Is this software for dsp only?

[yellow]

Hello,
I purchased Flowstone a month or so ago and think it looks like something I would like to learn. But I can not seem to get the hang of it, I guess I am not smart enough. It claims to be so easy everywhere but I struggle to do the simplest things. I was following the tutorial for Knight Rider leds but it was out dated and lost me just as I was starting to get into it, I contacted support about this and got no response. So I keep reading the forum posts each day waiting for something non signal processing to show up, because I am more interested in machine control than signal processing. Then a day or so ago someone posted a post about controlling an electric motor driven turbocharger. I thought, alright here we go, something for the non signal processing types like me to follow. Then later when I went to check on it, it was gone. What am I missing ?

[trogluddite]

FS can certainly be used for a great deal more than just DSP; but you're right, amongst the user base, audio DSP is by far the most common interest. In part, that's a legacy of the software's previous incarnation as "SynthMaker", and probably also because only certain hardware is supported for control/robotics applications (it also can't generate code for stand-alone microcontroller-based applications). The unresponsiveness of the developers certainly doesn't help, either; though that's a problem that we all experience, even the moderators!

Regarding the deleted post - it may have been deleted as "copy-bot" spam, where the body of the post is copied/pasted from previous posts in order to make the message look legitimate, which later gets edited to include links to the spammer's web-sites.

[acg2010]

@Yellow - don't get discouraged. Almost everyone here started out as you, some may have had a great background in programming, others in Synth hardware and electronic circuits, all of which can help. I started out with more of an interest in software synths and so read the Components and manual references. As Trog said, the original SynthMaker website was a treasure trove of information and help but then I wanted to try other projects (non-DSP), like you. Basically I searched the Flowstone examples here:

viewforum.php?f=11

There are all kinds of non-DSP (non-Synth) projects there. Also you might want to check out the Flowpaw robotics educational kit. I Downloaded the projects and studied them, rebuilt them from scratch, modified them,and tried to expanded on them. I also got a lot of help from the people here on the forum (Trog, Fluxcapacitance, Fix555, Spogg, and many many more over the years). As an example, I used the GPS project here:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=357

I studied it, got lots of help, and modified it to read my Garvin Etrex handheld GPS. My project post is here, if you want to see what can be done:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=561

My most ambitious project was to create a auto On Board Diagnostic (OBDII) communication tool. I started out with the com port basic module and went from there. Here is the post if you are interested.

viewtopic.php?f=72&t=2934

So don't give up. It may take some time to learn. A lot of my learning included trial and error, then trying to understand when things didn't work.

[Halon]

Dont give up. Start by downloading schematics made by others here on the forums. Check every module, check tutorials on YouTube and FlowStone guru. There is also a lot you can download from the 'synthmaker greatest hits' thread made by spogg. Great stuff in there! Everyone has to start somewhere.