PICAXE Text compression

erco

Senior Member
Nice concept & presentation, Jeremy! I love clever workarounds to put more into a chip and get more out of it. It will be interesting to see how big your decoding routines are. They will need to save that much space in compression to pay for themselves, kind of a breakeven point. Perfect for the text-intensive programs you describe.

Another route is to add external EEPROM. I just ordered one of these $1.13 I2C units to play with. An extra 256K can't hurt! http://www.ebay.com/itm/171325005348
 

Jeremy Leach

Senior Member
Hi erco, that's exactly what I've loved about the PICAXEs too. Making the most of the minimal resources. My PCB is already made and I've had size restrictions because I've had a number of different boards made from a single panel. You could say I've put the cart before the horse but I knew roughly what I wanted and now it's a case of getting the most out of the code ! So although I've used external EEPROMS before I decided not to this time, keep the PCB small and to try my best to use the on-chip resources. My requirement isn't really too complex. I'm thinking about 10 characters per song name (so it's clear enough to read and I don't have to abbreviate too much) and ideally 30 to 40 songs. I have got side-tracked on the concept of compression though, but it's all part of the fun.
 
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