First post - could anyone recommend where to stock up with parts please

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cheeseslice

Member
Hello all,

Finally I have managed to join, I think this is the hardest forum I have ever tried to post on.

I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to design a gsm interface for my boiler clock so that I could turn the heating on and off and as I was doing a bit of research I stumbled onto picaxe chips and realised how different things are from the last time I even looked at electronics, 10 years ago.

After spending a week or more reading I have decided to take the plunge and buy myself some equipment and the bare essentials to get started. I have ordered a jdm programmer on ebay for a few pounds and I have ordered a prototype board with a picaxe 18 chip, but I was wondering if anyone could advise me where is cheap to buy the rest, soldering iron, wire, bread board, resistors etc. I made a trip to maplin yesterday and the price of things in that shop is amazing.

I have already come up with a list of projects that I want to do:

Sms control for home heating
Wireless serial link between projector and computer
controller to interface pan and tilt for wireless webcam with website
Rapid controller for xbox (this is just for my entertainment!)

Should the picaxe chips be able to deal with projects like these?

Thanks in advance
 
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George Sephton

Senior Member
Yeah maplin is expensive best to buy things in sale otherwise Rapid Electronics is good. www.rapidonline.com. They sell solder, soldering irons, all the equipment and components needed all for a cheap price, leds from 5p and large amounts of resistors and capacitors for a pound plus they also do PICAXEs too.

PICAXE may be able to do some of them but start small, I tried to start big and decided it's actually quite hard, especially the SMS stuff and certainly VGA linking, I don't know how VGA works but its a lot of pins that have to be sent etc.
 
C

cheeseslice

Member
I'll have a look on rapid and see what there is, maplin were looking for something like £6 for a bag of resistors, seemed like a bit of a joke to me.

I always start on ebay but there doesn't seem to be that many components for sale. The breadboards seem to be quite cheap from china though.

I should maybe have explained what I want to do with the projector and comptuer a bit better. The pojectors I have in work can be controlled by sending serial commands to them through a rs232 connection.

I haven't looked into it that much yet but I will need to either create a serial cable between the computer and projector, probably using ethernet cable with rs232 on either end that is about 20m long or create a wireless link that I can transmit the serial commands over.

The thing about the cable is that it might be too long, I think I read somewhere that the maximum length for a serial cable it 3m, not sure though.
 
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manuka

Senior Member
Relax-serial cables are specified to be good for at least 5m (15'). Slow ( & incredibly robust) PICAXE style data allows this to be greatly extended however-a party trick involves sending control signals thru' damp string, fence/clothsline wire (with a ground return), or even a chain of kids (with adult "terminals") holding hands around the room.

For initial work perhaps check my diverse 2002-2009 starter ideas at => www.picaxe.orconhosting.net.nz Stan

EXTRA: Hippy's posting has pretty much echoed benefits of a "start simply" approach. I've seen complete newbies do more in a few hours with a PICAXE than they'd have otherwise managed in a month!
 
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hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
Welcome to the PICAXE Forum.

Put that JDM programmer to one side; you don't need it to use the PICAXE and if you do use it you'll probably wipe its firmware clean away, making the chip pretty useless to you at this time.

The best way to start with the PICAXE is to start simple and build up. Get a LED flashing, a piezo beeping, a button detected and get familiar with the commands available and how they fit together. Things oon become much clearer as you gain real experience.
 
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moxhamj

New Member
Re "Relax-serial cables are specified to be good for at least 5m (15')." - you can relax even more because if you drop the baud rate down you can go 500 metres or further.

Re "Sms control for home heating
Wireless serial link between projector and computer
controller to interface pan and tilt for wireless webcam with website
Rapid controller for xbox (this is just for my entertainment!)'"

Yes picaxe can do those things (sms and website would be in conjunction with a PC). And there are people on this site who have built similar things. Start simple though - try testing various instructions in some code to get to know how they work.

It seems like we are quite fortunate down here in the antipodes - I can get in the car and drive 10 mins and get to at least 10 electronics stores that would sell me a resistor for 3c. Shop around. Buy the essentials first and get a led to flash. Where are you located? - someone here might know some electronics stores near where you live.
 
