A Basic stamp supercomputer

posted Nov 24th 2008 6:59am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: classic hacks, pcs hacks

basic_super

Hobby super computer building isn’t something you hear about every day. This project is even more peculiar due to the fact that it is a supercomputer built with BASIC Stamps. [humanoido] posted some great pictures and detailed info about his project. We’re not completely sure what definition of supercomputer he’s using, but he states that it beats out the others in 10 categories. Those categories are: smaller, lighter, portable, field operable, runs on batteries, has greatest number of input/output, has greatest number of sensors/variety, lowest power consumption, lowest unit cost, and easiest to program. Those sound a little more like features than supercomputing categories to us, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is one cool jumble of wires.

You may be wondering what it does. Well, so are we. From what he says, it talks in Chinese and English and has a plethora of other input and output devices. It also displays status of its internal communications. Catch a video after the break.

[thanks Jeff]

Comments [148]

tagged: basic, cluster, supercomputer

Reader Comments

But..

It runs on basic stamps..

Posted at 7:04 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by medix

10 Basic stamps = 1×10^-20 of a Pentium 3

Posted at 7:25 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by ThatGuyBoston

Maybe he should claim biggest microcontroller powered ball of wire. I really like the potato chip bag clips. I think someone should send him a link to expresspcb, no really!

Posted at 7:31 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by chris

That video was… a video – but _what_ does that contraption do other than say “Computer N Here”

Posted at 7:31 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by superjew

Chris..

How could I miss that one? Basic stamps and expressPCB go hand-in-hand.. ;)

Posted at 7:43 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by medix

And it comes with a supercomputer price tag too with all those stamps!

It is innovative that is for sure, but the thing about the large number if input\output thing I would classify as more of a feature of mainframes rather than supercomputers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer#Mainframes_vs._supercomputers

Posted at 7:49 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by mike

No matter how many Basic Stamps he has managed to cram in there, the fact that uses basic stamps (!!) will preclude it being a supercomputer — there is WAY too much overhead per node (viewed as a percentage of total processing power) for it to ever be truly useful. That aside, this has got to be one of the coolest uC projects I’ve seen in a long time.

Posted at 7:56 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by mydnight

I would thing if he wanted it to be even more portable and more streamlined he would have used something like expresspcb to create a “module” that can link up to other similar modules, he could probably reduce the footprint of this computer dramatically, and make it easily expandable at the same time.

Posted at 8:11 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by twistedsymphony

its impressive that he built that. but i just laughed when i saw that ghastly rats nest of wires. zip ties man, zip ties.

Posted at 8:24 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by nick

Once again proving that people have far more money and free time than I…

Posted at 8:30 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by eric

This dude has way too much free time.

Seems like more time was spent on the goofy video than the “supercomputer”

Posted at 8:47 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by jimmie

haha,
that’s real hack
i like it

Posted at 9:14 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by timour

So, even if my mother’s 10 year old computer can compute circles around this contraption, its still a supercomputer?

Supercomputers are meant to do compute bound tasks. If anything, this is more like a mainframe computer with its high I/O capacity.

It’s a neat effort, and there’s always brownie points for blinky lights and swiches, but if all those boards are gunna be mounted together anyway to act as a supercomputer, a 1 wire bus is certainly not the most prudent choice of communication.

An interesting project, but a supercomputer, it is most certainly not.

Posted at 9:22 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by AnarKIT

Heh, How’d you like to try to get that thing through airport security in a carry on? LOL!

Posted at 9:23 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by Clay

smaller? lighter?? portable???

props for playing with microcontrollers and actually making something. and nothing wrong with stamps. stamps aren’t bad for an intro to micros. it seems that this fellow has outgrown them and is ready to move on to something more serious, like an arduino (faster, cheaper, more memory, more IO, dedicated analog lines so no more little RC circuits hanging off of every pin, more powerful…).

Posted at 11:39 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by walt

let’s see now:

BS – about 4000 instructions per second
mega32 – 16000000 instructions per second
epic fail

but crazy mad scientist props!

Posted at 11:46 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by le'chef

supercomputer? … in size, maybe. not in ability.

i would be proud too, but be carefull not to get carried away. describe your project with your head, not with your heart….

Posted at 11:46 am on Nov 24th, 2008 by will

arduino fans , you thik it much different from BS ? No. the real upgrade will be using plain chips, just add crystal and 2 caps and here you have dirty cheap and fast micro controller

Posted at 12:25 pm on Nov 24th, 2008 by therian

A DIY mainframe would be cool, this looks snazzy, but what does it do?

Posted at 1:25 pm on Nov 24th, 2008 by TheLucster

Also just pondering, how many FLOPs can the various hobbyist uc’s perform?

