Amicus18 - a quick review

gramo · Post by **gramo** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 2:30 am

I'm pretty wrapped with the new Amicus18 hitting the streets. I found myself clicking around for a while getting information so I made a quick review of it here: Amicus18 Overview

The upcoming (though not-yet released) Amicus18 Shields look just stunning.

I've got mine in the mail, and am looking forward to David (and the community) rolling out some Swordfish modules for it

RangerBob · Post by **RangerBob** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:31 am

Hardware wise it looks like a nice dev board and the IDE looks suspiciously familiar

. Anything that can utilise existing hardware is a good idea to me. Price seems about right too considering it effectively has a free copy of Proton included.

One question I need to ask is why they (Les i presume) chose to put on a USB "A" socket (host side typically), rather than the typical USB "B" (slave side).

I can't seem to find the schematic but looking at pictures the USB just seems to connect to a FTDI style USB-USART IC so the board cannot provide any host capability.

From my understanding the USB specs typically frown on, if not exclude "A" to "A" type connections, though a lot of low profile devices (hard drives etc) seem to use it due to mechanical limitations. I have hundreds of USB A-B cables lying around and precisely 1 USB A-A I use with a backup USB drive.

Edit: A to A connections are "non-standard, existing for specific proprietary purposes, and not interoperable with USB-IF compliant equipment".

Shame it uses Proton as the base for the compiler; I've moved away from that to Swordfish (and C-18 where necessary) for anything more than trivial 8-pin PIC12 stuff a long time ago. The more open nature of SF and its libraries would seem to lend itself nicely to the Arduino type development environment.

Nathan

PS. Gramo, in your reveiw you mention that "everything is open source". I don't believe the Proton Compiler will ever be open source. Libraries maybe, but not the core compiler. There is a big difference between free and open source.
I can't seem to find the schematics for the "open hardware" design either, but that's probably me not looking hard enough!

Francis · Post by **Francis** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:06 am

I'm confused.
I can't see the phrase 'Open source' on the Amicus site at all.
I know 'Open Source' is very trendy, but are people confusing the repeated use of the word 'open' as implying 'Open Source'.

"The Amicus Hardware is open design"
- what does that mean?
What's open about it? It's no more "open " than the average Dev board is it?

The customer seems to stuck with having to use the Amicus main board, with the Amicus bootlaoded PIC with (I'm guessing here) the microcode loader with Amicus compiler. Almost totally closed shop.
I'm sure it's very good, and sensibley attempting to get onto the Arduino bandwagon, but I can't see anything 'Open' about it at all.

CharlieM · Post by **CharlieM** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:14 am

Its all open source because the firmware for the pic and the bootloader for the pc is available to edit and do with what you want and the schematics for the main board are available too.

gramo · Post by **gramo** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:37 am

Francis wrote:I can't see the phrase 'Open source' on the Amicus site at all.

I'll re-phrase that paragraph, it might be taken out of contrast. From the Amicus site:

Amicus Hardware is an open design, the schematics and design data are available for download free of charge.

Understandably there are differences between open design and open source, though in my books they are much the same. There is not much about the Amicus18 that you can't find. The Amicus IDE is an exception, though I was referring to the physical hardware itself (and bootloader). From another Amicus web page:

For those users who wish to adjust the Amicus18's bootloader application, both on the PC and the firmware loaded into the microcontroller, it can be downloaded from here Amicus18 Bootloader Source and Firmware.zip

The PC application is written using Borland Delphi 6.
The Firmware is written using Microchip's MPASM assembler.

The HEX file of the microcontroller's firmware is also included.

Thanks for your comments Francis, regarding the "closed shop"; It's open to programming directly via USB (with bootloader installed), or it can be directly programmed via the ICSP header. The ICSP is designed for use with the PICKit 2 or 3, though any suitable programmer could be used.

There is no restriction as to what programming language you use. The free, fully functional version of Amicus IDE (Proton BASIC) is a nicety, great one at that.

Francis · Post by **Francis** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 12:13 pm

Thanks fo info. I hadn't realised that.

DerekUnderlay · Post by **DerekUnderlay** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 9:03 am

Amicus confuses me too.

