I received one of the TI ezDSP products for road test and will be posting a full review with pics and so on later... for now though I wanted to set teh ball rolling with some initial thoughts.
First of all the parcel arrived safe and sound. It's a small box just a little bigger than the ezDSP USB Stick itself.
Upon opening the box you get three things.
1. The ezDSP USB Stick
2. A mini-dvd with teh install package on it.
3. A mini-getting started manual. With mini-print.
You do not get a magnifying glass to read the manual with.
The ezDSP USB Stick itslef has a USB A connector at one end, a line-in jack, headphone-out jack (why not line out????) and an expansion connector. On board is the DSP chip, an audio codec, some USB glue logic and various support components such as voltage sources etc.
It is not clear if the USB glue logic is just a debug emulator, or if you can actually use it in your projects to ship data back and forth to/from the PC.
My PC has a slot loading DVD drive, so I had to use an external USB DVD Drive to load the mini-dvd-disk.
By following the microscopic instructions in the getting started manual, I was able to install the drivers and the Code Compser Studio (CCS) version 4 software development environment.
The getting started guide also includes instructions on how to build and run your first ezDSP project.
I followed the instructions and behold I managed to install the IDE and SDK, and lo and behold the project built and ran - resulting in a flashing LED on the USB Stick.
Well, so far so good. The problem is: I have no idea what I just did. A whole load of confusing, over complicated screens and panels and windows whizzed past and I'm left with a bloated 'workbench' with loads of windows and panels open. It is very messy and over complicated.
Because I have used 'eclipse' in the past I can clearly see that CCS4 is based on eclipse with some TI Specific mods, and plugins and so on, but even for a seasoned eclipse user like myself the userinterface is beyond comprehension at this point.
No where in multitude on instructions you had to follow in the getting started guide did it ever explain what was actually happening at each step - if it had done that then I might have half a clue what to do next!
The problem is that this ezDSP starter kit has been developed around the box it ships in. They had to ship it with a mini-dvd just to fit in the box, and strip the getting-started guide to a minimum just to fit it in the box too!
Now, I'm not an idiot, (no laughing at the back!) so I'm sure that I can break this down into it's parts, IDE, compiler, linker, debugger, support tools etc and eventually figure out what all this overloaded GUI is trying to tell me, but for now it's all a bit overwhelming.
The first project you build and run is not a great starting point for what is after all a DSP product, it's a bit lame to be flashing LEDs - thats room 101, day one on 'introduction to microprocessors' - I would have preferred to see at least some kind of DSP project as the demo.
Anyway, my ultimate goal for this kit is to see how well it performs so I've set myslef the goal of producing a project which will capture audio from the line-in and apply volume/balance/bass/treble adjustments and output the result from the headphone-out. Watch this space for more reviews as I progress.
Regards,
Kenny M.