On an unrelated note, I found this reading up about Colossus:
“My laptop digested ciphertext at a speed of 1.2 million characters per second – 240 times faster than Colossus. If you scale the CPU frequency by that factor, you get an equivalent clock of 5.8 MHz for Colossus. That is a remarkable speed for a computer built in 1944.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

Amazing!

Posted at 1:30 pm on Nov 24th, 2008 by TheLucster

What’s your assessment of this situation, Gunny?
It’s a cluster $%##$, Sir.
Say again?

Posted at 3:42 pm on Nov 24th, 2008 by UltraApple

Is anyone else reminded of Euclid from the film Pi?

All that’s needed now are ants and paranoia! :D

An absolutely brilliant idea. I love the fact that there are people who take on the “Can Do” attitude, and do it just because they can.

Posted at 3:49 pm on Nov 24th, 2008 by LordBug

Way cool! its an awesome project and amazing what can be made with hobby basic stamps. gotta get me one…

I can see it outperforms all the others on originality and being the 1st, IMO…

Posted at 3:02 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by dogbones

Getting the thing to work is usually the topmost priority, aesthetics are cool too, but they often come later in the process.

It looks like a lot of hacks come through in the phase where the idea is to show off the working project as opposed to a “finished product”.

It’s cool to have really good attention to tying wires up, but you just wait till _you_ do it and then have to cut it all apart to de-bug or retrofit.
It’s a pain in the ass, wastes effort and takes up a lot of time.

Posted at 3:55 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by strider_mt2k

Wow. That’s great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty impressive. But how about a little narration instead of your gay background music. Why is it that some of the greatest minds are so socially inept? Grow a set, learn how to speak, and tell us about your project. Don’t fit the typical basement virgin stereotype there buddy.

Posted at 4:34 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by MdP

i really must add that the video was complete crap.

really very unfortunate.

Posted at 4:49 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by strider_mt2k

if it really does what he says, thei he could sell it with huge amounts of money :D

anyway… isn’t the description of the supercomputr a lil bit exagerated? :-S

Posted at 6:54 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by marverde

Not a supercomputer of course and not sure the creation is just cool or the product of insanity. LOL

Hacking the Machine – Trying to take back control in our increasing technology driven world

Posted at 9:38 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by hackingthemachine

Well done Humanoido. Main value of this project is on the ability of individual stamps to work independently in real time, 10 of them. With this mimicry of bio systems is much better than with single powerful chip (even with multitasking).
Not to mention that programming concurrent real-time tasks is somewhat of a nightmare in regular programming language.
Well done commander!

Posted at 10:00 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by MC screwdriver

Haha very neat!, looks like the computer in the film Pi

Posted at 10:45 am on Nov 25th, 2008 by wickiddesigns

Cool looking thing, now you just need to figure out a way for it to walk around and smash useful computers so as to raise it’s own value.

Don’t get me wrong though, I like it and would have made a post if I had assembled that too. :)

Keep having fun!

Posted at 2:23 pm on Nov 25th, 2008 by jamessnell

Great functioning supercomputer humanoido! The real power is in the parallel running of all those programs at the same time, clustering technology of both hardware and software, and your supercomputer is a fine example. Very powerful indeed! Thank you!!

Posted at 7:00 pm on Nov 25th, 2008 by mansman

Very good supercomputer, and excellent power points. It sure beats out many supercomputers with its power. The assembly is very cool!!! Excellent movie too. Congrats!

Posted at 1:54 am on Nov 26th, 2008 by nestrmbonne

humanoido, I like the idea of a hobby supercomputer. Those other supercomputers cost millions of dollars. This one is a great learning tool and in my price range. Plus it does programs with the same powerful parallel clustering. Kind of like a micro-supercomputer, eh?

Posted at 2:05 am on Nov 26th, 2008 by timothybcarsons

THE FEATURES ARE THE POWER OF THIS SUPERCOMPUTER.

Posted at 5:16 am on Nov 26th, 2008 by brainman01

the supercomputer video is professional and the best I’ve seen,would like to see more… i saw many uses for it posted at the forum for this supercomputer…

Posted at 6:03 am on Nov 26th, 2008 by darkmasterzeon

This has been around for awhile, basically one guy who is really interested in parallel processing. Lets root that he makes a cool discovery and all our multicore CPUs work that much better.

Basically the whole “supercomputer” thing is marketing. Anyone can put together 12 x86 computers, add linux (and MPI or OpenSSI) and run parallel code, but doing it with stamps got his name in a magazine. Technically it also allows for trying out a few more exotic forms of parallelism without resorting to custom FPGA based interconnects and custom drivers. A level of experimenting likely beyond most home users.

