Would anyone be interested in an XMOS challenge?

Community General Discussions
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UPDATE: If you have a YouTube account or use YouTube, add/view our "MyXMOS" channel for latest videos and XMOS news!

 

UPDATE:

The 9.9 version of the XMOS Development Tools is now available:

http://www.xmos.com/technology/design-tools

It is VITAL that XK-1 users use this release or above as the XK1 is not supported in previous versions.

As for anyone else - you will probably appreciate some of the cool new features:

http://www.xmos.com/system/files/releaseNotes9.9.0.txt

 

 

XMOS challenge winners are now available!

 

Hi everyone!

I was curious to know if anyone would be interested in participating in a challenge to make something AWESOME with a new breed of processor which is particularly great for DSP/networking/USB/motor control type applications or more basic things if that is overkill for what you want.

XMOS event driven processors allow you to execute code in parallel which could open up a number of possibilities to evolve your robots "brain" to the next level!

I have some development kits to give away potentially, but before I give away all the details, I just wanted to see if there was any interest before I add to the challenges area or such.

People have made some cool stuff with our tech before (See videos).

 

Some details of the processor itself which will be on the dev kit (to be released soon):

 

- Single core device (Although we do have quad core versions - ask me)

- 400 MIPS per core.

- 8 Threads per core.

- 64Kb RAM

- 8KBytes OTP memory for applications, boot code or security keys, with security mode

- 64 user I/O pins

- Support for high performance DSP (32 x 32 → 64bit MAC) and cryptographic functions

- Time aware ports provide up to 10ns timing resolution

- Designs implemented using a software-based design flow (can program in C or XC - very similar to C but with support for extras such as parallel execution)

- Scalable - can connect many kits together for crazy amounts of processing power using Xlinks.

 

For detailed spec see: http://www.xmos.com/products/xs1-l-family/l1lq128

 

EDIT: As there has been some interest shown and to save time later - please post below with the following info if you would like to be considered:

1) Project Title

2) Project Description

3) How many Dev Kits you think it may require (eg you may need 2 if you are demonstrating the ability of one robot using image recognition to track another for example)

4) Are you willing to keep a video/photo diary of your progress if we choose you? Please state which/both.

 

If anyone is interested please feel free to post below with your project ideas (and subscribe to this forum topic for updates so I can contact you nearer the release date) so I can see if there is enough interest. I hope I have posted this in the right place, if not please feel free to move this to the right part of the forum!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oszq2kRWGlQ
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well yeah
yeah i spose so i have only done a little bit of programing with picaxe so im un-bias to any chip but does it cost much ? and is it hard to program etc?

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Very interesting looking

Very interesting looking micros. I personally would like to experiment with an event driven processor rather than the usual line by line types.

Count me in!

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Awesome
Sweet! I am glad you are excited by this! Subscribe to this thread or something so I can contact you all when it is released!

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Easy to program

As long as you are familiar with C, you should find it easy. If not, if you are familiar with programming in other languages, you should be able to adapt pretty fast.

 

For an XC tutorial check out this document - which should get you acquainted with the basics of programming on XMOS processors

 

As far as cost goes, well I plan on giving a limited number of XMOS’ new kits out for free if people have good project ideas for them, though if you want to make some autonomous remote controlled helicopter or something then clearly the helicopter parts you would have to buy yourself! But the actual dev kit I plan to give for free to a limited number of people when it is released.


For more general info etc check out www.xmos.com

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Subscribed :)Will the

Subscribed :slight_smile:

Will the challenge be to do something to win the development boards, or will those who get the development boards enter the challenge?

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The specifications are

The specifications are definitely impressive, and using a C derivative as the main programming language makes life easy no doubt. Although I’m used to C++ on a PC, most of my μC experience has been with Assembly on the Motorola 68HC11 and various PIC micros, so I had a quick glance over the XS1 Assembly Manual. It looked pretty well developed, but do you know how it compares to XC in terms of multi-threading efficiency?

A lot of my personal projects revolve around the use of either physical or emulated artificial neural networks, an area where multi-threaded processing is a major advantage =D

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Challenge details
I aim to give away say 25 dev kits to people (though I can easilly change numbers should their be a great influx of people with great ideas) who have the most interesting/promising project proposals.

