TaskScript Products

The TaskScript technology can be the core of a wide range of products; while they can have very different applications, performances and costs, they all share the whole design methodology, as embodied by the TaskScript Studio IDE, and the same implementation, that is the TaskScript Kernel.

Two are the main classes of Product:

  1. off the shelf controllers, for curtomers that use small quantities of parts per year, such as System Integrators working in the fields of Home, Building, Industrial and Traffic Automation; a number of low cost low energy controller boards and boxex is being built, using popular microcontrollers, such as the PIC16 and PIC18; various I/O counts and kinds of signal conditioning options will be available.
  2. custom controllers, for customers that use higher quantities of parts per year and/or have their own manufacturing facilties. This is the case of companies that use controllers within their own products of which build control solutions for their customers, both in form of boards and in form of microcontroller chips.

For both the product classes the advantages of TaskScript over competitor solutions are twofold:

  1. Non Recurrent, Engineering: that is the effort of the development of a new application or the maintenance of an older one; a rough estimate in the saving brought in by TaskScript is in excess of 15k$ per year per development seat; this advantage will turn either into a cost saving, if the Product is used internally, or into a higher value of the final solution if the Product will be integrated by OEMs into a rebranded solution.
  2. Recurrent: that is the cost of buying or building the physical TaskScript controllers; such a cost is lower than other solutions since, due to the high efficiency of the design methodology, tyipcally a lower power controller is required in the implementation of a model.

Custom controllers will be designed jointly with the customer, after signing a mutual non-disclosure agreement; depending upon the specific customer needs, customization could deal with (listed in growing order of customization):

  1. adaptation of one of the already existing TaskScript Kernels to a specific customer board, in terms of numer and type of I/Os, clock frequency, Development interface, etc.
  2. porting of the TaskScript Kernel to another CPU family, + what described in bullet #1
  3. adaptation of the TaskScript Studio IDE to specific customer needs (e.g. reduction of the available primitives in order to fit the needs of a specific application, usage of specific customer libraries, etc.).

For all the various kinds of products, the price structure of TaskScript will always include 2 components:

  1. the license of TaskScript Studio, priced per seat, according to the Edition and optional additional components;
  2. the license of the TaskScript Kernel, priced per controller board built with the TaskScript technology.

The various Editions of TaskScript Studio implement the same set of features, but are capable of handling a different number of items within a single design; the Commercial Editions are reported in the list below:

  1. Personal (software only entry level edition): it is limited to <= 64 elements and nets overall, <= 16 Steps and <= 6 Tasks. Code generation is excluded: only simulation is supported.
  2. Home (software+hardware entry level edition - supplied with one controller board): it is limited to <= 128 elements and nets overall, <= 32 Steps and <= 8 Tasks. Code generation included, for the processor contained in the chosen Controller board.
  3. Professional (software+hardware mid range edition, with controller board(s)): it is limited to <= 512 elements and nets overall, <= 40 Steps and <= 8 Tasks. Code generation included, for the processor contained in the chosen Controller board(s).
  4. Enterprise (software+hardware top level edition, with controller board(s)): it is limited to <= 2048 elements and nets overall, <= 128 Steps and <= 16 Tasks. Code generation included, for the processor contained in the chosen Controller board(s).

Others Editions are generated for non commercial purposes, such as Instruction and Evaluation; they are:

  1. Student (software only evaluation edition): it is limited to <= 32 elements and nets overall, <= 8 Steps and <= 4 Tasks. Code generation is excluded: only simulation is supported.
  2. Evaluation (software+hardware evaluation edition - supplied with one evaluation board): it is limited to <= 128 elements and nets overall, <= 32 Steps and <= 8 Tasks. Code generation is included, for the processor and Kernel Edition contained in the Evaluation board.

Various editions of the TaskScript Kernel have been developed for a number of microcontrollers and for a number of I/O attributions (e.g. allocation of digital and Analog Inputs and Outputs); they all implement the same functionalities. The ones already available to date are:

  1. P16_10_4_3_2: kernel for PIC16F876A, with 10 digital input pins, 4 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.
  2. P16_18_7_3_2: kernel for PIC16F877A, with 18 digital input pins, 7 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.
  3. P16_16_9_3_2: kernel for PIC16F877A, with 16 digital input pins, 9 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.
  4. P18_10_4_3_2: kernel for PIC18F2520, with 10 digital input pins, 4 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.
  5. P18_18_7_3_2: kernel for PIC18F4520, with 18 digital input pins, 7 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.
  6. P18_16_9_3_2: kernel for PIC18F4520, with 16 digital input pins, 9 digital output pins, 3 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins.

TaskScript Studio licenses fees (for both the Studio and the Kernel) will be discounted according to customers' yearly bought volumes.

List prices for both the TaskScript Studio and the TaskScript Kernel editions can be requested via e-mail to sales<AT>taskscript<DOT>com (this e-mail address is protected from spambots: just substitute <AT> with @ and <DOT> with .); click here to quickly to send a request.

In case adaptations or portings of the existing kernels would be needed to adapt them to customer boards, a setup fee will be charged, according to the needed effort; in case of adaptations of the existing kernels (same microprocessor family but different CPU, different mapping of I/O and other resources) a rough estimate of the needed effort is in the order of man weeks; in case of porting of the kernel to a new microprocessor family, a rough estimate of the needed effort is in the order of man months.