Posted at 12:16 am on Nov 27th, 2008 by tillin9

This “supercomputer” would not be considered fast in the 70s, a 4mhz z80 would be more powerful. They basic stamps are a complete ripoff, $70 each but you would need over 5300 of them to equal the performance of a pentium 1! (massively low estimate)

Posted at 6:02 am on Nov 27th, 2008 by mike-stamp

I agree it’s a very fast supercomputer once put together and he used some of the most powerful stamps available. Since no hobbyist ever did this before, well, a lot of jealous people with no imagination. Never mind. Who said a 4mhz z80 is more powerful is totally wrong. As the post says, it’s the top of the line. Plus these can be bought for $49 or less, not $70. Let’s get our facts straight before mouth opening…

Posted at 8:51 am on Nov 27th, 2008 by data-guru

Who wants to build a supercomputer? I do! It sounds like a new tv show. I’m in. Er… this is the best idea since sex

Posted at 11:18 am on Nov 27th, 2008 by genzi88

I looked a the article again and realised that the “supercomputer” only had one of the $70 basic stamps, the rest are the cheaper slower ones. This means that a single z80 would wipe the floor with it, an intel 4004 would be more comparable for instructions per second.

Until you are forced to use a BS2 for a school project, you do not know the meaning of the word slow! If the sega genesis had a processor as fast a basic stamp the games would run at around 1fps.

Posted at 5:14 pm on Nov 27th, 2008 by mike-stamp

There are many race cars that are not the fastest cars in the world, yet they are still race cars. Theres nothing wrong with using the midrange and top level stamps to create a project like this, that offers huge power not based on being the fastest in the world, but the originality of being the first hobby supercomputer, with the most powerful number of io stamp capability in the world is enough for me. I applaud his super success!

Posted at 12:57 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by geogioemanzess

The superstamputer could flush the z80 down the toilet with it parallel port clustering software port power. Besides, its not about the chip or speed but the power, concept and being the first. Go ahead DIY z80. It an intrestig thing. But you will always be 2nd to this fella’s great supercomputer. hahahaha!!

Posted at 1:06 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by dukeyou

it true a school program and not know properly program basic stamp it would look like run slow. Ever school project i made ran fast.. haha

Posted at 1:49 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by nancihanson

He posted new uses here.
http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=21&m=308220&p=2
I think this is totally rad n sick how he do many fab things with the stamp under our noses all this time. heehee.

Posted at 2:17 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by bobbbarker

it’s simply super!

Posted at 2:45 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by nednestered

agreed! super computer, super idea, super power, super simple, super project, super applications, super amazing. 8=))))

Posted at 2:54 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by tomtom365

i like the idea that many programs can cluster up and run in parallel, yet be controlled by one master program running at the same time. That’s awesome raw power!!! I give it a perfect 10!

Posted at 4:55 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by tedmeyersons

best idea ever. great going!I’d use it to solve all my problems. .ha

Posted at 5:16 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by lillyliuatwuschool17

Read the original article at the parallax forum and realized there are many ways to harness the power. Really want one I can purchase as a kit or something.

Posted at 5:54 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by coolduder

YUP, THE STAMPER ONE WIRE INTERFACE SURE BEATS OUT ALL THE OTHERS. ITS THE 1ST PLUG-N-PLAY SUPERCOMPUTER EVER INVENTED. I LIKE HOW HE PLUGS IN MORE COMPUTERS WITH ONLY ONE WIRE.

Posted at 7:27 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by stampmans

No one ever built a hobby basic stamp supercomputer before. Checked the web. give it a perfect score for originality, creativity, inventiveness, superior design, and more – have my own list! He calls it a basic stamp supercomputer on superpbasic on supernet. Really it’s the first superstamp ever made.

Posted at 7:37 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by bignutsguru

stamps on steroids, no doubt

Posted at 8:02 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by matrixbuilder

looks like a great product because it’s low cost and hobby orientated.

Posted at 9:45 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by boardboy

Personally I prefer the C Stamp microcontroller. Its cheaper and better than the Arduino microcontroller. I think that would be better for him to move up to a microcontroller that is more on par with his skill level and has greater educational value.

http://www.c-stamp.com if anyone is interested.

Posted at 10:59 am on Nov 28th, 2008 by Orlando Hernandez

personally i prefer the basic language stamp microcontroller. its easier to program and has a faster learning curve – better than arduino microcontroller. I think he made the right choice for a hobby project at a skill level that is more suitable to hobbyists and this will have more educational value to more people getting into stamps and their first supercomputer. Simple is better.

http://www.parallax.com if anyone is interested.