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cheeseslice

Member
I'm in the UK, the only electronics shop within a 30 mile radius is Maplin, which is just ridiculous prices.

I think I might start with the xbox controller as it doesn't matter too much and it should be the easiest, I'll move on from there. I'm going to see if I can get a wiring diagram for making a serial cable with cat5, if I can lower the rate then I'll have that job done in 20 minutes.

I bought the jdm programmer because I have bought some other chips to play about with too, 12f683's. I read that they were the most popular for the xbox controllers.
 
premelec

premelec

Senior Member
For a great selection of all sorts of parts I salvage from OLDER printers, TVs stereos, car radios etc - newer stuff is pretty much surface mount stuff harder to use for simple mock ups etc... FREE! and you learn a great deal about how things are made :) and learn how to use solder and iron without having to worry about ruining anything...
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
I agree with the above.
Start simple and check Rapid. But also check Rev-Ed for some of the directly PICAXE-related parts.

For a greater range of components check out Farnell, though they have (I think) a £20 MOV for Credit Card purchases.
Huge range, not the cheapest, but usually delivered to you next-working-day.
Also, their warranty support is second to none. And that has some value in itself.
Also, check out CPC (part of Farnell).

Digi-key and Mouser are 2 import options and both carry some interesting and hard-to-get-in-UK items, though their general stock holdings are not a patch on Farnell.
Alternatively, start a company and get an account with RS Components - similar to Farnell.

All the above are excellent sources of DATA SHEETS, these are the items that many (including myself now and then) forget to read or can't be bothered to read. In fairness to total newbies (e.g. Schoolboys) , Data Sheets are sometimes incomprehensible as they tend to be aimed towards qualified/experienced people.

If you are (generally) tight, don't mind the wait, don't mind a risk, don't want any support and don't worry about warranty then many will say Ebay. In fairness there are some amazing prices there and other places like Alibaba. Pros don't touch them from what I have heard.

This Rapid XBox thing has been covered a thousand times so have a search on this Forum.

Please don't complain about carriage costs before you work out how much it costs to drive to your local Maplins :)
I've seen quite a few posts on this Forum where people have driven 50 miles to save 50p....

Lots of people scrounge freebies from Manufacturer's. I have noticed that some have stopped doing freebies and some now charge. They were aimed at designers to do prototyping without having all the paperwork hassle of ordering. Thankyou scroungers! :(

Sadly, Maplins is mostly a toy shop now and components are secondary.
Remember, 99.9% of stuff is exported into UK now and the suppliers purchase prices are based on £:$ exchange rate - hence you are unlikely to see price reductions for a little while.

I'm sure you'll have a lot of (educational) fun doing your projects ... good luck with getting the job done in 20 minutes ;)
 
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MORA99

Senior Member
http://stores.ebay.com/Sure-Electronics
Has some good items at low prices, I have ordered there several times over the last year with no problems.

For large qty you can order from their site too, difference is on site it costs postage,on ebay postage is usually contained in the price.

They are usually "creative" on the tax value, so it dosent get cought in customs.
 
K

kevrus

New Member
Its worth shopping around as prices vary, as does P&P. I recently purchased some stuff from
here http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/index.html.
Not an exhaustive range, but they got the basics. Amongst other items, I recently got a couple of DTMF decoder chips for £0.76 each. P&P is repectable as well at £1.50 per order. Rapid is about £5 for orders under £30 (free if its over £30 though)
 
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manuka

Senior Member
Cheesslice-
30 miles form the nearest electronics store.
Click to expand...
Just WHERE in Britain are you-even the Yorkshire Moors are better provided for than this!

If you put up your hand even casually, we may be able to direct lorry loads of "e-waste" electronic gear to your front yard. It used to largely (& tragically) end up in Nigeria,India or China, but as the scrap metal game has gone so belly up recently it's hardly worth the export effort. This is not altogether a bad thing, as backyard recycling can give horrific local air & water pollution. See an eye opening video => http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5944615355863607664

I've run across toxic e-waste dumps during rambles in Asia that are gut clutchingly sickening, & make one question on going involvement with electronics. After the glamourous rollout the end result is near evil. I hestitate to use WW2 era anaologies, but reflect at least that it's akin to witnessing the end term health effects of smoking...

