Hey All,
I was just wondering why Sparkfun doesn’t carry any Propeller gear. While I understand that coding the Propeller can be a little more involved, (Oh and it is 3.3v) some of its features are pretty rock awesome. For the speed and the audio/video synthesis options that it offers, I can think of a lot of projects that could be a lot cheaper on a propeller than an Arduino. For example I made a door bell that played back wav files using just the propeller board, and didn’t have to buy any external ic’s to handle the data.
Just saying, for the right applications it seems pretty neat.
Thoughts?
I totally agree - I love Sparkfun and I would love to see the Parallax products on here (they do already have the STAMP)
I also agree.
There are lots of projects the Propeller would excel at when compared with other uCs.
For example, the [Rover 5 can require a lot of processing power. There are four quadrature encoders to monitor. Four motors to control. And if you want to control the Rover 5 with a RC system, you need to be able to read in the pulses of at least three channels from a RC receiver. I think all this would be too much for an Arduino to handle. A Propeller could handle all this with several of its cogs (processors) to spare.
Here’s [my Rover 5 project where I used a Propeller to do all I just mentioned.
I have a list of some my projects [here. I think all the projects listed use the Propeller.
Of the projects I list, these show off what the Propeller can do pretty well.
[Propeller controlling 32 servos (each of the 32 servos can be independently controlled).
[A differential drive robot that records it path as it travels and can then play back the path to repeat its earlier course. The original path is determined by input from a RC system.
I attempted to build a hexapod with Popsicle sticks. The servos weren’t strong enough to power such long limbs but you can see a partial success in [post #2 of this thread. Each of the eighteen servos had their positions calculated using a complex IK algorithm 50 times a second. There’s a floating point object which allows the Propeller to perform these complex trig calculations quickly.
The Prop is really the ideal microcontroller for robot projects since it allows one to both monitor multiple sensors and output commands to motors/servos all at the same time.](http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?138088-Popsicle-Stick-Hexapod-Attempt-(walks-with-tether)&p=1076025&viewfull=1#post1076025)](http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?138903-PropBOE-Bot&p=1086427&viewfull=1#post1086427)](http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?137597-QuickStart-Driving-32-Servos-(Video))](http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?135706-Index-Test&p=1049895&viewfull=1#post1049895)](http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?130797-Mecanum-Wheeled-Robot-with-Machine-Vision&p=1078740&viewfull=1#post1078740)](http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10336)
Thanks for your feedback! I will pass along to our main research person to see if we are planning on carrying more propeller. (or why we aren’t at this moment). 
Thanks again for sharing your Propeller projects!