Posted at 9:50 pm on Nov 28th, 2008 by dr williams b nordon

this project is totally fantastic. I’m blown away by it.

Posted at 7:46 am on Nov 29th, 2008 by spin-stamp-man

Dude, really? At least use a useful ic like an arduino, or propellor or a 555 timer…(lol)

Posted at 3:56 pm on Nov 29th, 2008 by St,Jimmy

i still feel dat there is lot of scope fr improvement.

Posted at 11:18 pm on Nov 29th, 2008 by jatin vasan

555? ROTFLMAO!!!! the 555 is a timer chip, not a processor —HAVE U MIssed the point? the point is, he built it, it works, its the first. If u want propeller or other, go built it, but it will be more complicated, harder to build, more difficult to program, its not about the chip

Posted at 3:06 am on Nov 30th, 2008 by Bob Nyersons

I am barack obama and I approve this article

Posted at 6:18 am on Nov 30th, 2008 by Obama

The Basic Stamp is a good microcontroller?

Really?

The following is a list of only some of its flaws

It is not structured.
It is not strongly typed. (This means that there is no promotion or coercion.)
It relies heavily on the GOTO statement.) (This makes for very disorganized code.)
It has many mystic , unnecessary, and restrictive instructions.
It has limited nesting.
There is NO recursion.

– — – — – — – — – — –

Perhaps one of its BIGGEST flaws is that it does not follow the fundamental rules of math (Order of Operations)

In Order of Operations the way that a math problem is supposed to be solved is like so, Parenthesis, Exponents,
Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.

In following these rules, the following expression would evaluate in the way described below.

Here 4 is divided by 2. Then, 2 + 2 is left. When this is solved, the answer is 4.

2 + 4 / 2 = 4

In PBASIC however, 2 is added to 4 which leaves 6 / 2. When this is solved the answer is 3.

2 + 4 / 2 = 3 (???)

– — – — – — – — – — –

Posted at 7:34 am on Nov 30th, 2008 by Orlando Hernandez

Hey I am Olando Hernandez. I say, Basic Stamp is best microcontroller. It has no flaw. Great article. Keep up the excellent work on Supercomputer!

Posted at 9:59 am on Nov 30th, 2008 by orlando hernandez

Actually, no.

I say that the Basic Stamp is the most useless microcontroller on the market. That is NOT a supercomputer.

Posted at 11:45 am on Nov 30th, 2008 by Orlando Hernandez

humanoido! Nicely done. Excellent working model and demonstration. You stand out among a crowd for making an effort to produce a functional model. Good riddance to the naysayers and Stamp critics – it’s not about whether this is done with an RCX brick or a Pentium. You stand out among the masses

Posted at 12:49 pm on Nov 30th, 2008 by nicelydone

humanoido, the idea you have is new and the first. We hobbyists salute you in appreciation. Now anyone can have a beautiful supercomputer as a project. This is just awesome. We thank you so much..

Posted at 3:44 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by GreatJob!

Fantastic Project! I like how you used parts you collected for years, and you could have used any processors for the project – the Parallax Stamp is a great choice. Humanoido, you are very innovative and a great inventor. Excellent video demo too!

Posted at 4:24 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Dr. Thomason E. Stone

humanoido, nice project, give u a high 5. Most useful, great demo video, I like yor ideas.

Posted at 5:32 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by I LOVE IT!!!!

just one question, where do all those wires go and what if one gets pulled out? Ok, it was 2 questions.. hehe.. good luck on your brilliant projects

Posted at 5:41 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by I LOVE IT!!!!

I agree with eric …
There is too much people around that have more money and more time than me.

It’s not a supercomputer and it’s not a cluster.
A small net of basic stamps can’t be a supercomputer.

Think about USB … in your computer right now there are a lot of usb devices working together.
Almost every device have its own processor or microctonroller.

Then, I own a supercomputer???? Wow.

Posted at 6:32 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by BUSY

I’m not sure why some less educated people have a bone to pick about the semantics of a supercomputer. This is a very neat cool project for anyone wanting to get into real parallel cluster supercomputing very cheap. Humanoido gives you a way to do it. I like the idea of a USB supercomputer that can program 216 clustered sensors of your choice and process data and run paralleled programs at the same time. Excellent idea!

Posted at 9:11 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Educated Man

I’m not sure why some people have a bone to pick about the semantics of a supercomputer. This is a very neat cool project for anyone wanting to get into real parallel cluster supercomputing very cheap. Humanoido gives you a way to do it. I like the idea of a USB supercomputer that can program 216 clustered sensors of your choice and process data and run paralleled programs at the same time. Excellent idea!

