[sdiy] New digital synthesis projects under way

[Eric Brombaugh]

Samppa Tolvanen wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Eric Brombaugh<ebrombaugh1 at cox.net> wrote:
>> If you're interested in writing dsPIC code you can use them to build audio
>> effects, oscillators, transient generators, etc. Otherwise  they don't do
>> much of anything - they just kind of sit there occupying space and consuming
>> power.
>>
>>
> Krhm,
> 
> No I really can write any pic assemby, even 16bits of DSP of it.. But
> do these take a huge space and can we even talk about wattage? :D

dsPIC assembly is actually fairly nice - it's got a decent bank of CPU 
registers that are (mostly) interchangeable, instructions that are 
fairly easy to understand (and mnemonics that actually make sense) and a 
decent set of peripherals. I used to do the 8-bit PICs and find dsPIC 
much easier to use.

If you know how to do C coding, the free 'student' edition of their C 
compiler plugs into the same IDE and has most of the functionality of 
their $900 pro version except for optimization levels 2 on up. I find 
that -O1 works just fine though.

Power-wise a 3.3V dsPIC running a max clock rate with a few peripherals 
going will draw about 90-100mA. Not exactly anorexic, but not bad 
considering what it's doing. ARM and Atmel processors probably are a bit 
cooler, but they don't have the DSP features I want.

Eric