AVR-Chat

Why should he be ashamed of himself?  I didn't take Graham's comments as 
"putting [you] down" nor did it appear he was hawking his stuff, just 
expressing an opinion...which is the reason for this list.

The original poster was looking for advice about a programmer.  Most of 
the responses were for him to get the most bang for his buck, 
programming capabilities with the ability to do debugging and then small 
size since he stated he wanted to do robotics work.  Why would the OP 
want to put a relatively huge board on a robot when he doesn't need to 
do so?  Why would the OP want to spend a lot of money for a board that 
can only talk over a serial port...which most computers no longer have?  
Why would the OP want to invest a great deal of money up front for a 
product that, although a great product still, is on its last 
technological legs and neither supports all of the newer controllers nor 
all of their spiff?

We have a variety of development boards here in the shop, including the 
STK500 and a couple of it's rider boards, but we hardly ever use the 
STK500 any more unless we do something stupid like, um, program the 
fuses incorrectly and have to clear everything out using the high 
voltage programming function.  We won't mention the time I was doing a 
last minute program modification at 0300 and was supposed to do a dog 
and pony show for a customer that same morning at 0900...and blew up 
both of our ISPs because I didn't read the firmware update 
instructions.  That's why we say RTFMC these days...it wasn't much fun 
having to tweak a program in the middle of a plant with a bare board 
flapping in the breeze, even if it did have some "feet" added to it.  
The Atmel rep, DuRant Lewis, was great in that he sent us one of his 
ISPs via overnight freight but that didn't get the immediate, and self 
inflicted, problem solved.

Before you get froggy and try to jump on Graham about hawking his stuff 
you might also check the price of the AVRDRAGON, currently $51.87 (US) 
at Digi-Key.

And since Graham won't hawk his stuff here, I will.  We have several 
levels of quality in our shop...G-S, OK-S, B-S, and Aw-S.  What Ecros 
Technology stuff we've used falls into the G-S category, and the prices 
have not been too terribly bad either.

Take a few deep breaths before taking offense, Mike.  You'll get gray 
headed not doing so.


REB



Mike Bronosky wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Graham Davies <Yahoo37849@ecrostech.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>   
>>> You can't put an
>>> STK500 on a robot!
>>>       
>
>
>
> Why can't you? Is there a law, or something, that says it cannot be done?
> Please provide us with the link. Sure, you can't use it on a Mini-Sumo Robot
> Contest.
> Here are those rules:
> http://www.botlanta.org/MonthlyContest/sumo/mini-sumo.html
>
> Philip said, "My goal is to do some robotics control projects." Graham, what
> would stop him from doing that?
>
> Are you putting me down so you can pitch your Dragon Rider 500? Shame on
> you!
>
>   


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