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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Geoff covers the DuinoMite on his site
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donmck Guru  Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
Geoff covers the DuinoMite on his site: http://geoffg.net/DuinoMite.html Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Hmm, dont know what to think about that. I should have spent more time reading the DuinoMite posts, but have been so busy lately I havn't read a lot of forum posts. I think there is room for both the Maximite and the DuinoMite. Both have qualities that suit different needs. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member  Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
Excerpts from the above link: The good features of the DuinoMite are: It is a high quality board <------ 
Current Situation The firmware (ie, the special version of MMBasic for the DuinoMite) is incomplete and poorly implemented. Some Maximite features have been simply disabled. There is no usable documentation other than a few circuit diagrams and publicity blurbs. My comments to these excerpts are .... If you had the Arduino with revision one (which I had) and now it is over revision 21 then it takes time to get the firmware right. Since the DuinoMite boards are of high quality then its only a matter of time in flushing out the software bugs which I will gladly wait for due to the price / performance ratio and GPIO flexibility of the DuinoMite. As for the docs, as with any new design, it is work in progress.  |
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vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Arduino was the first of his breed. All was "forgive-able" and the excitement was at maximum. The clones have not this privilege. The clones must be bullet proof at the hardware, development chain and documentation. Is the case also with Maximite (which is not at 1.0 version) and his clones. This is why Duinomite had to (and it must) be the first of his breed! Vasi Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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elproducts Senior Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 282 |
Geoff's write-up was well done and to the point. But this is the problem with open source. Someone will market it and then try to change it for various reasons. Sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. The compatibility or stability of the design is the victim. You can see variations on the Arduino via clones. But at least the Arduino creators eventually licensed the name and now sell it directly. This helped maintain some compatibility. They are also trying out their own variations via Arduino 1.0 and new boards. The jury is out on how successful that will be. If you watch any youtube video or presentation on open source you will see the big drivers of open source are some of the biggest sellers of others open source product (aka Sparkfun, Adafruit). Who wouldn't agree to free development to profit from?! Yet try to find reference to the names of the creators on those pages that feature the open source product being sold (maybe a link is all you'll find if you're lucky). All open source ends up a commercial venture at some point so why not license it in the first place. Open source it free to educational and personal use but make a small royalty required for commercial use. It only makes sense and to me is not greedy at all. We all have bills to pay. And younger generations talk like open source is so new. We gave away schematics and board layout (that you etched) and design tips in every electronics magazine or electronics club you could find. In fact the early days of software were all open source as well (Microsoft really put an end to this). Today its so easy to reproduce and market a product. Open source designs can be commercialized much easier and sold faster via the internet so it becomes an issue to many developers. I say get royalties. They can be small but it keeps things a bit more honest. Geoff has given us a gift. He's amazing in my book. He's a better man that me. I've gone back and forth on my opinion of the Duinomite but I see nothing wrong with expanding what Geoff created and expands the reach to help more people get started. If you make a few dollars selling an adapter board or variation that you would prefer than more power to you but maintain compatibility to a fault. What bothers me about Duinomite is the loss of compatibility and the pricing. Maximite compatible products like the SM1 are no longer being made because the price of Duinomite has priced it out of the market. I like lower prices but at what cost? If I were Geoff here is what I would do. Having open sourced the Maximite to a very excellent state, I would stop open source from here on. Any new versions with added features would be released as a .hex file only. Any user could upgrade for free but the source could not be stolen and modified. This will help maintain Maximite compatibility. If he wanted help in the typical open source benefit way, any user who wants to help expand the source can do it under a controlled agreement with Geoff and possibly share a small part of the royalties. A bit of a hassle no doubt but does add some protection to the original design compatibility. www.elproducts.com |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
