Future Development

[Immaculan]

Hi All,
Imagine a Picaxe 08X.
All the features of the 08M except for music, but the added feature of I2C.
I currently use the 18X a lot but dont always need so many IO pins. I2C on the other hand I seem to always use in one way or another.
Just food for thought.
Cheers
Jamie Smith (Australia)

 

[Technical]

Ask Microchip to produce an 8 pin chip with enough memory and you'll get it....

 

[ylp88]

<i>sigh </i> It's all about demand... Us poor little one-off constructor have little say in market direction...

Good idea to have i2c on it, though...

ylp88

 

[andrewpro]

Would it be entirely out of the question to move to soemthing like an AVR? Not only are they faster, but often have hardware spi and i2c etc. I dontknow if the 8 pin chips have them, but they more often than not have more memory than the pic's. As it is now, it costs at least 100 bucks to program an AVR in basic (though you can do it free, your limited to 2k code). There are also many tools to migrate pic code to the AVR's. Perhaps picaxe can jsut be a name, and use a more powerful processor? Just a thought.

 

[hippy]

I suspect Rev-Ed would be more inclined to stay with the PICmicro path which has been tried and tested rather than have to embark on a step learning curve to move to a new processor. The Firmware is probably non-trivial, and has grown over the years. Trying to move that to a new architecture without introducing bugs would be challenging, and tie up people who could be working on other projects and plans. And don't forget where Rev-Ed's core market is.

The 18Fxxx processors look very apealing, so I would guess at seeing Rev-Ed heading in that direction rather than changing processor families.

 

[ylp88]

What would happen to the name &quot;PICAXE&quot;??? &quot;AVRAXE&quot;, perhaps - doesn't quite have the punch the term &quot;PICAXE&quot; has, though...

ylp88

 

[Immaculan]

I'm sure it won't be long before Microchip releases a suitable 8 pin chip, until then the 18X is fine.

Cheers all
Jamie