Posted at 9:13 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Educated Man

I would not be surprised if humanoido came up with a way to create another supercomputer, this one can be interfaced from modified USB ports and their modified software drivers, and I think you just gave him another great idea. That would allow many pc’s into the picture interfaced along with extra devices and the Basic Stamps that do the controlling. Very cool supercomputing, and very powerful!!!

Posted at 9:28 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Educated Man

humanoido has created a great little supercomputer for the hobbyist. This is amazing and wonderful. By the way, I love Parallax Stamps and I love this Basic Stamp Supercomputer.

Posted at 11:29 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Stamp Lover

I’ve tried almost all the parallax basic stamps and each one has special powers. I applaud humanoido’s ability and skill to mix stamps in his basic stamp supercomputer. I’m also a parallax stamp lover. I have a stamp collection. :)

Posted at 11:42 am on Dec 1st, 2008 by Another Stamp Lover

It was ironical about USB :)

Posted at 4:58 pm on Dec 1st, 2008 by BUSY

awsome! very first and cool idea

Posted at 6:01 pm on Dec 1st, 2008 by jgrimm

i’ve always liked the idea of making a distributed computer out of microcontrollers, although the basic stamp is certainly not the ideal microcontroller for the job. i’d like to see a pcb packed with a ton of small, cheap single-chip microcontrollers, working together. the ’sx’ controller (which, ironically, some of the basic stamps are actually built out of) is 2$ per chip and runs at 75mips. with 50$ worth of these, you could get 1.8gips. still not the most cost effective thing in the world, but a step in the right direction for those dreaming of a future controlled by billion-core neural-network cpus. :)

Posted at 10:37 pm on Dec 1st, 2008 by ryan

With the Basic Stamp Supercomputer, the Basic Stamp is perfect for the job. Easy to interface, well supported, get up and running quick, easy to program, and all those qualities humanoido listed.
Hey! Look here. Humanoido is using the SX chip in his supercomputer. hahaha! You’re too late with your idea!!! :) http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=21&m=308220&p=4

Posted at 1:40 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Guru Master

One thing I like about humanoido’s Basic Stamp Supercomputer is that it’s reality. It’s built and working. All those other guys talking about other chips are just full of lip service.

Posted at 2:01 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Guru Master

hey tom, you’re right! I looked it up, and humanoido has the only hobby supercomputer ever built. That’s radically awesome dude!

Posted at 2:32 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Albert Einstein

I like how humanoido used the sx chip. That guy is some kind of magician to mix and match. It’s true, the Basic Stamp is extremely powerful. The supercomputer is even more powerful! His latest post at the parallax forum details the upgrade.

Posted at 7:08 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Machine Master

This is one of the best stamp projects I’ve ever seen. I got started in parallax stamps last year. I now know how to program and wire circuits. Basic Stamps – you gotta love em. Super Basic Stamp Supercomputer! Love it!

Posted at 8:28 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Fantastic Project!

Hello, thank you for all the wonderful comments and suggestions. I have increased the number of computers in the Basic Stamp Supercomputer. Details at youtube and Parallax Forums. It now has the SX chip, 2px and others for added power. I’m working to add the IBM super chips into the cluster. Keep up those great comments! Thanks again!

Posted at 8:58 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by humanoido

cool! I can think of some stuff for it to do

Posted at 9:15 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by circuit builder

like man make the supercomputer control more supercomputers dude..

Posted at 9:21 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by stamper dude

Yu made one before we did. congrats. u ar the 1st and best

Posted at 9:26 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by MIT

This is most certainly not a supercomputer, stop calling it a supercomputer. It’s also not the first hobbyist “supercomputer” either.

Anyone who has clustered a few machines together through a network to do something such as graphics rendering has built a supercomputer far more powerful than this machine.

I’m not saying this isn’t a neat thing, it is very neat, but it’s just a bunch of microcontrollers that can talk to each other.

Posted at 11:48 am on Dec 2nd, 2008 by AnarKIT

It certainly IS a Basic Stamp Supercomputer and also the 1st. We did the research. It’s not a network. It is a real supercomputer with the supercomputing software too.

That’s really uncalled for, anarkit.

Posted at 1:37 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by MIT University

Great stamp supercomputer! It’s the supreme of all stamps!!!

Posted at 3:15 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by jennylou

I see a miniature version of a supercomputer here, simplified to the hobby level. Great going! Our mis dept absolutely is ga-ga over this! :)

Posted at 3:47 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by MIS-dept-man

good sound project and should be on tv.

Posted at 6:16 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by bankersdocom

Very good Basic Stamp Supercomputer Project! Our class was looking for a examples just like this one. Congratulations on your success!!!

