SmartLabs announces first Insteon chip

[electron]

And the M1 supports Insteon already anyways (at least in BETA). My guess was he was going to add Insteon support to his AppDig collection

 

[ericvic]

If you or someone else could post the baud rate (or if its adjustable) then that would be great.

It is 4800 baud and not adjustable. It also requires some extra timing delays for each character sent.

Eric

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Electron has it right: I'd like to see how feasable it would be to make an Adicon interface.

Eric, thanks for the information. 4800 baud is good...doesn't need as much cpu speed as 9600 or higher. The timing delays are a drag however (in terms of more things to look out for). Btw, how would you implement intercharacter timing delays with a Windows app? Use a sleep instruction or a timer between each byte? Ugh.

 

[smee]

I don't remember needing to implement any timing delays between characters (unless the serial commands in HS just happen to do it).

I did manage to crash the controller if I sent too many messages one right after the other without waiting or checking to make sure they had been sent correctly.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

So maybe there is no input command queue, or a very small one. This would certainly be different then needing to add delays between characters. If anyone has the exact words from the documantation, then just state them here.

 

[ericvic]

Guy,

I have to be vague because of the stupid NDA you have to agree to in order to get the SDK.

There is only a 3 character buffer (as I understand it) and you are suppose to put 6ms between characters.

Eric

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Guy,

I have to be vague because of the stupid NDA you have to agree to in order to get the SDK.

There is only a 3 character buffer (as I understand it) and you are suppose to put 6ms between characters.

Eric

6 mSec would be a lot, considering that at 4800 baud, it takes about 2 mSec to send one byte. That would reduce the sustained data transfer rate to about 1200 baud... So if they say 6 mSec between characters as opposed to between commands or whatever, then that's kind of bad. I wonder how their USB version handles data buffering?

 

[ericvic]

Smarthome knows that there are some problems with thier current implementation of their interface.

Eric

 

[rocco]

Actually, I'm thinking microcontroller here...8051

Guy, Do people still use the 8051? (on purpose?)

I use to write firmware for the 8051 back in 1979-1982. It has the world's worst instruction set and even the current ones are pretty slow. Is this in an existing device, therefore you have no choice?

Just curious. I have a client who refused to adapt ZWave because it based on the 8051.

 

[TonyNo]

Do people still use the 8051? (on purpose?)

Absolutely! It is still the most popular 8-bit micro in use!

I have not needed them yet, but there are variants that run 33, 50, and even 300 MIPS!

I have a client who refused to adapt ZWave because it based on the 8051.

How sad!

 

[rocco]

I have not needed them yet, but there are variants that run 33, 50, and even 300 MIPS!

Are you sure that's mips and not megahertz? The 8051 needs 12 clock cycles per instruction cycle, so the 50 MHz versions are near 4 mips.

My client's concern was that none of their programmers wanted to code for it, and that 8051 code is very expensive to maintain. Having to shuffle everything through the data-pointer register (four instructions to do a simple move from an I/O port), the small range of a conditional branch and the lack of a parameter stack makes for some pretty bloated and bug-prone code.

I did try an 8051 C compiler back in 1987, but it didn't take long for some simple routines to fill the address space. It was also dog-slow. Again, it was the lack of a stack.

It's not that it wasn't a great achievement back in the 70s. It's just that it's architecture is out of the stone age of microcontrollers. Micros are so much better now.

Sorry for the off-topic rant . . .

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Hint: if a new design like Z-Wave uses the 8051, then it can't be all that bad...

I like it because I got a whole bunch (over 100) of 8751's for free, plus I bought some 8752's for about $2 apiece... I already have the compiler...and I just love its general processor architecture! I program it in assembler and I'm always in full control over what the cpu is doing at any moment. If I want to do a bit banged uart routine and run specific time sensitive routines between bit times, I can do it...and I do. This is computing down to atoms. This little cpu allows me to do things that I don't see how they could be done using higher level chips like PICs or BasicX type chips. As TonyNo said, it is still the most widely used and widely supported microcontroller around.

Eric, when you say that "Smarthome knows that there are some problems with thier current implementation of their interface.", to what extent are you saying this? Is a redesign in the works or are there just a few bugs that they need to work out? I'm guessing here that the dev kit is a raw serial interface and a command set; no "special driver" is being supplied by them, right? Because if there was a driver involved, then it would not be possible to use anything else but a PC to drive the serial interface.

I'd like to know more about the "bugs" you mention...

 

[Guy Lavoie]

I have not needed them yet, but there are variants that run 33, 50, and even 300 MIPS!

Are you sure that's mips and not megahertz? The 8051 needs 12 clock cycles per instruction cycle, so the 50 MHz versions are near 4 mips.

My client's concern was that none of their programmers wanted to code for it, and that 8051 code is very expensive to maintain. Having to shuffle everything through the data-pointer register (four instructions to do a simple move from an I/O port), the small range of a conditional branch and the lack of a parameter stack makes for some pretty bloated and bug-prone code.

I did try an 8051 C compiler back in 1987, but it didn't take long for some simple routines to fill the address space. It was also dog-slow. Again, it was the lack of a stack.

It's not that it wasn't a great achievement back in the 70s. It's just that it's architecture is out of the stone age of microcontrollers. Micros are so much better now.

The 12 clock cycle thing is true for the earlier chips, but the newer ones need as little as two clock cycles per instructions.

As for "bloatware", well I'm receiving constant polling from a 9600 baud RS-485 bus and driving an original IBM CGA card to produce large text and line graphics, retreiving the character bit patterns from a eeprom chip ...all in 4k of internal eprom program memory. It can't be that bad. I agree, the chip has very little internal ram (128 bytes), so some external ram is usually needed for slightly larger projects. I have to admit, I kind of like the challange of getting everything running in very little memory!

 

[rocco]

OK, Guy and Tony, I have to concede that my dislike of the 8051 comes purely from the perspective of an assembly language programmer. Though I really detest the instruction set, there are valid reasons to use the chip. And I can really identify with your reasoning, Guy. I have to pay $8 each for the HC08s that I have been using lately, and $20 for the DSPs. Also, already having the development tools counts for a lot.

As for why it's in the ZWave chip, it's because the 8051 is the cheapest IP-core you can get for an ASIC. Cheap both in purchase price and gate resources it uses. When you are trying to sell a chip for a dollar, that's a very valid business decision. To heck with the programmers . . .

Which brings me back on topic:

Does anyone know what the Insteon chips use?

I assume there is a microcontroller in there somewhere. How else can it run the SALad code? I know that AVR and MIPS IP-cores are available, but I don't know if they are affordable for a chip that is meant to sell for under $2.

 

[TonyNo]

One last OT diversion...

I have to concede that my dislike of the 8051 comes purely from the perspective of an assembly language programmer

Well, I love coding assembly on them... I guess it's because I cut my teeth on Z80's.

I detest C and all variants, so I can understand people disliking things others love.


As Guy said, there are versions that cut the 12 cycles down, and the 300 MIPs version is a soft 8051 that runs on an ASIC. "It's equivalent to 3.6 GHz clock rates in a conventional 8051".