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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : (DM) StickOS support for DuinoMite
| Author | Message | ||||
| Olimex Senior Member  Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
StickOS is another BASIC interpreter but pre-tokenize the source instead of keeping it in text as MM-BASIC. Here is the list of StickOS BASIC commands. DuinoMite is now with BETA support and you can download the HEX from HERE StickOS seems to be x3 times faster than MM-BASIC seen from HERE I will load StickOS on DuinoMite and will play this weekend then will post my impression from it in this thread. |
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| Olimex Senior Member Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
ok, I installed StickOS on DuinoMite-Mega and test it now. What I do like: 1. pre-tokenize when you enter your line and warn you for syntax errors and show you exactly where the error is, this also speed up the code execution as the interpreter use 1 byte token to switch the command instead to compare multiply bytes for each command 2. use the real UART, SPI, I2C no bitbanging, which allow it to execute the BASIC statements very fast, about x4 times faster than MM/DM 10 dim a 20 configure timer 1 for 1 s 30 on timer 1 do print a 40 for a = 1 to 200000 50 next executes and prints 112518 BASIC instructions per second vs 28608 in MM3.1 the BM1 test: 10 dim time, i 20 time = ticks 30 for i = 1 to 1000 40 next 50 print ticks-time when exectuted returns 35 ticks which equals to 0.00875 seconds vs 0,016 s in MM what I do not like in StickOS: 1. not open source, although you have some skeleton source which allow you to add your own commands and to link to the core stickos code 2. no graphics, no VGA, no keyboard support, just terminal via USB 3. no SD card file system 4. print command is simply implemented 5. while MM complete about everything MS BASIC have, stickOS implements less complete set of commands for those who are interested HERE is the quickstart guide and HERE is the users manual. loading the firmware is very simple just start the bootloader and load this HEX file then if you are on windows you will need also this INF file you can switch back to MM/DM basic by simple re-loading the MM/DM hex. |
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Geoffg Guru  Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3194 |
Just for the record, MMBasic dies the same thing. Ie, converts your program (when you enter it) to one byte tokens for command, functions and keywords. To get the speed StickOS must do some extra compiling like converting constants to binary numbers, reducing expressions, etc. MMBasic does not do this because it needs to retain the original human readable program so that you can list and edit it. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Olimex Senior Member Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
Indeed they probably pre-process the expressions Anyway after worked so much with MM BASIC I wouldn't switch over to less comprehensive BASIC implementation, just because there is some speed advantage I can add whatever I need in C to DM-BASIC and still stay with the convenient VGA/PS2 stand alone operation and the wide range of commands implemented. This is just an alternative option for curious people who want to evaluate something new. |
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Juri74 Senior Member Joined: 06/02/2012 Location: ItalyPosts: 162 |
maybe stickos is faster because it doesnt spent processor time to manage sd/vga/keyboard.. |
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| Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3194 |
That cannot be it. I once ran some tests and (from memory) USB took about 2% of the CPU time and video (VGA or composite) took about 5%. The SD card takes zero unless it is reading/writing. You can test this with 3.1. When you unplug the USB cable the firmware detects the lack of +5V and completely stops any USB processing. Then, using the CONFIG VIDEO OFF command, you can completely disable the video and test the difference there (reboot first). In both cases it will be negligible. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Olimex Senior Member Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
is it possible to do some kind of profiling and to see which parts eat most of the time? my blind guess is the timer interrupts for the GPIO state polling, but it may be something else as well when I posted on my blog the speed benchmark I got this e-mail from Paul Curtis who wrote SolderCore basic Saw this:
http://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/duinomite-basic-instr uctions-per-seco nd-speed-bips/ Speed approx.: 31044 BIPS ...so, tried this: C:\User\Paul>telnet soldercore _____ __ __ ______ / ___/____ / /___/ /__ _____/ ____/___ ________ \__ \/ __ \/ / __ / _ \/ ___/ / / __ \/ ___/ _ \ ___/ / /_/ / / /_/ / __/ / / /___/ /_/ / / / __/ /____/\____/_/\__,_/\___/_/ \____/\____/_/ \___/ Welcome to CoreBASIC on the SolderCore. Copyright (c) 2004-2012 Rowley Associates Limited. 65,528 bytes free. Core at 80 MHz. >10 T = TICK >20 I = I + 1 >30 IF TICK - T < 80000000 THEN GOTO 20 >40 PRINT I * 3; " BIPS" >run 175065 BIPS > You should be able to do better. ;-) SolderCore have no VGA nor keyboard as well, but run on 32 processor @80Mhz as MM-BASIC |
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| Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3194 |
Yes, that is how I got a lot of the speed improvement in 2.6 and 2.7. From 2.7 onwards you can uncomment the following line in Maximite.h //#define PROFILE
