PICBasic or BasicStamp -- ?

[Geir Holmavatn]

Hi,

I want to start playing with programming embedded devices / boards. I
see from various sites that both BasicStamp and PICBasic compilers are
widely used.

Preferably I would like to use PIC products, but what are your advice?
Does PIC range have most options and the fastest execution speed?

Which resellers have the widest range of prototyping boards and addon
cards like LCD display, port interfaces etc...?

One of my main needs are the ability to communicate to/from these
devices either via Ethernet (nedds TCP-IP stack) or 1-wire. Have any of
you been into that, does it exist controller cards with onboard ethernet
ports..?

Links to good user forums also highly appreciated

Thanks for any comments on this

Geir

 

[Rich Webb]

Hi,

I want to start playing with programming embedded devices / boards. I
see from various sites that both BasicStamp and PICBasic compilers are
widely used.

Preferably I would like to use PIC products, but what are your advice?
Does PIC range have most options and the fastest execution speed?

Which resellers have the widest range of prototyping boards and addon
cards like LCD display, port interfaces etc...?

One of my main needs are the ability to communicate to/from these
devices either via Ethernet (nedds TCP-IP stack) or 1-wire. Have any of
you been into that, does it exist controller cards with onboard ethernet
ports..?

Links to good user forums also highly appreciated

Nowadays I think that the preferred entry to embedded development would
be the Arduino family. It is an open platform, hardware and software,
with a considerable number of daughter boards (known as "shields") to
implement various auxiliary functions.

http://www.arduino.cc/

 

[Nico Coesel]

Hi,

I want to start playing with programming embedded devices / boards. I
see from various sites that both BasicStamp and PICBasic compilers are
widely used.

There is no decent free C compiler for PIC. Actually the ones you pay
for are not so good either.

Preferably I would like to use PIC products, but what are your advice?

Stay away from PIC. Its a very obscure and outdated architecture.

Does PIC range have most options and the fastest execution speed?

No. Look for ARM controllers from NXP, ST, Texas Instruments, etc.
They come in many flavours and price ranges. Most new designs are
based on ARM controllers. The newer ARM Cortex-Mx devices do not need
a single line of assembly to start the controller. There is also no
need for 'magic' interrupt routines. Knowledge of the C language is
all you need.

Which resellers have the widest range of prototyping boards and addon
cards like LCD display, port interfaces etc...?

Try olimex.com

 

[Nico Coesel]

Hi-Tech C is not decent? (honest question)

Yes. The command line options don't work as expected. Try to tell it
the name of the output file AND the directory where to put the output
files. And it needs to be told in which memory bank to put the
variables.

I just did a project using a PIC18F2525 (~4KB ram, 24KW rom)
and found the part to be just what I needed. 32mhz internal osc,
can switch speeds under code control, 8mhz SPI buss, bitbanged
SPI at about 1mhz to access a VDRIVE (11 bit SPI + status bit),
can self-program its flash rom for bootloaders. For loads of I/O
I used MCP23S17 port expanders so the PIC itself could be small.
If interested, google: PIC18F2525 MCP23S17 VDRIVE


no it's a steady workhorse great for reading inputs and toggling
pins.
ARMs etc can run real operating systems at several hundred mhz.

Not necessarely. Look at the ARM7TDMI and Cortex-Mx devices. These
cores are targeted at microcontroller applications without OS.

PICs top out at 40-50mhz. PICs are useful when simplicity and
very low power consumption is needed, and fast processing isn't.

Look for Cortex-M0 devices from NXP; these are ultra low power. As a
bonus: the faster you process, the shorter you need power.

 

[Nico Coesel]

I typically expect that all files related to a
source compilation appear in the same dir
as the source and named with the same base
name. However I just tried changing to a
different directory and specifying the path to
the source, output appears in the directory
I changed to. Perhaps it wants to write output
to the current directory, sounds reasonable.
Change directory to where you want output.


