NetBurner Community Forum

Totally new to NetBurner so excuse my newbie questions...

Due to memory sizing we are considering moving our (small qty) product from a Rabbit base to NetBurner and I am just trying to understand the cost ramifications at a module level and also ongoing software costs. Our other alternative is to use dual Rabbit processors.

I have spent a little time looking over the various products and I must admit I find it difficult at times to understand the specs and differences particularly as you move into the the cased or larger dev systems. I couldn't find a comparison matrix anywhere across your product range which was most surprising. It would be most useful ! I sort of created my own at least for processors from the various specs which often come from your store descriptions rather than the product pages and seems to crop up in many inconsistent places of the web site.

For example when I was looking for some entry level hardware to try things out ... aside from the board layout I 'm looking for functionality differences between the 5270LC dev kit and the SB72 dev kit ( is there a SB72LC dev kit ?) . The SB72 is based on the 5272 of course but the spec sheet on the 5272 states 2MB or RAM and yet the SB72 dev kit store entry says 512K The SB72EX does have 2MB Flash rather than 512K I believe. A comparison matrix would be most helpful across the full product range.

We may well opt for a mixture of modules, both cased and uncased depending on customer requirement. Our product has loadable personalities which might well mean we offer both smaller Flash and larger Flash variants. Additionally we use two serial ports in our product which means for debug purposes we will need to develop on at least a three serial port device I believe. The 5270 lists 3 UARTS but I dont think that helps does it ?

I couldn't find a clear expanation of the licensing model and ongoing costs for the IDE. From what I can gleam you purchase a development kit for a specific product model to which the software is restricted. This license gives you perpetual use of the software but you only receive updates for 12 months and support for 90 days . I assume this starts from installation. After 12 months you buy update packs that extend you another year. Is that all correct ?

So ... if we developed on a 4 serial port piece of hardware like the PK70EX232 but wished to ship our product based on a two port SB72EX either 2MB or 512K or the SB72 board or even use the module level option 5270 and 5272 processors in 512K and 2MB memory variants are we going to have to end up purchasing and maintaining 6+ different licenses ? I realise we likely won't end up with all of these but it's the principle I'm trying to understand, for example that a 512K, 2MB and 4MB product all based on the same processor module require independent licences plus more licences still if that processor is installed in some of your cased hardware products.

I am looking at the Support and Maintenance offerings in the NetBurner store - are these all the separate variations ? If I buy one development system do I just purchase additional licences for the other platforms here ?

We are a really small company so these costs are significant.

regards Kevin

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for the opportunity to address these questions. Please see comments below:

Totally new to NetBurner so excuse my newbie questions...

Due to memory sizing we are considering moving our (small qty) product from a Rabbit base to NetBurner and I am just trying to understand the cost ramifications at a module level and also ongoing software costs. Our other alternative is to use dual Rabbit processors.

How much memory do you have now, flash and ram?

How much more of each do you need?

What are you using it for? Are you running out of application space or data storage space?

I have spent a little time looking over the various products and I must admit I find it difficult at times to understand the specs and differences particularly as you move into the the cased or larger dev systems. I couldn't find a comparison matrix anywhere across your product range which was most surprising. It would be most useful ! I sort of created my own at least for processors from the various specs which often come from your store descriptions rather than the product pages and seems to crop up in many inconsistent places of the web site.

From the home page, if you click on the word "Products", you will be taken to a page with a product roadmap and product matrix. It is a summary matrix, but it does show memory sizes.

For example when I was looking for some entry level hardware to try things out ... aside from the board layout I 'm looking for functionality differences between the 5270LC dev kit and the SB72 dev kit ( is there a SB72LC dev kit ?) . The SB72 is based on the 5272 of course but the spec sheet on the 5272 states 2MB or RAM and yet the SB72 dev kit store entry says 512K The SB72EX does have 2MB Flash rather than 512K I believe. A comparison matrix would be most helpful across the full product range.

All our products are essentially single board network computers with the ability to program them to do whatever you wish. The difference in the models are the form factor of the hardware. The Serial-to-Ethenet products come pre-programmed with a factory application so you don't need a dev kit or have to program them if that application does everything you need.

The product catagories are:

1. Core Modules. Produt model numbers are MODxxx. These are designed for application where you need a lot of the processor signals, such as the address/data bus.