Then, when you recompile the source, profiling will be installed. To use the profiling you should use the RUN command to run your benchmark program. When the program exits MMBasic will write an Excel spreadsheet called PROFILE.XLS to the SD card. This contains a list of addresses and the number of times that the program counter was at that address. If you sort the spreadsheet by the second column (the count) you will see where the program spent most of its time. Then, using the MAP file generated by MPLAB in the compile, you can figure out what functions the program was spending most time on. Profiling uses up about 10% of the CPU's time and most of the general memory so you do not want it running all the time. Obviously I used this to speed up the critical parts but then I found that the critical sections depended very much on what sort of benchmark that you were running. Interestingly polling the GPIO's was not the largest part (although it was significant). My next target would be to optimise the variable lookup routines as they often showed up as the greatest consumers of the CPU's time. Regardless, I don't think that we can go six times faster so CoreBASIC must be sacrificing something to get that speed. I have not looked at it but perhaps it is a compiler, or uses integer maths, or something. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Gadget Regular Member  Joined: 22/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 70 |
Reading the Stick OS website they claim the code is compiled into byte code, which could account for the faster execution of programs. |
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vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Quote from their site: "Underneath CoreBASIC is something wonderful: a complete multi-tasking operating system, CoreOS, taking full advantage of all the hardware features of the microprocessor and sophisticated software that makes all your device programming effortless." Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| paul_l_curtis Newbie  Joined: 23/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4 |
CoreBASIC is fully interpreted. It has full floating-point mathematics including complex numbers and quaternions. You can edit your programs on the SolderCore using a telnet connection. Not only that, but it has a full suite of matrix maths functions, arrays and vectors are first-class objects, and it has a complete object system with dynamic instantiation of built-in drivers from simple things like SPI, I2C, and UARTs through to character-based graphics on HD44780, bitmap graphics on many LCD shields, GPS, and a complete quaternion-based AHRS which can fuse any supported accelerometer, gyroscope, and optional magnetometer to provide an IMU or AHRS. The interpreter and supporting software are engineered, not hacked together. It happens to be very fast because it was designed to be both elegant and fast. It does not sacrifice anything for speed: it is simply fast and well designed. That's all. |
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| Olimex Senior Member Joined: 02/10/2011 Location: BulgariaPosts: 226 |
Hi Paul welcome, nice to see you here sure CoreBASIC is good, and I do not want to underestimate your work, but you do not generate the video with the same chip nor handle keyboard the single-chip-does-all video and keyboard is the charm of MM/DM and it targets hobby/amateurs and does this pretty well, I do not remember to have had so much fun in the last few years than what I have with DuinoMite interfacing with few lines of code our UEXT modules through the UEXT connector I doubt hobby amateur will need matrix math functions or vectors  at lest not in BASIC - what I notice is that significant part of our DuinoMite sales go to people who do not use BASIC at all, today I got e-mail from small business who use DuinoMite in volume 20-50 pcs for their product and asked me if I have few prototypes of eMega as they need Ethernet, I told them that the firmware is still not ready but the reply was - I do not care for the firmware we use C in our project 
What I look at for a few days is iMX233 from Freescale it's 454Mhz ARM9 with build in Video DAC and Audio input/output, designed for portable media players this is also the heart in Chumby what I saw it I immediately though for small USB stick format computer something like the RASPBERRY PI on one end to have Video and Audio connectors and on the opposite side USB host for keyboard, this running BASIC interpreter like MM/DM will be perfect toy for home use. You can plug it to your TV and with one Keyboard you can play and write code. This processor have build in Video generator so will have zero overhead in code and will have 640x480 color video output. I pre-estimate this beast will be able to execute about 1 Million BASIC instructions per second if we keep same speed as on DuinoMite at the moment and remove the video generation and GPIO bitbang code. will have also SD card and 32MB of RAM so if you got tired from BASIC you can boot linux for instance and develop in linux too. UEXT and GPIOs on top side of the stick and the SD card on the bottom side. iMX233 is priced $5.50 for 100 pcs so it would be quite possible to make $30 retail all-in-one computer with Video and Keyboard in this stick form. Tsvetan |
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| paul_l_curtis Newbie Joined: 23/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4 |
