 

> useful

> for evaluation, but not so useful for actual projects (even for a 

> hobbyist.)

What makes you say this?  I think such an item is *incredibly* useful

for the hobbyist!  I can think of far more cool things to do with this

unit than I'll ever have time to implement!  In fact, if the price

were reasonable I might actually want to pick up a few more.

Perhaps my bias is based on my fear of soldering SMDs.  I'd rate my

PCB soldering skills to be excellent (for DIP components) but I can't

even begin to imagine hand soldering the SMDs as are on the PSoC.

One of the things that I find so striking getting back into hardware

after 20-odd years is how cheap the individual chips are (even at

qty.  1) yet how expensive they get once you provide them on PCB with

DIP connectors.

In fact, I've begun to lust after a little imaginary device that would

have an SX48/52, 50 Mhz resonator, external eeprom and sram, max232

and USB 2 interfaces all on a DIP socket -- something not terribly

unlike the Parallax Stamps, but without any pre-loaded interpreters

and instead the high-speed USB interface.  Designing the circuit would

be nearly trivial, it's simply a matter of the cash to do a production

run.  If cheap enough, and driven by an open-source development model,

I think such an item could *really* take off.

-p.

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 > It's also clever marketing-wise, perhaps.  It's a 'chip' genuinely useful

> for evaluation, but not so useful for actual projects (even for a hobbyist.)

Meaning that you wouldn't design that package into a project?  Consider

this:  I believe the PSoC chips are available in DIP, but .3" rather than

the wide dip that the eval chip is.  I don't know if that'll be a problem, but

it could just be a PITA since you'll have to swap out a wide DIP for a

skinny DIP in your breadboarded circuit for final testing before making

that PCB.  Of course, I could be completely off target here...

> Now, to figure out what it can do!

Let us know.  In particular I'm interested in whether an off-board oscillator

can be used (crystal, resonator, RC or otherwise), whether it can be used

to program an off-board chip (according to at least one document from

Cypress, it can[maybe]), and whether the USB chip on there can be used 

for anything other than programming (which I highly doubt).

Good luck and have fun!

Mike H.

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