That sounds like a good feature. In my last
hobby project I had direct peek/poke buffers
that the BASIC compiler I was using didn't
know about, fortunately variables always
started from 0 and grew up, strings started
at the top and grew down, I put my stuff
in the middle well out of the way. It would
have been better if I could tell the compiler
exactly where I wanted it to put everything,
spitting out errors if I crossed a line.

One weird thing about HTC is it compiles
code from the top of rom down, so I have
to tell it how high it can go using --rom.


Sorry I don't see too many for sale at Digikey,
around here if they have it, it's probably too
risky to use. For Cortex-Mx I saw a $4000+
dev board at Mouser.. no thanks

You are not looking properly. Just a few links:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Cat=2556109&k=lpc1313
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=lpc1766

http://olimex.com/dev/lpc-p1343.html
http://olimex.com/dev/lpc-1766stk.html

More in the range, still not much selection.
Those 16-ball ones are cute. I prefer DIP for perfing
and SOIC or TSSOP for production (someone's
gotta hand-make the protos, usually me).
With a plain $1 PIC in a simple app I can usually
get average drain of 50uA or less, that's fine.

I will keep parts like that in mind if I need
to do something fancy... but if I needed
something with a lot of horsepower I'd be
inclined to use a ready to go module and be
done with it. Unless I needed large numbers
the dev cost would outway the savings of
trying to design my own system.

Putting an ARM controller from NXP on a board is really easy. Keil has
excellent example diagrams on their website. The only thing you need
to program NXP's ARM microcontrollers is a serial port and Flashmagic
(free).

Back to the original subject of an easily
programmed ethernet system... one option
might be a multi-processor setup - program
one of those ethernet-equipped processors
with just the stack and as big of buffers as
will fit, then put the app in another processor
that can be programmed with PICBASIC or
whatever and it can send/receive raw data
to and from the ethernet processor, thus
not bogging down the app with net stuff.

Aaaarghhhh! Multi-processor systems are the hardest to program. This
is where most PIC users take the wrong turn. If a PIC is no longer up
to the job don't use more PICs but move to another platform!

If you use the LPC1768 you can download a complete software package
from freertos.org for it and get started.

 

[hamilton]

Hi-Tech C is not decent? (honest question)
There's a free version (of the fairly expensive compiler) that's
unlimited,
just doesn't have optimizations which for what I do hardly matters,
anything that's time-sensitive gets done in assembly and PIC18F's
have plenty of code space.


I just did a project using a PIC18F2525 (~4KB ram, 24KW rom)
and found the part to be just what I needed. 32mhz internal osc,
can switch speeds under code control, 8mhz SPI buss, bitbanged
SPI at about 1mhz to access a VDRIVE (11 bit SPI + status bit),
can self-program its flash rom for bootloaders. For loads of I/O
I used MCP23S17 port expanders so the PIC itself could be small.
If interested, google: PIC18F2525 MCP23S17 VDRIVE

Is this the vDRIVE ??

http://www.techmixer.com/vdrive-virtual-drive-creator-to-maps-windows-folder-as-virtual-drive/


h

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:58:11 -0500, Phil Hobbs

SNIP

I really liked HiTech C back in the day. It was such an amazing
improvement over the wart-encrusted PicC that it was worth the porting
nightmare caused by the completely incompatible libraries.

The other very great advantage of PICs is that Microchip never
discontinues them, so you don't get Maxim-ized just because your gizmo
stays in production for 5 or 10 years.

That is one of the main reasons I've stayed with PICs.

In the past I've had both Philips and Siemens drop me in it by
discontinuing 8051 family micros without a plug in replacement. I've
just had to discontinue an early 90s design based on the 80C537
because of this. The volumes didn't justify reengineering.

The other thing is I've never known PICs on long lead times. It may
take a few weeks to get a particular varient but never months. I
remember, arounfd the mid 90s a rep trying to get me to move from the
PIC to the ST6. I was tempted until I found out they were on
allocation and 40+ weeks lead time.

PICs are crap but reliable, never obsolete and always available. More
than I can say for Fairchild FETS at the moment, FDD5612s quoted as
June delivery Had to get old non ROHS parts from the US to keep
production going.