Quote:
|
Originally Posted by sparksandtabs
snip!
Not to bash anybody's control system but I have a development board sitting 3 feet from me that cost 80$ that can do EVERYTHING that the IFI system can do.
snip!
|
I assume you're speaking of the STK500 board, in which case, you are flat out wrong. That board cannot do anything the IFI system does save for program a Flash based microcontroller. It is a very fancy, albeit useful multi-AVR programmer with some builtin debug features, and a builtin array of LEDs and buttons for testing. The obvious features such as PWM generation, I/O and ADC hardware require a chip with far more pins than a 40 pin PDIP AVR could ever supply, not to mention it doesn't support the ease of connection ability or any number of little things, such as pulldown resistors, multiple ADC inputs (16 last I checked), relay outputs, multiple serial ports (the DB-9s on the board must be jumpered by ribbons to the proper pins on the AVR, and even then only one of them is directly accessible, the other talks to the STK500s processor array.) You can't fully emulate the IFI control system with any combination of chips on that board, not in full functionality with all the extras you probably don't even realize you have and take for granted. There's also the cost of the development IFI put in to the pre-existing controller libraries and default code, which gives you much of that functionality you arbitrarily claimed the STK500 could do.
In short, there's just no way that $80 development board could emulate the IFI system properly, and have all the pre-existing software support and safety features, plus it definitely does not have a built-on 900MHz radio system.
Before you go bashing IFI and making wild claims, make sure they have some foundation.