Are you saying that I can do code in Swordfish and use the SF microcode loader to get my code onto the Amicus PIC ? (i.e. using the Amicus PIC bootloader).

A friend of mine with an Amicus says that the Amicus IDE will only recognise the Amicus USB connection and that his Proton microcode loader won't load onto the Amicus PIC via USB.
He's modded a.n.other bootloader for the 18F25K20 so he can use proton microcode loader now.

Assuming I have understood it correctly, it seems to me that a 'bog standard' bootloader would be much more appealing. Then Proton/Swordfish users could bang away happily.

(I'm not sure how many here actually have used Amicus as opposed to reading specs ??)

Nonetheless, I wish the Amicus people every success. And I'm sure that it's all fine if you stick to all-Amicus. Bit pricey though.

Raistlin · Post by **Raistlin** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 2:40 pm

As far as I am aware the USB interface is just an FTDI FT232 uart bridge and should show up as a standard com port , so pretty much any bootloader should work ok. The ICSP is brought out on a header (spaced for pickit 2/3 but any will work) so slapping another loader of is simple enough.

As for the USB A>A lead it was chosen because its profile physically is lower.
I also argued that it was a crap choice and a USB A>miniB would be better as nearly everyone has a 100 for digi cameras , mp3 players , phones ect.

Counter argument was miniB was considered, but was deemed not sturdy enough ,, myself I think this is BS . I use mini B almost exclusively on my designs as i think its tougher than a normal B socket or an A.

A cynic might say it was to squeeze a few quid extra for the non standard lead

RangerBob · Post by **RangerBob** » Mon Jun 14, 2010 8:29 am

Raistlin wrote: Counter argument was miniB was considered, but was deemed not sturdy enough ,, myself I think this is BS . I use mini B almost exclusively on my designs as i think its tougher than a normal B socket or an A.

I agree that's BS. I also almost exclusively use USB mini-B on my designs and have never had any issues with them whatsoever. These are the same users that manage to mangle anything from standard barrel jacks to expensive LEMO connectors with alarming regularity and have broken more toughbook screens than I care to remember.

I also don't understand why it needed a lower profile? That is a standard DC barrel jack next to it. My calipers show that a USB-B and barrel jack are pretty much the same height. Same as on an Arduino.

Perhaps this is simply to differentiate a little from the Arduino platform. Or a subtle guise to sell more odd cables!

MattH · Post by **MattH** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:32 pm

Raistlin wrote:As far as I am aware the USB interface is just an FTDI FT232 uart bridge and should show up as a standard com port , so pretty much any bootloader should work ok. The ICSP is brought out on a header (spaced for pickit 2/3 but any will work) so slapping another loader of is simple enough.

Raistlin is right. I have an Amicus board and can program the board using the "on board firmware" with SF. All you have to do is setup a new programmer and call the supplied executable loader software.

Jon Chandler · Post by **Jon Chandler** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 4:53 pm

The Amicus compiler will generate code for the PIC18F25K20 only. But his code will work on any board that can accept this micro. I tried a couple programs on my TAP-28 board with this chip installed and it works fine. I loaded the code using a PICkit 2.

As far as using the Amicus hardware with Swordfish, it's no problem (I believe SF supports the 18F25K20). There's an ICSP connector and any bootloader may be used.

http://digital-diy.com/home/swordfish/p ... tions.html

rinthesun · Post by **rinthesun** » Sat Jul 10, 2010 6:01 pm

The Arduino has a "Creative Common SA license" which mean a user must attribute Arduino but can use the design even for commercial purposes. What is the Amicus 18 CC license, do they even have one? The most strict CC license says you can look at the design but don't use it.

rinthesun · Post by **rinthesun** » Sat Jul 10, 2010 6:06 pm

I have seen else where that the Amicus bootloader is the Tiny bootloader which is basically open source. At least the developer is happy to have others use it. On the Tiny site there is a PC application for downloading hex files. I use it with 16F886, 18F2420 and 18F2520.

Amicus18 - a quick review

Amicus18 - a quick review

Amicus open design

Bootloader