Gainer is a simple board developed by Shigeru Kobayashi and the team at Gainer.cc. This board utilizes the Cypress PSoC CY8C29466 IC making it a great board for digital and analog projects where AtoD and DtoA is required. Simple USB interface for reprogramming - no external programmer needed. The real power of this board is the ability to program it in a variety of languages including Flash, Max/MSP, and Processing.
Board includes a CY8C29466 with bootloader pre-programmed.
This skill defines how difficult the soldering is on a particular product. It might be a couple simple solder joints, or require special reflow tools.
Skill Level: Noob - Some basic soldering is required, but it is limited to a just a few pins, basic through-hole soldering, and couple (if any) polarized components. A basic soldering iron is all you should need.
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If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.
Skill Level: Competent - The toolchain for programming is a bit more complex and will examples may not be explicitly provided for you. You will be required to have a fundamental knowledge of programming and be required to provide your own code. You may need to modify existing libraries or code to work with your specific hardware. Sensor and hardware interfaces will be SPI or I2C.
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If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Noob - You don't need to reference a datasheet, but you will need to know basic power requirements.
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Unfortunately this breakout board does not grant access to all pins of the PSoC nor to the pins of the FT232RL. Kinda useless if you consider that...<br />
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Make it with access to all the pins and I'm buying at least 5 of these! PSoC is so much more powerful than those Arduino chips. Oh and add the hardware to get the SMP working (1mH coil, 100nF capacitor and Diode) and it would be a charm!!! Could actually make it work with a 1.5v battery. Plz check it out guys, Thx.
DogOne's comment on the schmartboard dev kit it great. I've been using kits from cypress that have been discontinued so I needed to find a replacement. Both of the kits at schmartboard are fantastic. The Explorer board is my favorite psoc dev board. Once you go PSoC you'll never go back. I've heard that the will be a schmartboard coming to Sparkfun, I hope it's true.
I found a really nice PSoC 5LP board I'd like to see SparkFun carry in their inventory or produce themselves: http://www.schmartboard.com/index.asp?page=products_dev&id=652
After doing my initial development with a Cypress CY8CKIT-050 and getting good a datapaths, the SchmartBoard is one fantastic addition to your embedded systems arsenal and it's the same price as the Gainer board with a much more powerful chip.
If you've ever worked with a device that can run code pretty fast as well as have plenty of custom logic, you'll never go back to anything else.
Thanks for letting us know about this. We will look into it and see what options we have.
I really love PSoC but I would definitely pay a little bit more for the PSoC 1 evaluation kit before anything third party like this. Or maybe 10 bucks less for the PSoC 4 kit which I have been trying really hard to not buy.
Can these be reprogrammed via usb?
I used the Cypress miniProg3.
The gainer.cc site is pretty much dead... is there some place/project where this board is still actively used?
Driver is simply the FTDI driver (VCP).
It appears to come installed with firmware designed to work with a set of serial command byte-codes - like those sent from its Processing library. NOTE: Processing, not Arduino. Look under their tutorials on their website for the library download.
I need the psoc driver software for interfacing...Can anyone help?
For future reference, try Cypress's website. They have their PSoC software free that you can download.
i need the software and the driver