BUT - chin up chaps- at least we're largely dealing with squeaky clean electrons (rather than pesky atoms) in the PICAXE game.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
True Andrew, but best not to give the impression that an 08M can be swapped out for a 12F683. I know you said 'based on' but people (wishfully thinking they can get an 08M on the cheap) may get the wrong impression.

I confess I'd never heard of bitsbox before. Looks quite good for small quantities.
Can you indicate to others a typical delivery time for in-stock items.
 
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eclectic

Moderator
Dippy said:
I confess I'd never heard of bitsbox before. Looks quite good for small quantities.
Can you indicate to others a typical delivery time for in-stock items.
Click to expand...
@Dippy.
Obviously I can't give a definitive answer, but, over the last couple of years,
it's been next day or the day after.

The absolute winner was when I've ordered very early on
a couple of Sunday mornings.
Both arrived Monday.

But, with the err present postal system?

e
 
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Dippy

Moderator
That's good.

When I ordered my Ebay Crystal Ball it turned up the day before.
Needless to say, it doesn't work now. The manufacturer's have gone bust but didn't predict it.

Get ordering Cheesy :)
 
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Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
Dippy - I really think you should stop using ebay (or at least buy one tektronics crystal ball to let you know when to not use ebay) ;).

I got a good selection of zener diodes from bitsbox - 180 diodes (20 of each of 9 values) for a fraction of what maplins wanted to charge me. Postage is one or two days.

A
 
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donrecardo

Senior Member
I use Bitsbox quite often and have always found them good value.
They are located just up the road from where I live so I suppose if
I were in a hurry I could always go and collect rather than have it posted

Don
 
C

cheeseslice

Member
Thanks for all the suggestions, I've started to put together a list of the toys that I need to buy myself.

Just to clarify something, where is the cheapest place to buy the picaxe chips themselves?

Techsupplies is more expensive than rapid and I could have sworn I found a site that was selling the 08m chip for around £1.40 if you bought 5 or more, though I could well have been dreaming that as I can't seem to find that price anywhere now.

I've decided to take the advice given and start small, so my xbox controller will be the starting point, I think jumping straight in and trying to build some of the projects that would be actually useful is wishful thinking.

Though with the weather the way it is at the minute the idea of having the heating turned on by text message is so appealing that I will have to get my head around this as quick as I can.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Thicker socks are cheaper.

Was that £1.40 ex VAT? Any idea on carriage charges?

I don't mean to sound cheeky, but for hobby use are you really bothered about a few pence?
- especially if it takes you a week to find the elusive supplier ;)

Just grit yer teeth and get them. Then you can start your project tomorrow night.
 
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C

cheeseslice

Member
Dippy said:
Thicker socks are cheaper.

Was that £1.40 ex VAT? Any idea on carriage charges?

I don't mean to sound cheeky, but for hobby use are you really bothered about a few pence?
- especially if it takes you a week to find the elusive supplier ;)

Just grit yer teeth and get them. Then you can start your project tomorrow night.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know what you mean. I just wanted to be sure that there wasn't some special place that sold 20 of them for £1 and I find out after I buy everything. That's the sort of mistake that I generally make.

I like the look of that small board techsupplies are selling, I'll have to take a look at the controller tonight and work out the space. I was actually thinking of mounting the chip on the outside of the controller with some sort of see through covering over it, just to be different.
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
For XBOX mods and similar using the 08M carrier board, it is a future product and it would make sense to use a traditional DIP 08M to prototype with anyway, then move to the carrier board once I/O connections and code have been tested and finalised, connecting wires can start long and be trimmed later etc.

Far better to have things go wrong with cheaper components. And in that respect, assuming the worse will happen, it is often worthwhile buying a few extra chips than have to pay additional P&P later and suffer delays when development crashes to a standstill. Even if everythng goes well, the chips are unlikely to go to waste and you can think of it as "insurance" or "investment", whichever feels most comforting.
 