If you are willing to keep a video diary/photo diary of your experiences with XMOS kit, and how you made your project etc, then this will certainly get you extra points if I have to choose between people to give kits out to!

It is also perfectly reasonable that one project may be bidding for say 2 dev kits (they can be linked together to execute programs etc so may be required for more elaborate projects, or maybe you want to make two bots that can follow each other or something like our X-Robot).

Sound reasonable?

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Want to be considered? Let me know the following!

As there has been some interest shown and to save time later - please post below with the following info if you would like to be considered:

1) Project Title

2) Project Description

3) How many Dev Kits you think it may require (eg you may need 2 if you are demonstrating the ability of one robot using image recognition to track another for example)

4) Are you willing to keep a video/photo diary of your progress if we choose you? Please state which/both.

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Efficiency
XMOS processors utilise a single cycle sheduler and has 8 hardware contexts. It should be noted for Neural Nets, if you want efficiency on XMOS processor then they should be implemented using fixed point (not floating point) which XMOS processors are optimised for. Does that help?

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From looking at the

From looking at the documentation this looks to be an interesting processors setup. I’m just getting started with avr processors so I’m still learning how to program in c to get things running so I wouldn’t be doing too much even if I did get my hands on one of these.

I do have a couple of questions though. I didn’t see anything specific to this, but would I be able to output pwm signals(I’m assuming yes)and how many would the proc support? Does the proc support spi, i2c, serial communication? I saw a serial tutorial so that seems to be there, just didn’t see how many serial ports were available, 1,2, x??

Which dev kit would we be getting?

Also Not sure how complex of a project you’d be lookin for. I have a couple of small projects that I could use it for. One of them being my ir beacon programmer(basing this off of the xc-5 dev kit). This would also seem to have potential for my ir beacon seeker which I’ve currently built with a picaxe. A third would be possibly useful for the “ir beacon/way point” base station.

Anyway, let me know if this is or isn’t what you’d be looking for in a project. It’s all good :smiley:

 

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Dev Kit

Kitchen Aid Robot

This robot will be used as a mobile “vending machine” for non perishable cooking supplies such as spices, and hardware related to cooking, such as measuring cups and other measuring devices (though really it could be used to vend just about anything). The goal is that it be approximately 3 feet tall (an excellent height for humans to grab the objects that have been dispensed as the items will move to the top of the bot). I want it to be very smooth and navigate very nicely through a home environment and parallel processing would be good for tis. One, or several, thread(s) for checking sensors and dealing with movement would allow another to deal the the vending aspect of the robot.

 

I would only require one Dev Kit

 

I am willing to keep a photo diary of my progress and occasionally a maybe a few videos.


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Chess playing robot i would

Chess playing robot

i would like to build a chess playing robot. The chess board will have sensors under each piece so the pieces can be tracked.

Hopefully a chess algorithm will be downloaded to the board for deciding on moves. The robot will have a gripper to move the pieces. This could take a few weeks but would keep picture and video records of the progress. I will just need one kit. I have suscribed. So no more playing agianst a screen. Robot vs. human.

Thanks

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**hay **
if there free ,i would like to try one if possible i think it offers more than picaxe

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**how do we **
subscribe to this thread? how do i do that?

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its the button right below

its the button right below the last video

 

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ferret robot

ok i plan to build a robot that looks and moves like a ferret main aim to be a companion and protect at night .

i am willing to keep a photo diary and maybe a few videos.

though it will take me a while to build and get parts.just 1 kit need

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Backyard/Beach Blogging Beer Bot
I’m in the planning stages for a bot that is essentially an intelligent beer cooler on big wheels. It will seek out (and serve, photograph, videotape, and follow) the humans it encounters as it maps my backyard or other enviornment. It will then upload it’s (mostly visual) data in a blog describing it’s adventures. I haven’t settled on a processor yet … does this sound like something xmos might be useful for?

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inebriated people plus robot
inebriated people plus robot with camera == interesting picturs the next day…

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thanks
cant believe i didnt notice that thanks