[sdiy] Taking a Step towards - - --((FUTURE-PREDICTIONS))-- - -

[Glen]

At 06:11 PM 1/14/04 , ASSI wrote:

>> I think he was referring to building your own hardware, and not to
>> "playing around" with a development board. It's a bit like comparing
>> playing around in a supervised pool, with swimming in the ocean. I'm
>> not saying that tinkering with a development board isn't something
>> worth doing. It *is* worth doing, but it isn't the same as designing
>> and building streamlined and optimized hardware to do exactly what
>> you want.

>I don't think there is any difference of doing a digital circuit 
>"exactly as you want it" in an FPGA vs. doing it with TTL IC aside from 
>the physical aspect, nor can you be any less adventureous with your 
>ideas or (dis)satisfied with the result.

I think you might be missing the point. Development boards are primarily
meant to acquaint a designer with a particular component, such as an FPGA,
a DSP, a microcontroller, etc. If you have an application that doesn't
require much or any support circuitry in addition to the development board,
they could also be of great assistance in final product design. However,
when it actually comes time to manufacture a product, I really don't expect
too many companies to simply stick development boards inside boxes and
start selling them.

I was talking about the difficulty of actually *building* advanced digital
circuitry yourself. Programming a development board is not constructing
circuitry. The fact remains, if you want to build this stuff yourself, it
will generally not be easy. When making a prototype, you can sometimes
accomplish your end goal by stuffing a development board inside a box and
calling the project finished, but that's not always going to be the case.
That's when you have to build something totally of your own design. That's
when it gets much harder, and it's the situation I was referring to--actual
physical construction, as opposed to using someone else's prefabricated
"trainer module".


>I notice you use the phrase "playing around" with some derision and I really 
>can't understand why, as I'd consider that a positive aspect.

You didn't "notice" any derision. You *assumed* derision. If you read the
end of my paragraph, you should get the idea that no derision was intended,
when I said that using development boards *is* worth doing. I placed quote
marks around the phrase "playing around" to indicate that I didn't mean it
literally as "play" or being non-productive. 

I just tend to think of development boards as a design aid, and not a
construction technique.


later,
Glen Berry