Using Variables

[jonny foster]

Hiya, I'm writing a program on logicator for a metronome and for the sake of simplifying the program I want to use variables to control the wait time (which would control the tempo of the metronome). The problem is that it appears to be impossible to assign non-integer values to a variable. do the variables have to be integers? and also say the basic code is let VarA = 5
pause VarA will it pause 5 seconds or 0.005 seconds? any advice even if what I'm asking is impossible is much appreciated, thanks.

[Technical]

You can do both, you have two options:

Use an expression cell to say
A=5
then a normal wait cell to say
wait A

As wait is in seconds this will give you a 5 second delay.

or

Use an expression cell to say
A=5
then a 'BASIC' cell to say
pause varA

This will pause 5ms (0.005s)

PICAXE (and almost all microcontrollers) don't understand fractions - you have to use whole numbers.

[jonny foster]

Thank you, so if i'm after a wait for 0.8 seconds I would need to give a variable the value 800 but that's not going to work is it because it's larger than 255. Is there somewhere that can store larger numbers or would let VarA = 200 pause 4*VarA be a valid piece of code? thanks

[jonny foster]

I've seen code with let w1 = whatever, can they store higher numbers?

[lbenson]

Check Manual 2, especially page 10 and following. In brief, the "w" variables (word variables as opposed to byte variables) can hold numbers between 0 and 65535. Note the a "w" variable is composed of 2 "b" variables, that is, w0 is made up of b0 and b1--so when using word and byte variables you have to be careful not to change a byte variable which is part of a word which you are otherwise using.

[Technical]

Logicator only uses byte variables (0-255).

But you can use word variables if you use BASIC cells e.g.

let w6 = 800

then

pause w6