While not wanting to criticise Geoff, it is hard not to make a couple of comments. It appears to me that Geoff has a real beef with Don and Olimex! Personally being in the consultation loop from the beginning I saw that Geoff was consulted from the start with a view to welcoming him into the design committee. The tone of the text makes it almost seem that we were trying to gain sales by stealth and false claims (yes Don and I made claims about the compatibility of the DuinoMite range that were proven wrong, this is because we had no idea as to the extent that some changes were being made). It also goes to infer that we tried to get Geoff to port his code for free.. Whilst this sort of is true the tone of Geoffs article seems to infer this to be sinister.. We really asked Geoff to be a participant in the project, royalties were offered, and rejected by Geoff. Compatibility with MMBasic is there... 100% compatibility is not.. The way I see it is that rather than trying to see DuinoMite as a Maximite that they see what it has to offer in its own right. I would look at a design problem that I wish to put a DM or MM to and size up the pros and cons of each. I feel that all of the comparisons back to maximite (pin differences and their usage) have unfortunately clouded the issue and made it difficult for the maximite community to accept the Duinomite, one example being MM can have 20 unrestricted Digital outputs the DM can have 14, with another 5 with reservations about their use and 1 that unless VGA is disabled cannot be used. Does this lessen the worth of the Duinomite? Maybe but in reality I dont believe this is the case, 14 digital I/O is a lot and most applications wont have the need for them. The uses for these digital I/O lines could be to drive relays etc, The Duinomite can also drive relays on the UEXT port using the MOD-IO board and I2C protocol, thus lessening the demand on some of these I/O lines.. I feel that the advantages that DM offers over MM far outweighs the disadvantages and in practice would most likely be so great that the MM may be left behind. Duinomite offers 2 important (IMHO) extra interfaces that we decided, as a group, was worth the pain in redesigning the Maximite, namely the UEXT and Arduino pinouts. The Duinomite was also designed, as an option (as I personally dont like and cant use C it isnt my choice), to be a PIC32 Arduino family product.. ie. able to be programmed in C and not use MMBasic at all, as a big brother to Olimex's Pinguino range. Many of the Pinguino libraries will work in this mode and new ones will come in time to use the new features that pinguino dont have. Yes there are still some firmware issues, minor but issues none-the less. Yes a User manual needs to be written. In fact is needed so that the DuinMite can be seen in its own glory and not in this constant comparison to the Maximite. As for making sales for Don and Olimex, well yes they have done this as a business, (I get nothing except a peanut or six and maybe the odd board tossed at me) but I really dont think that they are profiteering with them... look at the prices... Check the purchase price of the chip alone and deduct from the cost of a ready made high quality board and make your own descision, then compare with Altronics price for an MM kit. There endeth my sermon, (maybe Don will stop my supply of peanuts now) Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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Keith @ Senior Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 167 |
IMHO The Holy Grail has not been delivered yet. Get the PIC32MX795F512 MCU into the design and there won't be any need to quibble over 14 or 20 pins. The features will be richer and the outcomes will not be restricted except by the limitations of the top PIC32 MCU available at this time. Keith The more we know, the more we know we don't know ! |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
100 pinner "L" were simply not available at design time. Current thinking is there may be a special Mega-100 version in the near future, but this won't make the others obsolete. Just means there will be 4 choices instead of 3. It will be a little dearer, and will have features that I can't divulge simply because they are still being mapped out. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
This is the sort of thing Mick is talking about with the DuinoMite. I2C 2 wire circuit which is driving 4 optocoupler isolated inputs with screw terminals, and 4 relay outputs with 5A/250VAC contacts with screw terminals per board, so you can double that for the demonstration video below: Ken Segler has done a video of these two MOD-IOs in operation running from a DuinoMite-Mini: http://www.themaximitecomputer.com/max/Programs/Videos/KSD%2 0DuinoMite-to-MOD-IOx2%20Video.m4v This is what I am working on right now. In theory, you can add over 100 boards, in practice, I have no idea. Maths places this at 400 relays, and 400 inputs. Oh, and you still have room for more I2C drops for RTC, etc. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Hi Keith, Assuming the above chip is the 100pin jobbie... I can now say this as Don has taken away my peanuts ...
