Software Development Kit

Will that complete your order sir?

"Is there anything else we can do for you today?"

My reply, "No, thank you."

My thought, "If you can't pick up my trash reliably on Monday and Thursday as contracted, what else would I ask you to do?"

Don't bother. Nobody reads them anyway.

I'm curious who's micro controller this is. Ok, I've been mainly working Intel, Motorola/Freescale, products in my past career. I don't understand any company not fully supporting development tools, as well 3rd party vendors.

If you've just started development, seems easy enough to change to some other vendor that does support it's products. Especially if you haven't gotten the assembly Boot, I/O stuff worked through. But I bet you have $ tied up in emulators, compilers, linkers and such specific to this micro controller. So your stuck with this. And PWB prototypes, too many man-hours.

Sorry, and I bet you didn't make the decision for this vendor or processor selection. Or is this all your fault, .....

Does this micro have features that no other vendor has.

who's whose

it's its

your you're

That would clear the ranks in a hurry! Let's do it.

But then you couldn't say $hit.

There will be lots of posters on the Naughty Step today....

LOL!!!

Almost a GA!!

US or UK spellings? Both together would be fine with me....

I'd go for a spell checker that disables the whole post until the writer gets it all correct.

... but those weren't spelling errors, those were grammatical ones.

Anonymous poster

The last time I had to a presentation on a "higher" level language program for a Microcontroller, I had fun. The salesman insisted that their new language software would be easier. I asked if it is an academically recognized language like C, VHDL, Python, Verliog, etc.

No.... but we are hoping that these universities will start teaching it.

Will our code transfer over to other party chips?

Our next generation chips will include a cross compiler to accept your old code from this language.

That's not what I asked. The old code for our old systems cannot be attempted with your new chips. We do not want to do this again next year. One last question...

Ok

You say that this is a higher language.

Yes!

That wasn't the question. Who has to be high, the languange, the microcontroller chip, the programmer or the saleaman?

When selecting a microcontroller for a project, tools, support, and transportability are equally important as mips, A/D channels, and digital I/Os.

I guess you know that now.

Generally, with the various microcontrollers out there, there are support groups (i.e., forums) with individuals that have probably been through all the general growing pains and can help get you out of the woods.

You may want to also look for any GNU tool chains available. While GNU requires a lot more fiddling to get it dialed in, you will find a much, much better support group to help you get through it.

This experience will help you do a better job with selecting a micro now that you understand the value of support and tool sets.

May we know which microcontroller it is or is it a highly secretive project?

The IC software we used had a free version that only limited the size of the program, which was sufficient for our needs.

If all you rant about was made as easy and sraightforward as possible, who would buy their high level (god forbid) compilers, to use on a device with nonexistant or useless stack, banked memory, asm mnemonics that made some sense, etc? S.M.

Use a PLC. The brand we use is very well supported and the Structured Text language is robust, versatile and simple (with a little experience).

Your call is important to us.Please stay on the line and a representative will answer your call as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

click............buzz buzz buzz buzz......

Get and arduino!

GENERAL ANSWER:-

I don't want to name the manufacturer, as it will doubtless all turn out ok in the end.
I just object to the week I'm going to spend getting there.
Doubtless if we spent £10k rather than £1.5k we might get it all seamless... but I even doubt that.

We've gone for a specific manufacturere as we are currently using one of their chips which is V low current (the project is battery operated) but the current one is NRND and the customer wants to add complexity and cost....
All I need is V simple IO.

I might just do it all in assembler.

Hopefully I'll get to work and find a really helpfull reply from their support guy.
As for the the third party software I'll proabably uninstall and try again... The reason I'm using them is:-

The original third party we used previously 'Cosmic' gives a limited free trial software which works, we paid to upgrade, several years later, the support moves to France, they deny we ever paid them anything and won't help with out us sending more money or jumping through hoops for something worse than what we have already! So we are left with time bomb software linked inextricably to a manky old PC running win 89/98whatever.

Obviously software companies don't want their stuff pirated, but they seem to go mad with dongles, authentication keys, tying it to one PC etc (FFS what's the half life of the average PC these days? 3 years???)

See, I've woken up grumpy... I get none of this hastle making bows... if they work it's my skill, if the blow up it's my fault, no paperwork, no third party anything.
Seems to me modern life is a triumph of presentation of content.

One last thing, the pedantic over correcting of English is a stupid irritant. The content is vastly more important. The Qs we get with no info' are worse than miss spelt badly puctuated but well written Qs with all the relevant info.

Del

(Bwahhhhh sniff snifff... wheres my tea and toast?)

You wrote, "Doubtless if we spent £10k rather than £1.5k we might get it all seamless..."

So, what's the cost of a week's downtime, your salary, and the overtime required to get the project back on schedule?

Ah, but the project isn't behind schedule...because I haven't looked at the time scale.

Del

I don't want to name the manufacturer, as it will doubtless all turn out ok in the end.

IMHO, not naming the manufacturer does everyone a disservice. You are not exactly "protecting the innocent". And if they do "make good" in the end, that is a point in their favor.

1) There are no seamless/flawless microcontroller development toolchains out there.

