(Open Source) PICAXE Project Ideas

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lanternfish

Senior Member
Hi all

While I wait before I can get my electronics workshop up and running again I am frequently coming up with project ideas that I can only develop theoretically. So ...

Is their any interest in having these untested ideas (apart from simulating in the PE) put up in the forum for others to tinker with?
 
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Grogster

Senior Member
I'd be interested in trying some ideas out. I have a permanent PICAXE experimenters corner of the bench. ;)

I tend to do wireless-link concepts/serial more then anything, but anything is good for the little gray cells. I use all the chips from 08M up to 40X2's, so prepared to give anything a try. :D I don't really know much about I2C, although recent experiments have worked, but that is probably one area I could use an experiment to help me learn that aspect - got any I2C ideas?

Pitch the ball, I'll see if I can whack it. I'm sure others here will also try to steal 2nd...

It can be a few daze before I would post anything, as I am kinda busy this week, but come the weekend, I should be able to tinker with something, if I get time.
 
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Pauldesign

Senior Member
Fish, that's an awesome idea and will be a great section in the picexe forum.
It will be nice to split it into the different electronic disciplines/technologies. This will save tons of threads/posts and i think it should be called Read Me First. I cast in my vote and i'll be the bouncer. Cheers ;)
 
L

lanternfish

Senior Member
OK. I will put together the cct diagrams and code I have so far for one project - CubixHDD - and post in a couple of days. CubixHDD is a 'toy' that rips off the Rubiks Cube and displays HDD activity by 'solving' the cube.

Dimensions:
Scalable though current size is would be approx. 50mm/side.

Hardware Outline:
20X2, Backup battery management (for power down saving of cube data), 74HC595's (lots of them) and 54 RGB LEDs on 6 faces (9 x RGB LEDs and 5 x 74HC595s per face).

Program Outline:
Interrupt driven 'solving' i.e. each flash of HDD LED would initiate 'random' rotation selection and sequencing via interrupt.
Displays instant and pseudo-animated rotation.
A total of 36 types of rotation, randomly selected.

The program does not solve a scrambled cube via an algorithm (couldn't be bothered studying that bit) rather just randomly selects row/column/face to rotate and continues doing this until cube 'solved'.

Have thought of adding a 'flash all faces' display when cube solved.

Completed/Nearing Completion:
Schematic (20X2 main board & 74HC595/LED 'face' boards)
PCB Artwork (Cube Faces - SMD)
Program (Written just needs commenting)
3D image of PCB(s)
3D image of CubiX & Base
 
B

BeanieBots

Moderator
I'm struggling to picture how this would be represented and with what resolution. A little more description or maybe even a simple sketch would be nice.
 
L

lanternfish

Senior Member
Hi BB.

Each of the six faces of a Rubik Cube has nine seperate squares.

With the CubiX each of these squares is replaced by a RGB LED. Rather than rotating horizontal, vertical or whole faces the software imitates the rotation by changing the colour(s) for that square(row/column/face).

A standard 3 x 3 x 6 Rubik Cube has the following colours: red, green, blue, white, yellow & orange (amber). As the CubiX uses red, green blue, white, yellow(ish) & magenta due to the 3 bits used for each RGB LED.

Will post a couple of drawings later tomorrow.

FYI - there is an electronic, touch sensitive Rubik Cube out there for about US$69-$99. That could be hackable.

Thanks for the interest.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Phew! This is a healthy project to get the ball rolling.:eek:

Sounds extremely interesting, impressive and flashy , but (as usual) I'm confused; you seem to have done loads aready, so what are you hoping others will do?
If it's to turn your theory into reality then this will cost a lot in time and money for someone and it's quite a specialist-interest project.

(And, as I'm not very imaginative, I would have thought that that other guy's idea for a VU style HDD activity monitor would have been clearer - maybe you two can get together?).
 
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marcos.placona

Senior Member
To be very honest, I think I'm on Dippy's side on this one. I was expecting the projects to be a lot simpler than this.

Although this project seems extremely interesting (I have thought about doing something like this myself), it's really time consuming, and I would struggle to find all the time (and energy) to work on something like this.

I have been working on a simple thermometer+data-logger for over a month now, and just can't seem to find the time to do it. I got really excited about it in the beginning of Summer, and thought I'd put it all together in no time. Turns out I only had the time to get started with it about a month ago, and Summer is almost over :D

Just a thought:
Maybe we should try smaller ideas here, so it makes it more feasible for others
 
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MartinM57

Moderator
Might be a bit constrained having a cable attached to it - would be nice if it was wireless with a touchy feely rubber outer cage that you could juggle with (stress-ball like) whilst waiting for that latest disk-bound compiler run to complete.

Still...Grogster offered in post #2 to do the wireless bit, so that's solved that one.

Next problem? :)
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Hippy has long hair and knows what he's talking about.
I have an army No.2&3 haircut and make it up as I go along :)

I wasn't trying to be critical, I was just surprised how big the project could end up being.
I was expecting ideas with a wider appeal and simpler to do.
But, obviously it's a personal choice as to whether people chip in and spend hours/days/money assisting.

And, in fairness, it could be valuable brain-storming section.

And then, just when I was cheering up, I read about these OPC tw*ts:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2162568/Council-bans-brainstorming.html
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
Act 4. Outside the palace walls. Hippy arrives in a flash of light and a puff of bright blue smoke : "Did you call?"

I was thinking it sounds like a good idea. I was expecting more of, "here's my good idea ...", higher level concepts of projects for people to mull over, run with or not, but having more detailed concepts isn't necessarily bad.

