On Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:16:31 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

> I heard of PIC AXE, no idea what exactly it is, never used it.
>
PICAXE is a family of chips with from 8 to 40 pins. All contain a PIC
MPU, EEPROM for firmware, user program and constants and a small amount
of RAM. Two pins are reserved for a 4800 baud serial port, used primarily
to load programs into it but can also be used for serila comms by the
user program. The firmware lets you use the remaining pins (apart from
power and ground, for digital I/O, ADC or DAC or to drive servos. The
latter is a lot easier that it was on the old Parallax STAMPS, which
required your program to loop while flipping the pin up and down. The
PICAXE is a lot easier: once enabled to servo pulse train starts and you
only need to write to the port if you want to move the servo.

PICAXE are also very cheap: the 14M02 I'll use can meet my requirement of
driving two servos plus the ESC (so effectively three servos) while
monitoring three input switches. These cost GBP 2.25 each (less if bought
in quantity) and PICAXE also sell a rather nice and reasonably priced
download cable with a USB serial adapter at one end and a 3.5mm stereo
jack at the other. The jack is nice because small/light 3.5mm sockets are
easy to find and install.

The worst you can say about the PICAXE is that is that its designed to be
programmed in a fairly primitive integer BASIC which is meant to be cross-
compiled on an Intel box and then loaded into the PICAXE over the serial
cable for execution. The compiler is available for Linux version and
Windows. The Linux version can also be run on an RPi under a modified
version of qemu and this works pretty well.

> As to PCBs, for one off projects I never use PCBs, always veroboard,
> ready same day, and lasts for decennia.
> And easy to modify.
>
Same here, generally, but for the  model timer I'll use a custom PCB
because the result will be smaller and lighter (0.8mm epoxyboard) because
both size and weight are important.

> Yea, 4800 Bd is cool, my GPS modules also use it for output.
>
> OTOH there is a tendency to ever more RF, the new Pies have WiFi.
> Now 2.4 GHz for control and 8 GHz for video for model aircraft / drones,
> etc etc.
>
Unfortunately the PICAXE only accepts downloads through a 4800N1 serial
connection.

> People are working on THz (Tera Hertz) links too these days.
> There is no escape :-)
>
*ESCAPE*.../ESCAPE/...ESCAPE....Escape...escape..... .


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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