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Am I the only one struggeling or am I the only one using SPC?

Orbiter
Senior

Hi everyone!

My disappointment has reached the level where I write about it. Mostly to find a way to navigate the  ecosystem or to find an alternative. 

My initial idea was to move from Atmel 8-bits towards something more powerful. Usecase is automotive, where normal STMs are not at home. But..there was this new thing: SPC5. 

It took me days to figure out that the install videos where outdated and SPC5 Studio is not needed for Auto dev kit anymore. Several installations later I was able to click my way half through it but was totally stuck with UDE and the concept of it being something 3rd party that was no part of the IDE. 

Entering the pitfalls of eclipse (man what is this? Its awfully cluttered, buggy and inconvenient) I spend a few days learning that the pinmap editor must be closed in order to generate proper code, that the dark mode does not work -no matter what I try. The documentation is everywhere and nowhere. Is it in the devboard description? Or maybe some other board, I constantly have around 10 pdfs to navigate for just some basic functions and learning. 

Trying to read from a button on the devboard caused a major burn and my first dev board was destroyed. Reason: I could not find proper documentation how to declare the pin on the devboard as input. (well, on a devboard one could expect example code that walks you through the most basic things. Or expecting a manual that explains what to do and maybe even why?). Afterwards I totally ashed a BMS board, my fault... or lets say, the board is descriped in 3(!) pdfs with different levels of accuracy - yes- one could find that and "sherlock holmes"-his way through all of that...but really? Why is everything so obscure and well hidden? 

Using this community... well its not a very high answering frequency here, many threads are abandoned for quite some time. I rarely see intercommunity answers. Looks like everyone waits for the mods to arrive at the scene. SPC5 seems to be non existent in the knowledge base, on stack exchange and elsewhere. 

Finding the UM is quite a task, and everyone of them is quite well written with a lot of info, but where to start? Its like 3D Chess, and in between 2.2 is released and half of the application examples disappeared or crash on import..

So right  now I am feeling quite alone with a mega complicated IDE without proper documentation struggling with the easiest of tasks (Blink programs, analog readings, CAN message sending, How to use Threads).

What am I missing? I have done all of this on 8-bits for years. It never took me that long without having reached any progress and just having caused destruction and tons of support questions. 

How do you guys work with SPC5 and Autodevkit? Simulink? I even looked into Zephyr but as it looks no PowerPC support. 

 

8 REPLIES 8
AScha.3
Principal III

Hi,

i just use some STM32 cpu , so i cannot tell you about automotive. 

But based on what i see, this is a big company , producing a lot of new chips, just the other part, making the software and the examples to use it, is much behind the times .

So you can find here new and great chips, but for software examples to use them, maybe wait 2 or 3 years .

This is just my impression, on stm32 / ARM products - but might be same on the SPC5 ...

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Thanks. 
Weird, especially in the automotive world 2 or 3 years are way to much. The BMS they sell are already behind the cell chemistry, waiting another 2 years means I can likewise drop my development. Maybe its not meant for smaller devs, hence for massive OEMs that can just dog the difficulties with more people

well, thats just my impression here. I dont know, whether NXP or Ti or ... is better or not.

My impression is : this is a big company, making a lot of great, new cpus now ...

but the support , when using this new cpus, gets more and more worse : more errors, long time until known errors are corrected. But really, i cannot tell you, others are better - or same. I dont know. Maybe ... this is the brave new world.

If you feel a post has answered your question, please click "Accept as Solution".

Drowning in clutter and complexity…like webdev..

well I tried TI: a lot of chips, a lot of people in support- but no smart product. At least in terms of BMS. I got list in email discussions with 10 ti people in cc- but it never was someones problem…

NXP has no Asil for their bms, so its a small world.

Maybe I scrap all the fancy stuff and write plain assembler, something I do understand. 🙂 

so your old....same me. 🙂 🙂

 

If you feel a post has answered your question, please click "Accept as Solution".

Old…well,  I know the world without the internet. 
I hink its advantage actually knowing Z80 and how we did things back in the day. Without that my 8-bit projects would never have worked (running several CAN channels on an ATMega 328 while using almost all gpios is something my younger co workers think is only possible on multi core 32bit mcus, lmao) 🙂 Thats why I am so confused about all the hard-to-configure, hard-to-control and still-not-working nonsense in so called modern and complete IDE’s as autodevkit. Probably I am wrong- just looking for the one that can explain it to me 🙂

Max VIZZINI
ST Employee

No doubt there is struggle using a new IDE without having received proper training.

On the other hand, support has been provided for all your struggles both with private emails and in the community.

I used to do a lot of things with my peek and poke of my Commodore 64 but I think we cannot compare the complexity of an ASIL D solution with it. 😉

SPC5 is open to the public only since few years, therefore it will take time to build the knowledge-base of other communities. Nevertheless, we are here answering exactly for this purpose even on Sundays.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Best Regards,

AutoDevKit Team

Orbiter
Senior

Hi Max, thanks for your efforts and words. 

It could be easier and I hope someday someone will take the apple approach and drastically simplify and unify the process. I begin to see the advantages with autodevkitstudio, as its named now .-), to be honest.

Take a look at the CAN section: Its Subsystem 0 and 1. In zero we begin counting at 0, so its CAN0-CAN3. In subsystem 1 we begin counting at 1, so its CAN1 to CAN4. 

Well no, because in the lld we would name CAN4 on SS1 plain and easy just CAN7

But yes, I will get used to it. And will probably also start smiling at other newbies getting confused by it