Parallax, Inc. (company)

Last updated
Parallax Inc.
Private
Industry Technology
Founded 1987 Rocklin, California
Headquarters

599 Menlo Drive, Suite 100

Rocklin, California
Key people
  • Ken Gracey (President)
  • Chip Gracey (Founder, Director of Research & Development)
Products BASIC Stamp, Parallax SX, Parallax Propeller
Website www.parallax.com

Parallax Inc. is a privately held company in Rocklin, California. Parallax Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells BASIC Stamp microcontrollers, Propeller microcontrollers, microcontroller accessories (such as LCDs, sensors, RF modules, etc.), educational robot kits, and educational curriculum.

Privately held company business company owned either by non-governmental organizations or by a relatively small number of shareholders or company members, and the companys capital stock is offered, owned and traded or exchanged privately

A privately held company, private company, or close corporation is a business company owned either by non-governmental organizations or by a relatively small number of shareholders or company members which does not offer or trade its company stock (shares) to the general public on the stock market exchanges, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned and traded or exchanged privately or over-the-counter. More ambiguous terms for a privately held company are closely held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company.

Rocklin, California City in California, United States

Rocklin is a city in Placer County, California located approximately 22 miles (35 km) from Sacramento, California, and about 6.1 miles (9.8 km) northeast of Roseville in the Sacramento metropolitan area. Besides Roseville, it shares borders with Granite Bay, Loomis and Lincoln. As of the 2010 census, Rocklin's population was 56,974.

BASIC Stamp

The BASIC Stamp is a microcontroller with a small, specialized BASIC interpreter (PBASIC) built into ROM. It is made by Parallax, Inc. and has been popular with electronics hobbyists since the early 1990s.

Contents

Parallax is headquartered in Rocklin. The Rocklin office employs thirty-five people in research and development, sales, manufacturing, education, marketing, and technical support. Parallax Inc. has over seventy distributors around the world, [1] including Radio Shack, Jameco Electronics, and Fry's Electronics. [2]

Jameco Electronics is an American electronic component and tool distributor. It was founded in 1974 by Dennis Farrey in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, California and is currently headquartered in Belmont, California, where it also operates a brick and mortar store.

Frys Electronics American big-box store and retailer of software, consumer electronics, household appliances and computer hardware

Fry's Electronics is an American big-box store and retailer of software, consumer electronics, household appliances and computer hardware. Fry's has in-store computer repair and custom computer building services. The company has a chain of superstores headquartered in Silicon Valley. Starting with one store located in Sunnyvale, California, the chain posted sales of $2.4 billion and operated 34 stores in nine states by 2008.

History

Originally established in 1987, in Rocklin, California, Parallax Inc. manufactured products such as the ISEPIC, TopRAM, and the first third-party Microchip PIC Programmer. In 1992, the BASIC Stamp 1 microcontroller module was released. In 1995, the BASIC Stamp 2 module was added to the product lineup. By 2002, there were over three million BASIC Stamp microcontrollers in use around the world.[ citation needed ]

In 1997, the Stamps in Class program was created to provide educational resources that addressed the needs of electronic students ages 14 and up. The Boe-Bot is one of the company’s most popular products in the educational program.

In 1998, Parallax Inc. formed a partnership with Ubicom (formerly Scenix Semiconductor) to develop tools and BASIC Stamps using their new SX microcontrollers. Company founder Chip Gracey designed the SX-Key Programming Tool to make programming Ubicom’s SX chips affordable. And in 2005, Parallax Inc. and Ubicom formed an agreement in which Parallax Inc. was made the exclusive supplier of the SX microcontroller.

Ubicom was a San Jose, CA-based company which developed communications and media processor (CMP) and software platforms for real-time interactive applications and multimedia content delivery in the digital home. The company provided optimized system-level solutions to OEMs for a wide range of products including wireless routers, access points, VoIP gateways, streaming media devices, print servers and other network devices. Ubicom was a venture-backed, privately held company with corporate headquarters in San Jose, California.

Parallax SX is a discontinued line of microcontrollers that was marketed by Parallax, from a design by Ubicom. Designed to be architecturally similar to the PIC microcontrollers used in the original versions of the BASIC Stamp, SX microcontrollers replaced the PIC in several subsequent versions of that product.

In 2006, after eight years of development time, Parallax launched their Parallax Propeller microcontroller.

Parallax Propeller microprocessor

The Parallax P8X32A Propeller is a multi-core processor parallel computer architecture microcontroller chip with eight 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) central processing unit (CPU) cores. Introduced in 2006, it is designed and sold by Parallax, Inc.

The Propeller 2 multicore processor is under development and does not have a release date yet. The Propeller 2 processor includes features commonly requested by customers such as code protection, additional RAM and more input/output pins.

Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, is any effort designed to prevent the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons. Various methods have been devised to prevent reproduction so that companies will gain benefit from each person who obtains an authorized copy of their product. Unauthorized copying and distribution accounted for $2.4 billion in lost revenue in the United States alone in the 1990s, and is assumed to be causing impact on revenues in the music and the game industry, leading to proposal of stricter copyright laws such as PIPA. Some methods of copy protection have also led to criticisms because it caused inconvenience for honest consumers, or it secretly installed additional or unwanted software to detect copying activities on the consumer's computer. Making copy protection effective while protecting consumer rights is still an ongoing problem with media publication.

In computing, input/output or I/O is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. The term can also be used as part of an action; to "perform I/O" is to perform an input or output operation.

The Propeller chip

The Propeller is a multicore system that can do real-time simultaneous multiprocessing. It uses eight 32-bit cores called cogs controlled by a bus controller called the Hub. It can be programmed in assembly, C, or in the interpreted Spin programming language. It comes with a software library of objects for a various sets of input/output devices, such as UARTs and a video display controller emulated fully in software. The Propeller is also supported by third-party compiler developers who have developed platforms in C and BASIC. The Parallax Propeller is also recognized as being easy to program. [3]

The BASIC Stamp and BASIC Stamp 2

Released in 1995, the BASIC Stamp was so named because it was about the size of a postage stamp. Programmed in PBASIC, the BASIC Stamp found an audience in electronic hobbyists with powerful I/O commands that made it easy to connect to other electronic components. [4]

The Boe-Bot

The Boe-Bot is a programmable wheeled robot with a BASIC Stamp 2 brain that is used by educators and hobbyists. After being introduced in 1998, it is one of Parallax's top selling robots.

Sensors

Parallax manufactures sensors to measure distance, color, humidity, temperature, pressure, RPMs, heat, and altitude. These sensors are either surface-mounted components on a printed circuit board or in packages that are readily acceptable for breadboard-style mounting. Each sensor is supported with educational curriculum and documentation.

Education

Stamps in Class

Launched in 1997, Stamps In Class curriculum was designed to introduce students and educators to BASIC Stamp microcontrollers using software basics, circuit building, and simple hardware. One tutorial in the Stamps in Class series is the Boe-Bot, a simple yet versatile rolling robot that has a BASIC Stamp brain. [5]

Propeller education labs

The Propeller education program was developed to teach how to operate the Propeller chip. The Propeller features eight 32-bit processors. The Propeller education program demonstrates how to program the microcontroller for use in process control, measurement and signal generation and robotics. The program is designed for engineering students who have product design requirements in their curriculum. [6]

Filling a niche in the technology market by offering robotics for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and students, Parallax has been featured in magazines including: Make Magazine, SERVO Magazine, Robot Magazine, and Nuts and Volts.

Unofficial Propeller Expo

History

The original UPE, the Unofficial Propeller Expo North East (UPENE) was hosted by a long time Parallax Forum member, "Oldbitcollector." He labeled it "Unofficial" so hobbyists could meet and exchange projects, ideas, and advice about Parallax robotics without getting permission to host an "Official Propeller Expo." However, Parallax came on board and now many Parallax employees can be found at each expo, talking with hobbyists, students, and inventors. [7]

Unofficial Propeller Expo North East (UPENE)

The UPENE was an annual event located in Norwalk, Ohio, at the Norwalk Community Center. The expo consists of educators, engineers, hobbyists and students setting up tables and sharing their experiments, demonstrations, and products based on or inspired by microcontrollers such as the Parallax Propeller. The UPENE was the first of the three existing UPE's. [8] As Parallax unofficially sponsors the expo, the company was joined by a second sponsor: the company Gadget Gangster.

Unofficial Propeller Expo Chicago (UPEC)

The UPEC, also known as the "Chicagoland Propeller Expo," was a one-day event held at the 807 Building in Ottawa, Illinois. [9]

Unofficial Propeller Expo West (UPEW)

The UPEW, was the only one of the three UPE's to be located at Parallax's offices in Rocklin, California. This UPE also offers a special educator's course hosted by Parallax's engineer and author Andy Lindsay. [10]

The Parallax forum

Before 2004, the Parallax product user support forum was hosted in Yahoo! Discussion Groups. In 2004, this discussion group was moved from Yahoo! to Parallax Forums, located through Parallax's website. Members frequently discuss projects, programming, and products designed around the BASIC Stamp and Propeller Chip. Also, students can use the forums as a place to ask questions and receive direction to solve homework and projects. [11]

Products sold

Microcontrollers

Robots

Other products

Discontinued robots and products

Upcoming products

Related Research Articles

The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. The standard specifies how to inform the web robot about which areas of the website should not be processed or scanned. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize websites. Not all robots cooperate with the standard; email harvesters, spambots, malware and robots that scan for security vulnerabilities may even start with the portions of the website where they have been told to stay out. The standard is different from but can be used in conjunction with, Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for websites.