2) There may be folks using the same devices/tools as you are and can get you that jump start through the hoops you are going through.

3) You may help someone who is re-evaluating their own choices of micros and toolchains, and who could use the heads-up on this particular vendor.

Also, I didn't see you mention if the vendor has an online user forum. I've often found them to be more useful (and sometimes more responsive) than the vendor's official information sources.

I work for a very small company with very little/no budget for development tools. I went with Microchip because I had recently done some consulting work on a system with a high-end PIC on it, and the software was free, and the programming hardware very inexpensive. I soon found the applications notes relating to the project I was working on were nearly all erroneous in one detail or another (after I tracked them down, which was painful in itself). Ultimately the time spent in development far exceeded the cost of "real" development tools, but the product works, and I am living a dongle free life, and know the development procedures ("recipes") that work, long after the tears have dried.

As I said, they are no worse than anyone else so I won't name them. I have named one company who I feel gave appalling service.
I could name all the micro manufacturers I've used if you like.
Zilog, Hitachi, ST

All 3 have done the NRND trick and I don't suppose any will actually have real tech support.
And yes of course they have an online forum... well it costs 'em nothing does it?
It seems to me that you defeat you own argument with point 1.

Anyhow, I can't be ar$ed to argue, you are welcomed to add you own experience.

Del

So, I get into work and find 2 E-mails.

1. The chip maunafcturers support guy is on holiday.
2. The Third party software company is asking for issues and serial numbers of the stuff they sent a month ago... well they should have them and if they expect me to provide them, they could tell me where I'm supposed to find these magic numbers.

Hope you guys are having a better day.
Del

WHEW!

Slowly getting there having re-installed two lots of software and found a tutorial to work through.
I'm probably going to need a threetorial, but at least it's progress and I'm a tad calmer.
Nice big breaths...
Del

Really interesting blog, thanks to all. I am learning slowly.

The only thing missing is the name of the $hite company.......they should be named ASAP!!

To be fair to them, some of it is RTFM problems.
The biggest pain has been blind links to download the examples.
A bit of guesswork, detective work and random downloading has got me there. Quicker than anticipated really.
What's the point of links that don't work??? Or telling you to down load 'example xyz' that are really called 'qbp-8043' or some such random collection of numbers... I just don't get it... but at my age I would n't know what to do with it anyway. Now WTF were we talking about?

I've had the same prob with other manufacturers. I won't use Hitachi (bless you...) as they once lured me into using one of their chips and then declared it NRND a year later!. Zilog no longer sell the emulator for a whole range of chips which we are still developing stuff for and selling in pretty good numbers. But they do sell an emulator with a virtually identical partnumber wich isn't suitable, not a hint of regret, oppology or help when you actually manage to contact them.
These companies need a good kicking.

Ok the old Z86 based chip families (Z86733 is what we actually use) are v long in the tooth, but I'll bet there are plenty of small companies using 'em still.

Anyhow, I'm glad my ranting has been of some interest.
Del

I have used several PICAXE chips in projects and there is a wealth of information about them. PICAXE is a PIC chip with simplified software and lots of examples in the documentation and very suitable for non programmers such as myself. The programming software is free and could be a good starting point

http://www.picaxe.com/Software/PICAXE/PICAXE-Programming-Editor/

If you decide to go down that path I can email you a series of old getting started PDFs.

Tony

Cheers, I think I'm over the pain barrier now.
It's just my impatience/grumpiness threshold is pretty low these days
Del

Is Arduino a solution to your design needs? At least then you get all the help you need, so I hear. And it sounds pretty cheap.

dunno... too late to be changing horses mid stream and trying to climb yet another learning curve (to mix my mataphors somewhat)
Del

Is it completley designed by your company from the start? Our customer just says use this MCU!

I've chosen the chip vendor, as
a)We used their chip on the previous highly successful version of the product.
b)Their chip has some V V V low power modes etc.
c) They are no worse than the other vendors.
My real gripe is how chip manufactures don't give the support they used to.
I phoned their UK office yesterday... bloke on phone told me there is no one there and he'd try to get someone to call me. He said their support had been virtually wiped out 9 years ago. Probably another case of bean counters taking over.

The project is begining to move and I'm expecting a call today. It's just the whole downtime thing to get moving frustrates me. Just old and grumpy I s'pose.

I daresay the new kids doing this stuff just take it in their stride and grind away to support their family... I've just done my time on that stuff and I'd have hope it would be easier not exactly the same as it was 30 years ago...but with glossier user interfaces.

I'd better shut up and go to work and plug away at it.
Don't worry chaps it will all be marvlious when it's done
Del

As they say, "The only easy day was yesterday."

After typing half a page and failing to post, I'll make it short: Check out Atmel microcontrollers (arduino uses 1 of these) and when you have time...Forth- a virtual processor system from Chuck Moore and put in the public domain and used around the world.

It is off course a top secret NRA, Prism project where this CPU is used, need to know bases only

This profession is becoming well-liked day by day as the needs of utilizing the application are also growing up. People require applications in business, on their workplace and sometimes people require software for their personal use also for keeping the records of the total expenditure of a person.

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