You would be surprised at the compromises that are still being thought about even with a 100pin chip... Ethernet for a start... eg. If ethernet then No xxxx If xxxx then No ethernet.. It just goes on.. and On and ON.... As Don said the expected supply time (at date of descision) for the 100pin chip was either Dec or Jan... We (well Don and Tsvetan) were able to source a moderate number of 695/795 64pin chips and we went that way.... Watch this space a 100 pin version will appear in the Duinomite range I am sure ... as will, no doubt, other `derivitives' (from many sources) appear as well. Such is the beauty of open source.. maybe even Geoff will have a 100pin version. Then the end user can choose which product suits them best.. It does not have to be 1 horse for all jobs, pic (pun intended) the best product to suit the application. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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djuqa Guru Joined: 23/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 447 |
The way I see it there is advantages in both the Original Maximite concept and the DuinoMite concept. Maximite is straight forward and simple to implement (especially new Mini Version) DuinoMite is more flexible because of the increased features. Eventually the MMBasic will mature (as Microsoft Basic did) into a flexible interpreter that can easily be ported to any hardware configuration. Both can co-exist and maybe at some stage more addons/software may even start converging. No different than the good old days when TRS-80 BASIC was easy to write programs, but CPM C or Assembler had the Grunt factor for those critical programs. As regarding a 100pin based version , all good, but do not go down the road of feature/hardware bloat. Stops being a simple design and more like a major project more suited to commercialisation because of the increased development costs. VK4MU MicroController Units |
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| Keith W. Senior Member Joined: 09/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 118 |
Hi, I agree entirely with Geoff’s take on the Duinomite. Reading many posts to the Forum this could be seen coming and I have been tempted to post before but the Forum has become Duinomite not Maximite. That Maximite features have been removed with excuses such as” No one is interested in video” or “Maybe some pins are wrong” and still claiming compatibility beggars belief. Faults still being discovered in a supposed near clone of Geoff’s simple hardware design does not say a lot for Olimex. The original was well documented. I think that Olimex are trying to profit from Geoff’s achievement aided by others who should not be proud of their efforts. Geoff is not obliged to pick up someone else’s mess of their own making. Olimex have demonstrated that they cannot engineer it correctly; hardware or software. Excuses that follow the line “It will take a while for the design to settle” are ignoring this fact. Keith W. |
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| Olimex Senior Member Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
It seems many people here do not understand open source, but it's allright I also didn't knew a lot before. What Duinomite did is to add low cost alternative to MM hardware with lot more features. This is something what happens when you go open source - be prepared someone to Adopt, Clone, Improve, Trash your work. We were prepared for this when we released Duinomite but obviously Geoff is not prepared for this. DuinoMite is open source so Keith if you think there is "lot of profit" in this product all schematics and board files are freely available, manufacture these and do profit as well. If you can't do this locally where you are located, just put some cash and go to China, it's near you and cheaper to manufacture than here in Bulgaria, so you will have even better profit margin than us. It's up to Geoff to decide what to do with MM Basic from now on, if he wants to make it closed source it's OK. DuinoMite is and always will be open source both software and hardware. Sure it have lack of documentation and examples but MaxiMite project is already 1 year mature, DuinoMite started few months ago. People are yet to see what open source community will do with this project, there will be not only MM Basic which all of you are focused here, but also Pinguino and lot of other software platforms which support DuinoMite. Yes we couldn't make it completely compatible to MM, as we though that we have to make important features which MM miss and never will have if you want to be backward compatible. Let's face it what was your option for hardware before we start selling DuinoMite - to pay double for kit instead of professionally produced board? If Geoff receive royalties from the kit manufacturers and this rise the price of the kits so much, why he refused Don's offer to receive royalties from DuinoMite too? |
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| camfab Newbie  Joined: 10/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 13 |
well anyone who felt sparkeys demise would mean that they'd loose thier hourly drama fix, should be enjoying the way this tread is going!
kudos to don for how he handled it and to geoff for setting the record straight! Fre Sprky ///.../// |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Hi Keith, your comments are welcome and opinions differ but thats fine in a democracy, I have to set the record straight though on a few points though. Apart from the restrictions associated with some of the IO pins there is to my knowledge no maximite features that are removed. Composite Video is NOT removed from the DM, We have Not decided to drop Composite Video support as there are many people who use it. A comment was made by Ken that in his opinion that it is a waste of time but that is his opinion as is his right. Comments about `some pins are wrong' alludes me.. what does that mean? Do you mean there are differences? YES ,definately there are differences in some of the IO pins.. if this is an issue with your application then the DM is not for you... They are NOT WRONG just different, there are several reasons why which I wont go over here as they have been done to death. Claiming compatibility `beggars belief' Hmmmmm what can I say about that? Compatibility... to a drop in replacement for MM in 100% of cases... No it is NOT.. Compatible in MMBASIC, well apart fom pin assignments I feel that it is identical and worthy of being compatible.... maybe a more accurate term might be MMBasic compatible.. but then I feel that there are more similarities to the MM than there are differences. When The System 80 (PMC-80 to our US mates) appeared it was also different in many ways to the original TRS-80, the expansion interface was S-50 Bus instead of TRS 40 in `in house' bus but it was deemed compatible too Don and I have already broached Glenn to get a DuinoMite and peripheral forum so that these `my dad is tougher than yours' arguments will cease as it is not productive to any one. The Duinomite needs to be seen as a new product in its own right not constantly compared to its father (MM) they are related but not identical... Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