PIC microcontrollers

PIC is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division. The name PIC initially referred to Peripheral Interface Controller, then it was corrected as Programmable Intelligent Computer. The first parts of the family were available in 1976; by 2013 the company had shipped more than twelve billion individual parts, used in a wide variety of embedded systems.

BEAM robotics is a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design. While not as flexible as microprocessor based robotics, BEAM robotics can be robust and efficient in performing the task for which it was designed.

Embedded software is computer software, written to control machines or devices that are not typically thought of as computers, commonly known as embedded systems. It is typically specialized for the particular hardware that it runs on and has time and memory constraints. This term is sometimes used interchangeably with firmware.

PBASIC is a microcontroller-based version of BASIC created by Parallax, Inc. in 1992.

PICAXE

PICAXE is a microcontroller system based on a range of Microchip PIC microcontrollers. PICAXE devices are essentially Microchip PIC devices, with pre-programmed firmware that enables bootloading of code directly from a PC, simplifying hobbyist embedded development. PICAXE devices have been produced by Revolution Education (Rev-Ed) since 1999.

The XGameStation is a line of embedded systems, primarily designed as video game consoles, created by Andre LaMothe and sold by his company Nurve Networks LLC. Originally designed to teach electronics and video game development to programmers, newer models concentrate more on logic design, multi-core programming, game programming, and embedded system design and programming with popular microcontrollers.

Big Trak

BIG TRAK / bigtrak is a programmable electric vehicle created by Milton Bradley in 1979, resembling a futuristic Sci-Fi tank / utility vehicle, possibly for use on the Moon or a Planetoid style environment. The original Big Trak was a six-wheeled tank with a front-mounted blue "photon beam" headlamp, and a keypad on top. The toy could remember up to 16 commands, which it then executed in sequence. There also was an optional cargo trailer accessory, with the U.K. version being white to match its colour scheme; once hooked to the Bigtrak, this trailer could be programmed to dump its payload.

BOE–Bot is short for Board of Education robot. It is the trade name of a robot kit that is used in junior high, high school and college robotics classes. It consists of a main circuit board and breadboard, a plug–in BASIC Stamp microcontroller, two servo motors to drive the wheels, and an aluminum chassis that the parts bolt onto. Students can use Erector set parts, Lego blocks, and additional servos to build custom projects. The BOE-bot has been manufactured and sold by Parallax Inc since 1998.

Microchip Technology company

Microchip Technology Inc. is an American publicly-listed corporation that is a manufacturer of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers, Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, embedded security devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and wireless solutions. Examples of these solutions include USB, zigbee, MiWi, LoRa, SIGFOX and Ethernet.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. It is aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handles a wide variety of robot hardware. It requires the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

Scribbler (robot) small educational robot for pupils

The Scribbler is a small, low-cost fully programmable intelligent robot with multiple sensor systems. It is capable of auto navigation and interaction with its environment.

Single-board microcontroller

A single-board microcontroller is a microcontroller built onto a single printed circuit board. This board provides all of the circuitry necessary for a useful control task: a microprocessor, I/O circuits, a clock generator, RAM, stored program memory and any necessary support ICs. The intention is that the board is immediately useful to an application developer, without requiring them to spend time and effort to develop controller hardware.

Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer is an open-source rapid-prototyping standard for building small electronic devices using the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio/Visual C# Express.

Proteus Design Suite electronic design automation software

The Proteus Design Suite is a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation. The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and technicians to create schematics and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards.

References

  1. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 23, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  2. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 27, 2008. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 2, 2010. Retrieved June 29, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Nuts & Volts - May 2007". Nutsvolts.texterity.com. 2007-04-21. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  5. ↑ "Parallax Inc | Equip your genius ®". Parallax.com. 2016-06-13. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  6. ↑ "Parallax Inc | Equip your genius ®". Parallax.com. 2016-06-13. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  7. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 28, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  8. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on August 10, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  9. ↑ "UPEC: Unofficial Propeller Expo Chicago Tickets, Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite". Upec.eventbrite.com. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  10. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 22, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 27, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  12. ↑ "Parallax ActivityBot 360 Robot Kit | 32600 | Parallax Inc". Parallax.com. Retrieved 2017-12-14.
  13. ↑ "Make - Volume 06". Make-digital.com. 2006-04-26. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  14. ↑ "Parallax Inc | Equip your genius ®". Parallax.com. 2016-06-13. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  15. ↑ "Scribbler 2 (S2) Robot - USB | 28136 | Parallax Inc". Parallax.com. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  16. ↑ "Parallax Inc | Equip your genius ®". Parallax.com. 2016-06-13. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  17. ↑ "HexCrawler (Hexapod Robot)". CrustCrawler.com. 2009-06-22. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  18. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 28, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
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