Posted at 6:47 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by job well done!

Great Success!!! I found over 10,000 google links to this project!!! Wow!!!

Posted at 7:40 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by smitten

Good work! I saw the upgrade! Very powerful basic stamp supercomputer! Great idea! Good web page.

Posted at 8:03 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by DeaconAJones

fIGUREed on the quad core upgrade saidn to petaflogs range, cool, want to get me some obaords too

Posted at 9:37 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by darknite2

Excellent. Now I can afford my own.

Posted at 11:05 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by hobby guy

…discovered this awesome link. Great going! Nice Basic Stamp Supercomputer! Good for hobby too. Love the movie.

Posted at 11:22 am on Dec 3rd, 2008 by rcguy

Heard u upgraded to more cpu. Want to learn more. Very slick design.

Posted at 1:17 pm on Dec 3rd, 2008 by robodesigner

Hey – Very good hack project to build the fastest basic stamp supercomputer.

Posted at 1:32 pm on Dec 3rd, 2008 by chipscomman

just caught this on the news. Very newsworthy Basic Stamp Supercomputer. Not the fastest but many fine qualities. Amazing you built it.

Posted at 1:36 pm on Dec 3rd, 2008 by classy reporter

My computer had 19000 google links, very popular invention! How do you wire that?

Posted at 1:08 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by timbenson

Well, it is a super looking thing, but it still uses basic, so basically it is super!

Why has nobody made a pascal stamp?

Posted at 1:49 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by hippy

what it is – a super stamp aggregate and conglomerate that perfectly models a supercomputer at the hobby level using hobby parts

Posted at 8:24 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by duke university

The slower (2Mhz instead of Basic Stamps 20 or 50) MicroStamp11 will run Pascal.

Posted at 8:30 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by duke university

You can find a chip for any language, but only a few are well documented with examples.

Posted at 8:49 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by Hawaii Central

at school we just stick with pbasic. it most easy to use, does all we want, its free and has tons of stuff to show how to use it -

Posted at 8:59 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by Stamp Kid

another thing I built some stuff like this with it and all the stuff was free so you gotta like it – all perallax stuff

Posted at 9:03 am on Dec 4th, 2008 by stamp kid

Its nice to see someone can bring this complex stuff down to hobby level. when can we buy one?

Posted at 12:03 am on Dec 5th, 2008 by electric brain

just saw the movie and link. very nicely done!

Posted at 6:49 am on Dec 6th, 2008 by Nicely Done!

Our school put two of the BS2 boards together, it’s working perfect. will take a feat of engineering and a miracle get it to do 20 parallax stamps like this supercomputer.

Posted at 4:52 pm on Dec 6th, 2008 by school engineer

also the simple one pin interface is brilliant! If we had tried that, our project could be less complicated, and maybe it would be more than 2 computers, like 20 like yours…

Posted at 4:58 pm on Dec 6th, 2008 by school engineer

what are some of the things it can be used for? Oh, found it. Brains, security, AI, Robots… cool…

Posted at 8:23 am on Dec 7th, 2008 by Supercomputer Questions

i like this movie, great job, and the way all the computers run together at the same time

Posted at 11:04 am on Dec 7th, 2008 by kidwiz

this is cool. never saw this in a hobby project before. great going! Originality. 5/5 perfect stars.

Posted at 12:56 am on Dec 8th, 2008 by Ned Aspin

HOW MANY OF THOSE 8Hz CHIPS DID HE PUT
IN THERE!?!?!?!?

I mean, in order to even approach supercomputer
quality, it would have to be at least a million of
those things clustered together. I mean, What’s
the point?

PS. Does hackaday.com have an IRC? I would like to ask a question…

Posted at 7:17 am on Dec 8th, 2008 by Phaction 5

looks like it could be a hundred 5mip chips but

Posted at 10:49 am on Dec 8th, 2008 by sawram

I have always wanted to create a supercomputer
(similar in design to his, except with stronger
chips) but I keep running into this road block
in using these newer processors in these newer
PC’s. My question is: How do you make a board
for those new chips, like the AMD Athlon, and
all of these super-new things? I wanted to give
these really big corporational supercomputers
a run for their money, but a) I have no idea
where to get a pinouts and usage manual, and
b) I have no idea how they’re soldered in there!
If somebody has an aswer, PLEASE let me know, and
email me at: Phaction.5@gmail.com

Posted at 12:09 pm on Dec 9th, 2008 by Phaction 5

Wow. The response is divided between skeptics pointing out the obvious and people who have omitted the “basic stamp” part out of the title.

