From time to time questions get posted about writing software to interface to a picaxe. This is a work in progress and is heading towards a system that can control devices anywhere in the world using a picaxe to interface to a PC and the internet to ftp some simple data packets to and from a common location (a free website).
Link to working Serial interface demo is at http://www.instructables.com/id/Control-real-world-devices-with-your-PC/
Link to working FTP worldwide interface demo is at
http://www.instructables.com/id/Worldwide-microcontroller-link-for-under-20/
This code uses VB.net. I must say that VB.net is horrible. There is minimal help. It is almost impossible to code unless you know ordinary basic so it is not a language for beginners. Not much code exists on the internet and what is out there seems to only half work. Many commands simply don't work any more. Things like strings don't work unless you say Imports Strings = microsoft.visualbasic at the beginning. Simple things like an FTP batch file end up being far too complicated. There is far too much unnecessary jargon (we don't have run time errors any more, we "throw an exception").
But on the upside - it is free. Errors are easy to catch which is why it is worth coding the ftp in vb.net rather than shelling out to a batch file. Slabs of C and Java can be pasted in. There seem to be no licence error messages like vb6 has. Building an exe seems simpler. Serial port interfacing has timeouts. So all in all I suspect it is going to be worth trying to learn this new language.
This code comes with a form with two picture boxes, two labels and two buttons so the form is as simple as possible. The website password and username are in this code and I'm more than happy if anyone wants to use that site for testing. For just serial interfacing much of the code can be deleted.
The forum says this has exceeded the 10000 character limit so am posting in three parts.
Link to working Serial interface demo is at http://www.instructables.com/id/Control-real-world-devices-with-your-PC/
Link to working FTP worldwide interface demo is at
http://www.instructables.com/id/Worldwide-microcontroller-link-for-under-20/
This code uses VB.net. I must say that VB.net is horrible. There is minimal help. It is almost impossible to code unless you know ordinary basic so it is not a language for beginners. Not much code exists on the internet and what is out there seems to only half work. Many commands simply don't work any more. Things like strings don't work unless you say Imports Strings = microsoft.visualbasic at the beginning. Simple things like an FTP batch file end up being far too complicated. There is far too much unnecessary jargon (we don't have run time errors any more, we "throw an exception").
But on the upside - it is free. Errors are easy to catch which is why it is worth coding the ftp in vb.net rather than shelling out to a batch file. Slabs of C and Java can be pasted in. There seem to be no licence error messages like vb6 has. Building an exe seems simpler. Serial port interfacing has timeouts. So all in all I suspect it is going to be worth trying to learn this new language.
This code comes with a form with two picture boxes, two labels and two buttons so the form is as simple as possible. The website password and username are in this code and I'm more than happy if anyone wants to use that site for testing. For just serial interfacing much of the code can be deleted.
The forum says this has exceeded the 10000 character limit so am posting in three parts.
Last edited: