Picaxe-08x8 !

With all the PICAXE excitment up at the high end, the family baby is being threatened with neglect. Hence a South Seas brains trust has pondered novel low end 08 applications, and humbly offers the approach below.

Perhaps the most appealing feature of this small footprint array relates to it's zero power real time seasonal solar clock capabilities. Yes- you read right- zero power! Even the 20X2 doesn't have that. The trade off is that modest user involvement will be needed - simply place the 08X8 stack in a sunny position and note when the shadow is shortest. This will automatically be local true noon- no further programming or messy daylight saving adjustments are required.

Mid winter, & even true local sunrise/sunset, can be detected by noting the longest shadows. The approach should even indicate solar eclipses (awaiting funding for field trial verification), and has the further benefit of responding to nearby obstacles between the 08X8 stack and the distant sun. How's that for remote sensing!

Further applications are in the pipeline. Stan (1st April 2009)

That felt-tip pen still needs sharpening though.

Its like a 8 pin propeller chip

I assume the PICs multitask, but all work together as a combined unit?

At 8MHz each, and 8 in a stack, we have a 64MHz 08 here!

Very nice use of low power features.

A

As long as they are all in the sun shine I guess they must be considered to be parallel processing. But isn't this mono tasking with many processors doing the same thing?

Thanks for the words of encouragement so far posters. It's just been mentioned here (sunny NZ- lat 41° Sth) that the 8X8 stack further lends itself to solar powered "points of the compass" direction finding. No more flat GPS batteries!?

The array is displaying remarkable redundancy incidentally, since several DIP8s have pins slightly misaligned (caused by an early morning coffee fumbles),yet performance has been unhindered.

Rickharris said:

But isn't this mono tasking with many processors doing the same thing?

Click to expand...

Not entirely. The lower ones cast a shadow early in the morning and late afternoon, the upper ones only around noon, so they all use a slightly different shadow generating algorithm.

Stan,
The fact that I am reading this on 1st April wouldn't have any affect on the veracity of this message, would it!?!?!

paulr

Where can I find a data sheet to ajust it for GMT?

Ha ha, very good. Though somewhat superseded by the new 20x2 placed vertically.

I see in The Australian newspaper someone has taken out 1/4 of page 5 with an ad saying that the Australian government is going to provide free child minding services at your local MPs office, and people are invited to take their children there today. 'Tis a day of Mirth and Merriment!

hippy said:

Not entirely. The lower ones cast a shadow early in the morning and late afternoon, the upper ones only around noon, so they all use a slightly different shadow generating algorithm.

Click to expand...

Perhaps they are the illusive dark suckers - https://www.msu.edu/user/dynicrai/physics/dark.htm rather than shadow producers.

Dark suckers, interesting idea...does that mean an LED is now a DSD (dark sucking diode)?

Apart form the funny and taking unusal slants on things, I haven't seen any really good April Fool stories in a long time. The art of making things sound entirely credible at first glance but obviously nonsensical when one thinks about it seems to have been lost. Plus there's the issue of unnecessary harm and inconvenience from hollow promises which could indeed be real ( kindergartens at MP's offices, free travel for children/pets on trains, free laptop if you buy 100 burgers ). This is just one of the reasons France has made April Fools pranks illegal this year, and EU legislation will ban it entirely by 2015.

Maybe people expect an April Fool's Day prank more these days? Maybe people aren't quite so gullible? Maybe more cycnical? Maybe all the good ones have been used up?

A clever April Fools Day joke that I saw many, many years ago was by a Mobile Phone manufacturer who said they were going to put a camera in their phone...
An April Fool's joke plus Market Research. Very nice.
The rest is history.

Is hippy sneaking in a crafty one there?

Funny stuff, Stan, and a happy April 1 to you, too!

Best,

Tom

hippy said:

Apart form the funny and taking unusal slants on things, I haven't seen any really good April Fool stories in a long time. The art of making things sound entirely credible at first glance but obviously nonsensical when one thinks about it seems to have been lost. Plus there's the issue of unnecessary harm and inconvenience from hollow promises which could indeed be real ( kindergartens at MP's offices, free travel for children/pets on trains, free laptop if you buy 100 burgers ). This is just one of the reasons France has made April Fools pranks illegal this year, and EU legislation will ban it entirely by 2015.

Click to expand...

Did anyone see google's?

Google churned out a fair few with varying appeal. I was looking forward to an early day and not having to deal with forum posts for a while until I discovered this one wasn't for real ...

http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html

"Google launches Manpower Search in China (google.cn). This new feature is powered by 25 million volunteers who do the searching around the clock. When the user enters a keyword, volunteers will search any possible answers from a mass of paper documents as well as online resources. The user is expected to get the search result within 32 seconds".

hippy;95919i [url said:

http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html[/url]

Click to expand...

That reminds me of an old joke.

"I can read and speak every language except Greek."

"What does that page say, Tom?"

"I dunno, Hippy. It's Greek to me!"

I kind of enjoyed the story on the Greening of DC over on http://dvice.com/
(about5 the third or 4th story down right now - has the Washington Monument).

Of course, I am easily amused...

Cheers,

Wreno