Some spiders are crawling out of GHI

Haven’t even gotten to unbox mine yet :frowning: Been sick and I’m working on getting my video for KickStarter ready.

Pyxis 2 + Game Slate + Gadgeteer = Gadgetos; handheld portable game and operating environment that can run multiple applications and connect to new hardware on the fly.

And 2 RGB LEDs! :slight_smile:

@ Skewworks Is your KickStarter project up? Link?

Was there any info in the box about which GHI SDK to use with the Spider? Or do we only use the MS SDK?

@ Mike I didn’t see any extra info

@ Architect waiting for my reply of KickStarter; it’s not up yet only submitted.

Thanks Tom…

I have a poker game tonight, so I will have to wait for later to play.

I live in the Princeton, NJ area, and some of the local roads are still bad. The Fedex site in Princeton was closed after the hurricane. I hope they delivered my package today.

@ Mike: The Spider uses the EMX module so you can use the GHI SDK. The Gadgeteer stuff is a managed code layer that provides the easy plug-and-play features. The Gadgeteer stuff is not released you but the Spider can be programmed just as you would the EMX module itself.

We posted the schematics online of the mainboard, that is all you need along with GHI SDK as usual.

The first thing I did after plugging it in was look at myself looking at all the good stuff 8)

Oh yes we left the camera demo on it so the first thing is to plug it in and make sure you see it working.

So I go to update my profile because I’m so proud to own one of the first Spiders and discover, much to my chagrin, that it is not on the ‘boards I own’ list yet. Oh, what shall I do?

@ GHI - very low priority request - please add it to the list when somebody gets a chance.

It’s gonna be a late night!

Just got home and opened the GHI box.

It was late, so I decided to just plug the Spider into the powered USB hub I have on my IMac.

Gasp… The board booted, the EMX initial information appeared on the screen, and then nothing.

Where is the picture? …

Before panicking I decided to startup my Windows 7 virtual machine and see if that made a difference… Yep, everything works fine.

It seems that if an EMX is plugged into a USB boot on a machine that does not have a GHI driver, the EMX does not complete the boot sequence? Is this a known condition? I have seen it before on Windows machines also.

On another note… What is the correct way to remove a cable from the Spider? It comes out easy if it is pulled by the cable, but this seems wrong?

I do not think it is the driver but it is power issue

Solution, get rid of the Mac :o

OK, just giving a mac guy a hard time, all in good fun… :smiley:

Fixed the profile issue, FEZ Spider Kit now appears.

At first I thought is might be a power issue, but after some thought I doubt that it is.

I plug the Spider into a USB port of a power hub attached to the Mac and have an issue. I then start a virtual Window 7 machine on the mac and plug the Spider into the same USB port and it works fine.

As a test, I went to my office neighbor and plugged the Spinder into his Windows 7 laptop. It worked fine.

Bottom line… When the mac operating system is trying to mount the Spider the USB protocol communications seems to confuse the EMX. When the OS lets a Windows 7 VM handle the mounting it works OK.

What should be done about this situation? Nothing. Just an interesting condition.

@ Jeff: I am a professional windows developer. I use both Mac and Windows systems. I got a mac to try something different and liked it.

I prefer not to be labeled a “Mac Guy”. If you must label me, “weird” would be more appropriate.

@ Mike: I already have the copyright on ‘weird’ (or so I have been informed) :smiley:

@ Jeff: You copyright is invalid. According to patent law, I can clearly demonstrate, in my case, the existance of prior art relative to the term “weird”: