Re: Being too dependent on one "guru"

Chris Carlen wrote:
Greetings:
<snip>
I think it is better to have me do the embedded side from scratch, because I am one of those who finds it much easier to develop a program from scratch than to understand and extend someone else's. That's mainly a result of the fact that I only do programming "part-time." Whereas for the software guy, he could probably decipher my entire work and begin making enhancements on much shorter order than if I were trying to decipher his work.

<snip>
 I have been pushing them to allow me to build a custom DSP/FPGA board
based on F2812 since I am already familiar with that CPU. But the software guy is not very happy about this, that it will take too much time and we should just use COTS. At this point I am actually starting to agree with him, but don't want to admit this and keep arguing for custom, because I know custom will lock him out of the embedded software side, at least until the FPGA-implemented peripherals are developed into a fairly stable form from the programmer's perspective.
<snip>
Does this sound like a sensible approach that provides mutual economic benefit to all parties? 

You are both right, to a degree.

The test should always be to justify the next level of complexity.

viz If Labview and a relay will work, then use them.

 If you can prove some 'coal face' HW is needed to augment labview, then
that should be used.

Only if you can prove that Std board, [and that _includes_ vendors
Silicon EVAL pcbs ] will not be suitable, should you embark on green fields development. In that case, often a conditioning PCB is all that will be needed.

I'd look very closely at the better FPGA development PCBs: ones with
USB,Ethernet and VGA support - you'll need USB/ethernet to get decent
speed into Labview, and VGA allows some local-display, for setup,
trace, and fault finding.
Then, explore the Soft-Cpu support around, and you'll have something
more flexible than your custom F2812+FPGA pcb, without the PCB development cycle.

There are also just emerging ARM chips, with FLASH, ADC/Ethernet/USB/CAN, so an Eval PCB for one of those would also
be usefull.
Ask ST about a EvalPCB for their STW22000 - tho that might be a tad new
to deploy in a lab...

-jg



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