2. Serial To Ethernet. Product model numbers SBxx and CBxx. The form factor differs from the core modules in that there are fewer pins to connect. Models vary, but signals include UARTs, SPI, I2C, CAN, timer input, irq input, and a few GPIO. Fewer pins mean it easier/less expensive to connect to, but from a programming standpoint you can do everything a core module can do. These are available as a circut board level product, or in a metal enclosure. These devices have either 1 or 2 serial ports. For more serial ports see the PK70 products.

I would like to note a differentiation in the SBL2e products. These are designed to be very low cost and use a small micorcontroller with 32k of ram. All the other serial to ethernet devices have 8MB of SDRAM. Most customers use the SBL2e devices with the factory application. Programming these devices takes a higher skill level than any of the other network devices we sell.

3. Product Kit. Product model numbers NBPKxxx and PKxxx. This device is a very flexable platform consisting of a metal enclousre, core prossing platform, and a "blade board" socket. The blade board makes each PK70 device unique. We make a number of blade boards, but it is also very easy for customer to make their own custom blade boards. This platform give you a very fast way to create a professional finsihed product as a prototype, and works great as a production unit as well.

Some of our standard PK70 products are (http://www.netburner.com/embedded_control.html):
Quad RS-232 to Ethernet
Quad RS-485 to Ethernet
Quad RS-232/RS-485 (configurable) to Ethernet
NTP/GPS time server
Multi mode with GPIO, A/D and D/A
Digital I/O
Xilinx FPGA

We may well opt for a mixture of modules, both cased and uncased depending on customer requirement. Our product has loadable personalities which might well mean we offer both smaller Flash and larger Flash variants. Additionally we use two serial ports in our product which means for debug purposes we will need to develop on at least a three serial port device I believe. The 5270 lists 3 UARTS but I dont think that helps does it ?

If you volume is small as you suggest, it may make sense to standardize on as few different models as possible, even if they have more features than you need. The way out tools work the application is compressed in flash. So depending on what you are storing, you can get up to 2x the physical flash size. This is different from the rabbit, which runs from flash.

I couldn't find a clear expanation of the licensing model and ongoing costs for the IDE. From what I can gleam you purchase a development kit for a specific product model to which the software is restricted. This license gives you perpetual use of the software but you only receive updates for 12 months and support for 90 days . I assume this starts from installation. After 12 months you buy update packs that extend you another year. Is that all correct ?

The getting started page has this information. Here is the link: http://www.netburner.com/getting_started.html.
Each dev. kit comes with 3 months support and 1 year of updates. After that its an optional $99 per year for support and updates.

So ... if we developed on a 4 serial port piece of hardware like the PK70EX232 but wished to ship our product based on a two port SB72EX either 2MB or 512K or the SB72 board or even use the module level option 5270 and 5272 processors in 512K and 2MB memory variants are we going to have to end up purchasing and maintaining 6+ different licenses ? I realise we likely won't end up with all of these but it's the principle I'm trying to understand, for example that a 512K, 2MB and 4MB product all based on the same processor module require independent licences plus more licences still if that processor is installed in some of your cased hardware products.

As described in the Getting Started page, if you are using our hardware in each of your end products, there are no additional license fees.

Each different platform requires the purchase of a deveopment kit for the drivers, bsp, linker scripts, etc.

You can develop for all your platforms simultaneously in NBEclipse.

You will need to create a separate application image for each different platform. You can not load a PK70 app into a SB72 module. However, most times you can just rebuild your source files for each different platform, with few, if any, changes.

I am looking at the Support and Maintenance offerings in the NetBurner store - are these all the separate variations ? If I buy one development system do I just purchase additional licences for the other platforms here ?
[/quote]

The support is "per developer", not "per platform". So one $99 support account would cover one developer and all platforms he/she is working on. If you had 2 developers, each would need their own support account if they want direct support assistance.

I hope this information is helpful. We are always trying to improve our web site and tools, and any feedback is greatly appreciated.


We are a really small company so these costs are significant.

regards Kevin[/quote]

See: http://www.netburner.com/products.html

BBAdmin wrote: How much memory do you have now, flash and ram?

512K + 512K

How much more of each do you need?
What are you using it for? Are you running out of application space or data storage space?

I'm out of memory in most places, root and data as well as codespace although the latter is probably not the bigger issue. I have been squeezing things in as the application has grown regaining a few bytes by (re)using smaller data types, optimising char arrays etc here and there so I'll be interested to see how much space is left in Flash on the NetBurner . I suspect I may well fit into the 512K Flash versions. I might need more IP buffer space but probably only to about 1MB RAM so the 8MB will be more than enough.

The support is "per developer", not "per platform". So one $99 support account would cover one developer and all platforms he/she is working on. If you had 2 developers, each would need their own support account if they want direct support assistance.