Posted at 7:21 pm on Dec 9th, 2008 by Shinra

I believe those “stronger” chips you speak about require much more “strength” to use. I’m sure humanoido used a Basic Stamp simply because it’s easier to use and he could finish the project in our lifetime. Just by the fact that no one did this project with the Athlon tells you something. But I’d bet my money that humanoido could help you get started. He’s a great guy who has already taken too much punishment here. Why don’t you contact him at the Parallax Forum if you have questions about his project? Have a great day and good luck!

Posted at 11:45 am on Dec 10th, 2008 by Answer Man

LOLOfreakLOLOLfreakOLOLOfreakLOL,
The video is a total hoot!
I thought I was a hardware geek!
The video with the goofy sound montage was
so ubergeek that I laughed and freaked and I’ve
been a prototyping engineer for 20 years!
On the other hand I have to give the guy credit
for his follow thru. I’ve seen much bigger rat nests than this. The contraption in a way is a work of performance art more than anything else and sort of cool to look at, but the way it was presented in the video is what made my day!
I bet the guy watched way too much NASA channel
and 2001:ASO.

Posted at 12:51 pm on Dec 10th, 2008 by Betageek612

Could be tens of thousands of new applications for this, even in the most simple form – lots of processors/software all running at the same time.

Posted at 4:40 pm on Dec 11th, 2008 by Gurood

I think that the way you have linked many chips to work together is genius. I was thinking about trying something similar with the PICaxe. Not the best chip to use, but i am familiar with the PICaxe.

Good effort,
Benny M

Posted at 4:32 am on Dec 13th, 2008 by Benny M

It looks like the concept is brilliant and will work with most hobby chips using similar principles – it’s an advantage to work with a chip that one is familiar with. Excellent.

Posted at 3:36 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by cyborg man

This is a totally amazing accomplishment.

Posted at 7:17 am on Dec 14th, 2008 by zmonic781

My God!!! His video is fantastic! Something right out of the future!!!!

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=huukEEwy-3E

Posted at 2:05 am on Dec 15th, 2008 by zmonic781

Why not just use some propeller chips each one has 8 32bit CPUs?
It’s still cool since it has like of blinking lights and displays.

Posted at 10:34 pm on Dec 16th, 2008 by Nitori

why not use more basic stamps? luv the vid…

Posted at 11:39 pm on Dec 16th, 2008 by cordova

What happens if a wire comes off? Will it still work? Ok, sorry a bit negative. Great project. If I had any intelligence, I’d build one too.

Posted at 7:10 pm on Dec 17th, 2008 by hunkyears

Very good use of technology and many original ideas shown in the youtube movie.

Posted at 4:04 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by alien-area-69

You probably want to submit this to the Smithsonian Institute because this is the only one, and the first one made with Basics Stamps.

Posted at 3:43 am on Dec 21st, 2008 by libraryofcongress

This is a new concept in hobby computing as it looks like code is capable of running in parallel across all the processors. This can make processors super. Very good idea.

Posted at 6:30 pm on Dec 21st, 2008 by cpuiq

found this project on google – anyone building more of these?

Posted at 1:12 am on Dec 23rd, 2008 by Snar qwekk

IMPRESSIVE!

Posted at 2:12 am on Dec 23rd, 2008 by nancydrew

This is NOT a supercomputer, by todays standards it is crap compared to Pentium 3, but I like the idea.

I was working on something like this also, but I could not get more then three basic stamps with my money, and I was working on making a seperate protocall so that I would not have to mess with slow speeds using one wire.

Either way, I do not understand why there are lots of people going ga ga over this when a better use of his time and money could have been used to make a PIC “super computer”.

Posted at 8:53 pm on Dec 23rd, 2008 by Colbert

Maybe it’s the consideration that he actually did something more than lip service and put one together and made it work.

Since the Basic Stamp is a Pic Chip, I’m sure you can call this a Pic Chip Supercomputer. :) Have a great Christmas!

Posted at 12:05 am on Dec 24th, 2008 by StampMaster

Dude, if you read the movie blog, he’s now connecting it to pc’s faster than P3. I think this is the most spectacular project!

Posted at 8:21 pm on Dec 25th, 2008 by darknite

This is a full scale supercomputer by the true definition.

Posted at 4:12 am on Dec 26th, 2008 by hackman

Outstanding Hack! You turned a common chip into a super project!

Posted at 6:34 am on Dec 29th, 2008 by Dr. Donald Besserman

Just doing some research and his post now has a 2 stamp wiring example for guys on a thin budget.

Posted at 2:41 am on Dec 30th, 2008 by gonzalaz

cool!

