Heads up - Micromite

MPep

Senior Member
Alright then.......maybe I should have been a bit more specific, flavour! (or is it flavor) Ooops did I start something else???? :rolleyes:
 

srnet

Senior Member
From what I can see, the Micromite is a valid substitute for the 20X2 and up PICAXE items with a number of advantages
And some significant disadvantages too, but you chose not to mention them .......................
 

john2051

New Member
There are several 32bit pic chip development boards out there. If we mentioned them all then the picaxe would hardly get a mention. Some of the programming
languages are pretty good.
Every chip / board has its place, and its uses. Picaxe is perfect for what it was designed for, in my opinion.
I followed all the falling out with sbcs ending in mite, and get so fed up with all the back stabbing / insinuations.
At least this forum is friendly most of the time.
To me, comparing one sbc against another is like comparing one colour with another!
Whenever new products come out like the 'mites', I don't know about other people, but you end up with an awful lot
of white elephants. I bought four rpis, and within three weeks the b plus came out.
With all the systems I've tried, the picaxe always comes out favourite.
john
 

John West

Senior Member
Same here. John. I must have 8 or 10 different development bds and sbc's around here, and whenever anyone asks my advice I direct them to the PICAXE unless they need something that requires screaming fast processing speed or heavy mathematical computation.
 

bryanl

Member
re: "And some significant disadvantages too, but you chose not to mention them ......................."

interesting, the original post seems to have hit the bitbucket -- wonder what happened.

curious as to those significant disadvantages, though, as I am still trying to evaluate. They weren't mentioned out of choice but rather out of ignorance and I'd like to fix that.

re: "There are several 32bit pic chip development boards out there. If we mentioned them all then the picaxe would hardly get a mention. Some of the programming
languages are pretty good.
" -- where I think the PICAXE has an advantage is in the balance between on-board firmware and off-chip IDE. It isn't a 'development board' but rather a part that is easy to use for its range of applications. From what I can see, though, it is getting a bit long in the tooth and showing age in compatibility problems trying to support a wide range of devices in its class that have evolved over time.

The plethora of platforms tends to make discrimination difficult. A lot of times, the Arduino model with base and daughterboards hardware is way too much. The PICAXE idea takes advantage of the mcu in building your own simple circuits without a lot of excess stuff.
 

rq3

Senior Member
The PICAXE idea takes advantage of the mcu in building your own simple circuits without a lot of excess stuff.
Bingo. Many times a great, good, or even mediocre idea must wait for a confluence of technology to occur. My mediocre product is doing quite well, thank you, very recently requiring board house level fabrication and a global distribution channel.

Although the IDEA for the product had been in my head for decades, the REALITY was that I needed cheap A/D converters, a cheap LED driver and dimmer, VERY bright and small LED's, and brutally rugged voltage regulators, not to mention passive SMD components that were pure unobtainium even 10 years ago.

The Picaxe fulfilled all requirements save the LED's, regulator, and passives, which were covered with new technology. I still play "catch-up" with the LED's on an almost weekly basis. In short, the Picaxe made possible an affordable device, with easily modified code, to enable the production of a product that would otherwise not be economically viable.

In the mid 1960's my dad (an avid photographer), told me he wanted a movie camera that would "instantly display what I just filmed". He had met Ed Land, and had been told in college that the zoom lens was not "realistically possible". He lived long enough to see the confluence of technology, when I showed him my iPhone with the instant playback of the video I had just recorded of us. He actually said, "I've lived too long. I'm speechless".
 

john2051

New Member
Hi Bryani, the point I was trying to make was that to get a fair assessment of whats available, you would have to look at a lot of different hardware. Mentioning only three is pointless.
Also this is the picaxe forum. In my opinion, the picaxe does exactly what it was designed to do, and what it does do it does well on the whole. After all, if there was a board that did everything perfectly, there
would only be one company. We all know what happens when companies have a monopoly.
Our house is littered with various systems chips and boards, but for ease of use and speed of development, picaxes do it for me.
regards john

btw rq3
I had one of the polaroid land cameras in the early seventies I think, and most of the 'instant' colour photos are as good as the day they were taken.
You wouldn't happen to know if there are or were any uv leds that would erase eproms? the ones I found were just under or just above the right wavelength!
apologies for going o.t
 

premelec

Senior Member
@john... I have a bucket of UVeproms - why do you use them? Sunlight works as does a 'sunlamp' tanning lamp or any Hg tube for instance used in sterilization... I suspect you are working on an eeprom modification for a UVeprom - integrating the UV LED onto the UVeprom so you can electrically erase it - how clever :)
 

john2051

New Member
Hi premelec, do you know, I left some 2764s on our south facing window sill, and after a few months not one had been changed at all.
My main reason is I have some old 8048 (I think) processors that have on board eprom, and its a real pain removing them and putting them in an eraser.
I also have loads of 27 series eproms that I use with z80 chips, and an led eraser would make program alteration easier.
I even tried using the 28 series eeproms, but now they seem harder to get, and more expensive.
I'm probably clinging on to old technology, but one of my first projects many years ago was an eprom programmer for the Sinclair spectrum.
I could probably change some of these for a couple of picaxes with i2c eeproms, but I find a 20MHz z80 quite a powerful device, and I find
z80 assembler easy and functional.
My wife has another theory, she thinks I'm just too sentimental to throw it away!
regards john
 

Buzby

Senior Member
... one of my first projects many years ago was an eprom programmer for the Sinclair spectrum. ...
One of mine was an EPROM programmer for the ZX81, the active components of which were a single TTL chip and a transistor !.

Seriously though, I'd be a bit dubious about the reliability of those 30 year old UV devices. I have seen them lose bits after ten years, and couldn't get them back no matter how much UV I used.

As an aside, I've still got a couple of UV erasable PICs, 16C64 and 16C71, with a cute little window.
These are more ornamental than anything now, I can't see any reason to faff about with a programmer and UV eraser when we've got PICAXE and the AXE027.
 

rq3

Senior Member
btw rq3
I had one of the polaroid land cameras in the early seventies I think, and most of the 'instant' colour photos are as good as the day they were taken.
You wouldn't happen to know if there are or were any uv leds that would erase eproms? the ones I found were just under or just above the right wavelength!
apologies for going o.t
Hi John, interesting question! I'd imagine so, but I can no longer remember the erasure wavelength (435 nm?). I do know there are UV LEDs down to 415 and even 385 nanometers these days. Perhaps a slightly "off" wavelength for a longer time would do?
 

premelec

Senior Member
Hi John, you might not have enough UV _through_ a window - take 'em outside... :) The last ones I erased [many years ago] I used a mercury capsule from a sun lamp with a small current limited neon sign transformer... Now I just keep them around to look at [and I have old Sinclair 1000 & Commodore VIC20s, Apple II etc] -so much ancient history... and no wife to nag sense into me!
 

bryanl

Member
re: "the point I was trying to make was that to get a fair assessment of whats available, you would have to look at a lot of different hardware. Mentioning only three is pointless."

rather than an extensive review, it is a matter of selecting examples such as the one that is the topic of this thread. What can a teacher learn by looking at similar options? What can Revolution learn for future product improvements? How can a hobbyist's horizons be expanded and by what size step? Where is the technology going and how can its advances be leveraged to facilitate entry while also providing for depth of inquiry?

PICAXE is a concept as well as a tool and a better understanding of that concept can often be gained via comparison and contrast. A better understanding of the concept can improve the utilization of the tool and can often stimulate creativity in its use.
 
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