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cheeseslice

Member
I have just got my hands on a prototype board with a 16f88 chip, I think that's the 18x.

A friend of mine has lent me it to play with, it has the ldr, 3 switches etc and the 8 leds for output.

So I'm going working out the code now and see if I can get things going, I'll order myself the 08m chips tonight.

Just as a matter of interest, do most people have these prototype boards to test on or do they use software to simulate things?
 
B

BeanieBots

Moderator
I'm not aware of an "official" 18X board with 8 LEDs on but they may have brought one out. Make sure it's not just a 16f88 dev board.

Always a good idea to have a known working board to check your chips on, especially if your experience is limited.
If you want to do quite a few projects, then the AXE090 is a worthwhile investment and it supports nearly all of the PICAXE breed.
 
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eclectic

Moderator
The new AXE091 also looks very interesting.

If I didn't already own an AXE090,
then I would certainly consider it.

Hmmm, might even get it anyway.
e
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
cheeseslice said:
Just as a matter of interest, do most people have these prototype boards to test on or do they use software to simulate things?
Click to expand...
It's probably a mix. Simulation is good for some things and real hardware better for others.

The main thing to remember with simulation is that it can never be a perfect emulation of a chip and what happens with I/O in the real world so what may appear perfect under simulation may not always work as well in practice though most times it will.
 
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cheeseslice

Member
I think the board I borrowed is called a t-board.

This is the website of the company that sells it:

http://www.economatics-education.co.uk/secondary/education/90,94,0/1561/T-board_with_Digital_Inputs.htm

He works in a school, so at the minute I'm probably at the same standard as a 10 year old!

*Edit*

This is the link to the actual board:

http://www.economatics-education.co.uk/secondary/education/90,94,0/1562/T-board_with_Digital_and_Analogue_Inputs.htm


In a previous post it was mentioned that it might just be a dev board, could someone explain the difference between the two. I think I will get a good enough feel for things after this xbox project to know if I'm going to get back into these sorts of projects again, if so I think it will be the axe091 I'll buy so that I can cover everything.

Yet another question... if I was to decide to try and do any projects using the likes of the 12f683, is it possible to program these in a basic language too or is it only assembly or c for this type of chip ?

Thanks again
 
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lbenson

lbenson

Senior Member
The description at the link you gave says it has a PICAXE18X chip, so I think you are ok. I couldn't find documentation on the board, so it isn't clear whether you would need a programming cable. Going the other route with a raw pic would mean a steep learning curve.
 
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cheeseslice

Member
lbenson said:
The description at the link you gave says it has a PICAXE18X chip, so I think you are ok. I couldn't find documentation on the board, so it isn't clear whether you would need a programming cable. Going the other route with a raw pic would mean a steep learning curve.
Click to expand...
I just use the usb programming cable, basically it has 5 inputs and 8 leds as outputs to let you test the circuit, it will give me something to play with for a few days until I get the hang of things.

I take it with programming the raw pic I choose either C or Assembly? I did assembly over 10 years ago in university on a motorola chip, probably the worst class I ever took!
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
cheeseslice said:
if I was to decide to try and do any projects using the likes of the 12f683, is it possible to program these in a basic language too or is it only assembly or c for this type of chip ?
Click to expand...
Primarily assembler or C but there are Basic Compilers available though whether there are any free versions which could support that chip I don't know. There are other languages as well but it will all be an up-hill struggle compared to using a PICAXE when starting out.

The Rev-Ed BAS800 programmer can convert PICAXE programs and burn PICmicro chips but not all Basic commands are supported.
 
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BeanieBots

Moderator
The PICAXE comes with a program already installed. It is that program which makes life so easy. It allows you to simply download your program into it via the serin pin. A raw PIC cannot do that. You will need a programmer to get your program into it. Also, you will need extra software to compile whatever language you program in into a file suitable to be downloaded to the programmer. In most cases, these 'compilers' cost significant money.

There is a big difference between programming a PIC and programming a PICAXE. Not just the language you do it with.
 
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