Posted at 6:02 pm on Jan 2nd, 2009 by devonsilk

The epic-ness of this video alone just gives me the shivers.

Posted at 3:35 pm on Feb 20th, 2009 by Dcon

agreed, the video is spectacular!

Posted at 10:15 am on Mar 2nd, 2009 by opensource

In the words of Homer Simpson, “It’s so unnecessary!”

Posted at 5:55 pm on Apr 1st, 2009 by Don't have a cow, man!

Awesome! I got started with Basic stamps that led to my career at NASA. This project is what I dream about doing someday.

Posted at 4:29 pm on May 21st, 2009 by Rocket Scientist

I’d be willing to bet that half of the glowing statements in the comments here were posted by “Dr” Humanoido himself. Especially considering all of the posts which point out that it’s the first Stamp-based “supercomputer.” I have engineered the first Stamp-based toilet- it has a heterogeneous Super-Beowulf network of MCUs, even more wires *and* an analog computing capacity achieved with a matrix of H2O suspended in a patented stable derivative of sintered Al6Si2O13. Sure, it sounds fancy- but in the end, it’s still a Stamp-based toilet that doesn’t do much of anything.

Don’t get me wrong- this is a fun project. But, like Mr. Simpson said above, it is completely unnecessary. There’s really no innovation here- just a nice little movie. The statements made by Humanoido are grandiose, bordering on those made by someone with megalomania. Check out this link for a lot more of the ramblings of someone with what appears to be a form of manic schizophrenia or a very special form of autism:

http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=21&m=343484

It’s a real treat to read some of his code- I recommend one of his programs which implement a fully-conscious Artificial Intelligent Being. Apparently, humanoido’s genius is such that he can code up a new conscious entity in 80 lines of BASIC code. To those 80 lines code, there are _500_ lines of self-important claims about the “supercomputer,” or the ability of the AI to act creatively- write poetry, etc.

John McCarthy would bow down before him if he was able to write the code he claims to- and if he did it in 80 lines, John McCarthy would probably jump off a bridge. Or something.

Somebody call MIT- obviously we have an unparalleled genius on our hands!

I kid you not!
http://forums.parallax.com/forums/attach.aspx?a=33046

It’s sad, really. The guy is obviously pretty smart on some levels- he can articulate himself very well, he can handle writing simplistic BASIC programs, knows how to solder, can prepare plastic bits without trouble, etc. But something isn’t right- someone this smart but grounded in sanity would know how how embarrassingly laughable his claims and statements are. He isn’t a computer scientist- he’s just playing one on TV. Trying to make real some fantasy of being a smart, famous, and well-respected scientist at the cutting edge of his field.

thank you for your support!
dr. humanoido’s psychiatrist

Posted at 1:53 pm on Jul 23rd, 2009 by stanlykinkleheim

I came across this through google. It’s a hack that is truly innovative for basic Stamps with all claims appearing accurate. This model appears to be fully functional. According to research, his claim of being the first with this type of stamp project is accurate. This and his newer projects are all very interesting, some of which have found their way into universities and school curriculum, as I can attest. There are obviously some lesser jealous minds posting here who have more time on their hands than intelligence. If you don’t like the project, just leave. humanoido, this is work appreciated by everyone here enjoying the hobby and those of us creating technical projects for school and higher learning. We look forward to your next project.

Posted at 10:08 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by mitmen

I agree with mitmen on this. Obviously stanlykinkleheim is retarded to go off like that. Humanoido has offered many hours of research and proven results at no charge. His open source projects are accurate and easily duplicated. I especially enjoyed the two links. The program in under 80 lines of BASIC that achieves Self Evolving Enumerating Deterministic Code is an eye opener. I am sure many hobbyists with small processors and little budget but wanting to do introductory AI will welcome this. On one level, this code is similar to the popular game of life where life forms evolve and can be watched in their transformations. Only here, the life forms output is not only on the screen – it communicates in English and achieve some great things represented in simple ways with code. The other link shows another project altogether, which moves processors with robots to achieve simulations and reproductions of some physics experiments, such as the doppler effect, beat frequency, and constructive destructive interference of sound waves. Again I agree with mitmen this is a first as I have never seen a computer with physically moving Stamp cores. While visiting the links I saw several newer stamp supercomputers by humanoido for example seed at http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=21&m=361377&p=1 and tricore, minuscule and one more. If you follow more url links, he has a robot connected to a stamp supercomputer. This is some really great stuff not to be put down. Personally I don’t care if he’s an attorney and doing hobby stuff in his spare time, or not, or whatever. I’m enjoying these projects very much.

Posted at 5:01 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by nuos-datacenter

A Basic stamp supercomputer

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