yeah I've been meaning to get back to Don about that, but have been pre occupied with other forum issues. I wont be creating a new forum area just for DuinoMites. The reason is there is much more to this web site than just microcontrollers. TheBackShed is about the sort of (technical) stuff we get up to in our sheds ( or workshops, hobby room, kitchen table, etc ). Its beginnings were in home made wind turbines and it grew from there as forum members contributed their own experiences. The forum is divided into five main area's of interest:- Wind, Solar, Electronics, Microcontrollers, Electric Vehicles. Everything else goes into Other Stuff for now, until I feel there is enough interest in a new subject matter to create a new area, for example, CNC. All these areas overlap to some extent, eg, we chat about microcontrollers on our windmills, EV battery chat can be shared with solar, etc. I dont want to create two areas that are basically the same from a outsiders point of view. It will clutter up the board and give the impression this site is predominately about microcontrollers, which its not. It would be like having a EV area for electric bikes, and another for electric cars. Besides, there are many other microcontrollers out there apart from the Maximite derived stuff, like PicAxe for example, which has see a lot of discussion on this forum in the past. So thats why all microcontrollers are bundled together in the "Maximites, PicAxes and other micro controllers" area of this forum. I hope everyone can see my reasoning. Getting back to the topic, I feel there is more than enough room for both the Maximite and DuinoMite. I like my little Maximite, it's got a nice case and I've really enjoyed my time with it. Goeff is up there with the likes of Owen Hill and Matthew Star in my mind ( Microbee developers ). But I will also be playing around with the DuinoMite in the future, because I have no Duino experience and I should dive in and experiment. I dont see one as better than the other. I do understand where Geoff is coming from though. I've developed open source projects in the past, though only small, and I had concerns when others made changes and further developed the software/hardware in ways I didn't agree with. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3800 |
I'm puzzled now, as video does not appear to have been removed. Which boards have it removed? Also, I'd like to know what the faults (as distinct from differences) are, please. Geoff's design etc are in many ways good, though with issues such as the bit-banging not ideal. I have a use for the on-board LiPo battery and low power possibilities but that doesn't mean I'm complaining about Geoff's stuff. It does mean I'm glad of the choices now available. I'll also use CAN so the DM-Mega is attractive. BTW, to state the obvious, the MM took quite a while to settle. Why would other boards and software be different.... John |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3194 |
I have never asked for royalties and I have never received royalties from anyone. You should (and probably do) know that. It is noticeable that the two people in this thread who are critical of me are the ones who stand to gain an advantage from promoting the DuinoMite. Obviously, while I was useful in the past I am now regarded as an obstruction. I really believe that you should stop trying to put a spin on everything. The most damage to the DuinoMite has not come from me or my web page. It came from the fact that it was way over promoted giving people huge expectations and leaving it with a long way to fall. You have done the damage, not me. My belief is that this forum should be for people who want to exchange information and experiences. Introducing a new product to the forum is OK but in my opinion the promotion of the DuinoMite went well beyond any reasonable limit. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| elproducts Senior Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 282 |
On the contrary, I think we understand it better. As Wikipedia describes it: "The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. " Geoff understood this and was willing to open source his whole design so others would help promote it and look what happened. The Back Shed exploded with users. New compatible designs popped up (SM1 and others). Arduino shield adapters, new adapter boards for RS232 etc. All kinds of project code written in MMBASIC and shared. And on top of all this along comes Duinomite we were excited. Another expansion of Maximite. But what we've found is the Duinomite doesn't promote the Maximite design, it competes against it. By changing the design and then pricing the other Maximite designs out of business you are doing the opposite of promoting it. You are essentially attempting to kill it. If a chinese Maximite clone comes out then it prices out competition but doesn't change the original design. If Olimex had released a Maximite version at your cost advantage then you would have served Geoff's goal of open sourcing the design to promote access to the original Maximite and what it offers the community. Then having your own variation in Duinomite makes more sense for those that want to go further (with some complexity). It comes down to respect for the originator, the copyright holder. Without Maximite you wouldn't have Duinomite. You guys took an open source design and and strong community of support and have essentially (although maybe not intentionally) taken it over. But you can still fix this. If you think the Maximite community shouldn't have to pay Altronics price then offer an alternative. Release an original Maximite design fully assembled at your great pricing. Get it into Mouser, Dontronics, others in your network so more can buy it easier. The design is done. The board layout complete. It's all open sourced! This would not take much effort on your part. Do the right thing. "Promote the end product". Support the community. Serve the true open source spirit Geoff created. www.elproducts.com |
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| wizard Newbie Joined: 29/07/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 38 |
Hi Geoff, I am MOST impressed with Maximite. I am still trying to figure out what I can do to give real help! Wiz |
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