I am the sole developer. So - just to clarify I need to buy the development kits for every variant I use (I can't just buy one dev kit and extra licences which are typically $99) but then when I renew each year I will just buy one support licence ($99) and I will have 12 months support plus I will have the latest updates / version of the compiler etc for all my platforms.... ?

K

Hi Kevin,

First of all, I assume you are the same Kevin H from UKHA and xAP?

Up until recently I was using the Rabbit processors for my embedded designs. I liked them as they have 6 serial ports, 5 of which I can use with my own hardware and they are in circuit debuggable. They are nice and low cost and the compiler is free with lots of drivers, most of which are in source code format.

I recently, from last year, switched to the Netburner MOD5234 as it had an external data bus CAN, 3 UARTs but most importantly, lots of programme space and RAM and a proper C/C++ compiler. The only thing lacking on some of the Netburners, was the limited number of UART's and I needed 5 for my design.

I chose the MOD5234 as the eTPU allowed me to create more UART ports, albeit 3 wire only and up to 8 of them (I have a design that used 10 RS485 ports on another design) additional to the 3 hardware UART's. 1 of the hardware UART's is dedicated to debug use so the eTPU has given me the extra I need and they work very well. I have Modbus running RS485 over 2 off them, one acting as a slave and the other acting as a master.

Getting the Netburner up and running with a website is so much easier than with the Rabbit and much faster too. Tod, one of the regular helpers and who appears to have C++ for blood, has an AJAX driver that I am currently trying out.

The support on this forum from the users and Netburner is superb.

Hopefully we can welcome you to the fold!

Regards
Dave McLaughlin

I am the sole developer. So - just to clarify I need to buy the development kits for every variant I use (I can't just buy one dev kit and extra licences which are typically $99) but then when I renew each year I will just buy one support licence ($99) and I will have 12 months support plus I will have the latest updates / version of the compiler etc for all my platforms.... ?

K

You can buy one dev kit and then just the sofware at $99 per platform, but remember the dev kits have both the hardware module you will be designing for as well as a development board for modules. So the development kit price includes all the hardware as well. The software is a small part of the development kit cost.

For support you are correct. One $99 per year support accounts give you support and updates for all of your platforms.

v8dave wrote:Hi Kevin,
First of all, I assume you are the same Kevin H from UKHA ?

Yep... small world this embedded stuff

I have a reasonable order (for me anyway) of my Rabbit 3700 based C-Bus/xAP/HomeVision/IHC/iViewer gateways but I will have to do another PCB run and they've requested a couple of extra firmware features. Although I had space in my last released firmware I know the current beta is jammed full of extra bits I wanted for my own use and I don't want to regress and fork. The Dynamic C debugger is now inoperable with my code too.

They are , as expected, pushing on price and the NetBurner modules will be understandably more expensive. As the original was so low margin I need to think carefully. I could do so much more with more space, but it needs to be commercially viable and not the labour of love the last design was.

I'll drop you an email off forum but I'm going to buy a couple of dev kits and I too will likely use the same 5234 module as you , or possibly the PK70EX-232 cased 4 serial port device as they have requested a nicely finished product. I need to see if I can squeeze my tiny custom module inside there. I'm going to sound them out at that PK70 pricing level and see what they say although it's at least double the current gateway price. Using a finished product like the PK70 protects me too should they not purchase the volumes they anticipate.

K

xAPPO, Having also used Rabbit for projects in the past i can tell you this. Once you try a Netburner product and feel the freedom, simplicity and speed it gives you i am willing to bet your going to take all your Rabbit stuff and sell them on line. NB is truly the only company who does it right, period! The only thing i love about Rabbit is the size of their boards, i am very fond of the mini pci connector. Outside of that, they are mere tinker toys compared to NB. Now that Digi took them over i really wonder what is the future of them.

Please spend the $99 bucks and get a kit. You get the hardware & software. You will not regret you made the choice. On top of that NB has a great forum with very helpful members and unlike Rabbit / Digi who may make an appearance once a year in the forums to help. NB staff is constantly in here to help.

In my time with NB, I have used Mod5270, MOD5234, MOD5282, MOD5213, SB72, SB72EX, SB70LC. Love them ALL!

P.S. if you do decide to get your kit, please feel free to ask your questions here. we are all here to help to get up to speed. Best of all there wont be a steep learning curve. Doing things in NB is far easier then Rabbit. On top of that you have an RTOS which is sweet to say the least.

Cheers