RepRap with XMOS

[Folknology]

Hi Leon, I also have been following that thread, good to see the prop guys coming at it with their hardware, I'm sure it will be an awesome board for RepRaps.

As regards common driver that would probably be rather difficult. Sometime ago I tried to work on a hybrid C set of libraries and APIs that I could use for both Props and XS1s, however I failed miserably to unify the 2 very different approaches for things like events and concurrency. There are however things to be learnt from different approaches (I have learnt a lot by building multiple platforms electronics for RepRap)

But hey if someone thinks they could do it then take a shot at unified drivers that would be cool. It might be easier at a very high level rather than driver based though IMHO.

P.S. I'm really hoping that the prop guys do a through hole board (clearly we can't with XS1) that would be really useful for RepRap as most are hand built, in fact that's why we designed the original modular OMCA + Dual Stepper modules as a complete through hole set.

regards
Al

[leon_heller]

I was actually thinking of common driver hardware, rather than software.

[Folknology]

Ok my bad, got the wrong end of the stick. I tend to link both the software and hardware when I think of drivers, with the software providing higher level abstractions. The discrete 'H' sections are fairly generic with only minor variations, there tends to be more diversity in the way the other pieces are wrapped around the designs however like Signal conditioning, ADCs, isolation etc.. not sure those would be best optimised for each platform if they were unified. If however it was a modular arrangement rather than monolithic, then certainly such a common design would be beneficial, I don't think folk are looking at it that way, which is a shame.

regards
Al