Electronic – PSoC as General Data Acquisition Block

psoc

I've been taking a close look at PSoC chips (series 1 in particular). With the reconfigurable analog blocks, they seem like a great solution for general data acquisition needs for prototype projects.

I'm thinking about buying the programmer ($37 academic) and a few PSoC 1 chips so that I can avoid building amplifiers and filters and design electronics in a more intuitive way (more like Max/MSP).

Here's the signal chain I'm looking at for my current project:

(noisy) textile resistive sensors => voltage divider => PSoC(amplifier => lowpass filter) => (Xbee => Xbee?) => Teensy((decodeXbee|ADC) => micro-OSC code => USB) => Max/MSP/Jitter

People didn't have much good to say about PSoC in the last thread. Do you think they're overkill for general signal processing tasks in prototypes? Not worth the convenience? Wait a few years for the bugs to be ironed out?

Edit 1: I'm not looking for the best solution for my current project, I'm curious as to whether you think PSoC is a good investment for general prototyping. I see two advantages for myself:

  1. I get to learn (and share with the local community) a new technology
  2. When I need to do signal processing in prototypes, rather than hunting for circuits, spec'ing parts, ordering them, waiting, then assembling them, I can whip out a PSoC, configure the blocks I need, and plug it into a breadboard

This was prompted by the answers to a previous question I asked here. I thought, rather than buying and learning to use PGAs and instrumentation amplifiers, I could get to know PSoC and turn a hardware problem into a software problem.

Edit 2: I ordered the MiniProg1 kit from NKC Electronics. I'll let you know how it goes.

Best Answer

Unfortunately I can't comment much on PSoC - it hasn't really solved a major problem for me.

What I can say is that you can connect you noisy resistive sensors to a PIC or AVR and then filter in software, so the PSoC isn't really solving a problem for you either.

For some sensors where a real amplifier is necessary before the A/D, then a PSoC might be useful, but I don't see it being important to your particular design, and may well be more expensive than the equivalent PIC/AVR solution.

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