That is true. But we wanted to keep to the small Arduino footprint and offer VGA and LCD to the Arduino community rather than bolt everything into a single offering. The chip we use for VGA output is an XMOS one, and the firmware is already on the web and open. The design is open. No worries. The whole VGA output is done in software, as is SPI, using an 8-thread core. The LCD runs the same protocol. Yes. There is no reason to doubt this, but your solution is simply different from ours. Indeed. But that's no different from the SolderCore supporting (at present) a huge range of shields in a consistent manner. We could (and do) support MOD-* things anyway. If you want to do a balacing robot in CoreBASIC, you can. You want to fly using CoreBASIC? Sure, you can do that too, because that's what we're working on right now (I funded a KickStarter project to do this). Don't underestimate the fact that calibrating a touchscreen using 9-point interpolation is very easy if you can solve a set of linear equations, and that is what the matrix maths are for. SolderCore will be available without CoreBASIC. We already have customers for this. Yes, but they are hard to program "on the metal". It's all about software. I don't doubt that there are great pieces of hardware in the world (BeagleBone we have, along with many other high-end things), but the software is the thing that takes the time to write and debug. For small programs, possibly. I took a look at the core of the MMBASIC code out of interest--completely different strategy to CoreBASIC for execution. However, it is not set to scale, I don't think. For large applications, with many lines and many variables, it just doesn't have the internal structure to scale well. Yep, SolderCore already has SD card supportt. And it has a TCP stack inside it, so you can drag our library of examples directly into the SolderCore using "EXAMPLE" which downloads from the soldercore.com website. And it has a web server so you can program it through the web, or display your customized content from CoreBASIC. And I can build an FTP server into it. And it gets its time from the network. And it supports a huge range of devices all inside CoreBASIC. However, the point is that both are different philosophies--it's going to be hard to compare them. CoreBASIC ran on ARM9s with integrated keyboard and VGA a long time ago, from 2006: http://www.revely.com/RMS102/Documents/RIZE%20RMS102%20Produ ct%20Sheet%20A3.pdf Without custom software, if you don't include the cost of the software in the hardware sale, I would think so. |
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| paul_l_curtis Newbie Joined: 23/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4 |
That is true. But we wanted to keep to the small Arduino footprint and offer VGA and LCD to the Arduino community rather than bolt everything into a single offering. The chip we use for VGA output is an XMOS one, and the firmware is already on the web and open. The design is open. No worries. The whole VGA output is done in software, as is SPI, using an 8-thread core. The LCD runs the same protocol. Yes. There is no reason to doubt this, but your solution is simply different from ours. Indeed. But that's no different from the SolderCore supporting (at present) a huge range of shields in a consistent manner. We could (and do) support MOD-* things anyway. If you want to do a balacing robot in CoreBASIC, you can. You want to fly using CoreBASIC? Sure, you can do that too, because that's what we're working on right now (I funded a KickStarter project to do this). Don't underestimate the fact that calibrating a touchscreen using 9-point interpolation is very easy if you can solve a set of linear equations, and that is what the matrix maths are for. what I notice is that significant part of our DuinoMite sales go to people who do not use BASIC at all, today I got e-mail from small business who use DuinoMite in volume 20-50 pcs for their product and asked me if I have few prototypes of eMega as they need Ethernet, I told them that the firmware is still not ready but the reply was - I do not care for the firmware we use C in our project SolderCore will be available without CoreBASIC. We already have customers for this. Yes, but they are hard to program "on the metal". It's all about software. I don't doubt that there are great pieces of hardware in the world (BeagleBone we have, along with many other high-end things), but the software is the thing that takes the time to write and debug. For small programs, possibly. I took a look at the core of the MMBASIC code out of interest--completely different strategy to CoreBASIC for execution. However, it is not set to scale, I don't think. For large applications, with many lines and many variables, it just doesn't have the internal structure to scale well. Don't take this as a slight on the code; it is what it is, and it just happens to be different from CoreBASIC. Yep, SolderCore already has SD card supportt. And it has a TCP stack inside it, so you can drag our library of examples directly into the SolderCore using "EXAMPLE" which downloads from the soldercore.com website. And it has a web server so you can program it through the web, or display your customized content from CoreBASIC. And I can build an FTP server into it. And it gets its time from the network. And it supports a huge range of devices all inside CoreBASIC. However, the point is that both are different philosophies--it's going to be hard to compare them. CoreBASIC ran on ARM9s with integrated keyboard and VGA a long time ago, from 2006: http://www.revely.com/RMS102/Documents/RIZE%20RMS102%20Produ ct%20Sheet%20A3.pdf If you don't include the cost of developing any offered software in the hardware sale, I would think so. |
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| jlder Newbie Joined: 30/09/2012 Location: FrancePosts: 2 |
I am a little bit confused. Is CoreBasic available to the PIC32 and/or the DuinoMite? JL |
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CircuitGizmos Guru Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1425 |
No - different product all together. Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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