Furure Hardware Support?

[eroyer]

Dynamixel TTL support would be great

[its1000]

Support for Cubloc or picbasic
Support to program bioloid by robotis or Nao from aldebaran

[csakarikas]

ARM Processors in general, specially CORTEX
MICROCHIP 32 (MIPS) Useful in Universities
AVR in general, specially Arduino

[fixstuff555]

Parallax Propeller chip. With its built in video generator hardware and multicore processing ability, this would be a great hardware platform to support. If the flowstone interface could incorporate objects from the OBEX library on Parallax's website, it would open up a ton of great preprogrammed objects, ready to use for the Flowstone user. The chip has some really unique capabilities not seen in your typical microcrontroller chips, i.e Arduinos, PICS, AVRs, etc. so it would seem to be a good fit for a unique product like Flowstone. Take for example one of the developer tools using a Prop. Viewport is a wonderful tool that shows the potential of a PC front end GUI with the Prop. Take that GUI front end with Flowstone. That would be pretty sweet.

Off topic, I have another suggestion that would tremendously increase your user base. Right now the high end Flowstone is a bit pricey. If the price for the full software package was about $100 or less, the user base would explode. A small price and large volume versus high price and low volume is a wash to DSP Robotics. What you gain though is user contribution. Instead of a fourm with 200-300 posts total, you would end up with thousands. Your product would tremendously benefit by having lots of users who contribute to the code base. It would make your product better and generate more sales. I played with Flowstone and loved it, but never have done a project with it. If you could get your price to something I could afford, I would use it in an instant. A bigger user base will also get you a ton more in hardware sales such as the embedded PC's, etc.

[Markolise]

I personally would love to have the Arduino supported in Flowstone.
That way some one could make moveable cameras and be able to watch them from any screen display in their setup, as well as be able to look at different spots etc.

It would work for other things as well, very useful.

It would also be cool if flowstone could support and build gui apps for the Android Phone/iphone, I would probably buy the full version if it did.

[fixstuff555]

A couple more suggestions, since it looks like most of these comments look like interfaces to microprocessor platforms. The MBED platform, which is Arm Cortex based, might be appealing due to it's cloud based compiler interface. The module has a lot of hardware based io built in such as USB, Ethernet, etc. Another platform I'd recommend is the XMOS platform. This platform may be a better fit since it can do DSP level filters, etc. Since Flowcode has a lot of audio functionality, the XMOS may be a better fit for a higher end application hardware layer. The XMOS is interesting with it's XLINK chip to chip interface that allows distrbuted threads running across multiple chips, which may be very beneficial to a large synthesizer-type system. The PC based GUI flowstone is capable of would be a really good fit for an XMOS system as well. Really you could pick up an incredible amount of traffic from adding an interface to any of these platforms, such as the Parallax Prop, MBED, or XMOS, because they all have really super active user bases. I'd even recommend the Arduino platform, since it's user base is so broad. I'm not a big fan of that platform, but there are huge numbers of people that are, even though the hardware is relatively low end. That could actually be to your benefit, since it may make the interface easier.

Some other comments. I've been keeping an eye on Flowstone for a while now, but never really dabbled with it seriously till this weekend. It's really a pretty incredible piece of software you have here. I'm really amazed that there isn't more example applications that people aren't posting, since its so easy to build stuff. Have you given any thoughts to building a library of applications that are organized into various subjects? Any easy way to contribute might bring you more interest. Another thing that you should be doing. When you create example applications that show or demonstrate some new function, make a Youtube video of it, and put the link to that in the post of the example. This would help generate interest as well. In addition to the Youtube videos, make small little application note PDFs of the example as well. This would really help explain the mechanics of building the application as well. One idea for user content that would be easy to implement, is EXE credits for a successful submission to the library. This would allow people to contribute without using up their free EXE credits, and maybe even allow them to accumulate them. Try to get exposure on other websites that your software will interface to, such as Phidgets or your other hardware you support. This will also bring in new users.

Another thing that I see that can generate more interest is user contests. You could have user contests, such as once a month or something, that would give a prize to the best application that month, such as hardware or license upgrades. License upgrades may be a really good prize, since it would give the most powerful version to the best programmers, would would in turn contribute more content. Hardware would be really fun, such as your new DAQboard or an embedded PC module.

One final thing. I have noticed that Flowstone and Synthmaker have a lot of similarity and capability, with perhaps Flowstone being the more capable of the two. My first question are Synthmaker applications useable in Flowstone? If so, perhaps you could tie in the two websites together a little better. From what I could see, a lot of the components between the two are identical. You could showcase some of the examples from the Synthmaker site, to help Flowstone users become more familiar with Flowstone. Just my two cents.

[Embedded]

fixstuff555 >> Great Post...

I've also used some of the XMOS stuff and I agree it would be a great addition. For those not familiar with XMOS it is basically a range of networked audio chips.

also some of your other suggestion are good regarding user posts youtube videos etc. Have you found the examples downloads there are already over 50 examples of how to use FlowStone: http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/viewforum.php?f=11
I found these to be a great help when starting out.

Another hardware suggestion would be the NI LabView DAQ interfaces, these are well used in industry but I think the FlowStone software is much easier (and cheaper!)to use than the LabView Software! http://www.ni.com/dataacquisition/

[Embedded]

Also someone suggested MIDI support? It's already there!

[lanctx]

more home automation and smart grid app..i think you should look around and see what people are buying so you would know more about what to include.right now im useing a ta8435h and a ta6560 based boards and i see that there very popular.

[Jay]

fixstuff555!

Flowstone IS Synthmaker with a couple of extra modules dedicated to various interfaces! Synthmaker can output VST pluggins and exe files and Flowstone only exe. and thats about it as far as differences in both platforms

We the SM community did not agree with the splitting and re branding of the product range or the separation of the new community! that is why most of the SM ppl stay over there and not here! Great pity imho since this community could have had the benefit of many seasoned users and gurus we enjoy over there! Maybe the lack of users of this forum will prompt ADMIN to merge us together eventually but i doubt it! Bloody stubbornness lol

There are a few fine fellows from SM land lurking here! Quietly!

Yes you can use SM work files (osm) within flowstone. go get em!

The difficulty for the devs in providing work from SM land would likely be that it is not their work and a lot of ppl there would not be happy to have it moved due to feelings over the split/new company old product situation.
That wont go away either until things are set out in a better air of fairness for SM folks RE we have waited years for modules such as video,usb,mp3 etc and they re-branded leaving us without them! Lots of angry ppl was the result.
The feeling was generally that we were used as beta testers for some 5/6 years then slapped in the face!

eventually we got a couple of the more mediocre (none of the above though) modules and prim's and a raft of welcome updates to stuff and hopefully it will continue! Hopefully in the future i can log in here and see something other than tumbleweed

Best Regards