"Wouldn't it be great if I could ... use a PICAXE to get what the actual time is for my clocks from my Sky STB ... use a PICAXE to send a Wake-On-LAN signal to turn-on my PC just before I get up in the morning", are the sort of 'bright ideas' I have but don't have the time to fully research and explore let alone implement. Things which might inspire others who think that's also a good idea to do it.
 
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BeanieBots

Moderator
We've certainly had some good in depth discussions on bigger topics in the past. Ones that come to mind are MPPT (maximum power point tracking) for both solar and wind chargers and also weather stations.

Complex serial networks have been discussed before resulting in some very neat and useful real applications being developed.

One topic I'm still interested in myself is neural networks.
The stumbling block I have with that application is resolution when tried with an 8-bit integer only micro. Thinking about the recent threads on 32-bit sums gets round the problem of resolution within calculations but I'm not sure if anything practical could be done with only 10-bit input and output.
I'm picturing an 08M based neuron such that any number (of identical units) could be hooked together to form a 'brain'. You'd only need about 15 to get to the same 'intelligence' as a wasp:cool:
Open to any suggestions.
 
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Hansen

Member
What about making a code bank with example off code

It will help alot if you sit with a problem most off time other have make it before what you and I just a plan to make
 
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lanternfish

Senior Member
Yes, this is an 'advanced' project in some respects though it does make use of some standard building blocks. These include, controlling RGB LED, using 74XX595 Shift Registers, SPI command, Scratchpad pointer commands, Look-up table(s) .....

No, this isn't a completed project. Or tested So plenty of room for others to improve on the idea.

I probably have done quite a bit of work on it but as I found out last night, a bit of a stuff up on the PCB so I will have to rethink those.

And as for the program itself, once fully commented it will certainly provide plenty of scope for improvement as it has only been simulated in PE, not tested in real time.

And with the proliferation of LED control chips e.g. Maxim MAX 6956 or older chips from NAtional Semi, the opportunity to try I2C instead exists.

I will put this project idea up as a seperate thread so that we can keep the (open Source) thread going.

I'm certainly keen to look at others ideas to keep my hand in until I can get back to the smell of solder fumes, frying components and working cross-eyed with SMD components.
 
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Rickharris

Senior Member
On a slightly more theoretical theme:

The LED cube from another thread may have some merit for discussion and experimentation.

I gather from my research that writing the patterns if just binary transfer is a pain so there must be an easier way to create the patterns -

I have seen suggestions for a PC based pattern maker which you can then down load to the Picaxe or perhaps there is a good old fashioned physical interface with each LED represented by a switch and a write button to place the pattern into the Picaxe memory.


Actually driving the LED cub shouldn't be a problem with the higher end Picaxes and a suitable LED drive ic.

Another area worth investigation may the automatic generation of patterns as there are many 3 D formulae for generating graphs out there - this would be more productive than simply randomly putting the LEDs on and off.

Perhaps you could dump the Picaxe memory to visually display what it's "thinking"??

Any thoughts from the think tank (or should that be the drink tank :) )
 
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lanternfish

Senior Member
Rickharris said:
On a slightly more theoretical theme:

.... Perhaps you could dump the Picaxe memory to visually display what it's "thinking"?? .....
Click to expand...
Now that is an interesting idea. That could be interrupt driven to make it separate from the main program.

Maybe an 8 x 8 (x 8?) single colour cube. And for the adventurous, RGB.
 
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westaust55

Moderator
lanternfish said:
Now that is an interesting idea. That could be interrupt driven to make it separate from the main program.

Maybe an 8 x 8 (x 8?) single colour cube. And for the adventurous, RGB.
Click to expand...
That will need some "horsepower" aka PICAXE speed.

I posted a project I did ages ago using a 40X1 driving an 8 x 8 matrix of RGB LEDs via i2c using two MCP23017 dual ports (16 IO) chips. At 8MHz some flicker was visible. Higher PICAXE speed would solve the flicker on an 8x8 matrix, but now going to a cube with a lot more LEDs would need even greater speed so an X2 part at max speed would seem necessary unless using a better dedicated LED driver
 
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Rickharris

Senior Member
Perhaps raw speed isn't the way forward then. Perhaps with external cctry the LEDs could be turned on/off without the need to multiplex.

If the patterns were to be calculated then a reasonable amount of time would be requited to calculate the next set of coordinates anyway.

Or perhaps the way is distributed processing with each layer/line having an 08/14 driver doing nothing else.
 
techElder

techElder

Well-known member
Now you're talking about an OLED display for each face! Now THAT would be a REALLY interesting cube.
 
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lanternfish

Senior Member
Another 'toy' idea: Tap Serial data. With an 8 x 8 you could display 8 bytes (multiplexed?) and with an 8 x 8 x 8 you could display 64 bytes.
 
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BeanieBots

Moderator
Can't say that I have Boriz.
That's an interesting link, thanks for posting.
I've seen and played with many neural concepts and implementations but that is quite a novel one:cool:
 
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MFB

Senior Member
Rather than trying to collaborate on specific projects, I think the bildr ( see example at http://wiki.bildr.org/index.php/Category:Component ) approach might be more efficient. The PICAXE is not well represented at the moment and would benefit from contributions from forum members. Based on past experience there is little chance of support from SparkFun or Rev Ed.
 
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MFB

Senior Member
There seems no reason why the PICAXE should not enjoy the same level of support as the Arduino. Although the Arduino C++ compiler offers a higher performance, the PICAXE has a better development environment that makes it much easer to get started. As contributions to this forum shows, you can do an awful lot with the PICAXE before ever having to move on to an Arduino or ARM platform.

Where the PICAXE does loss out is on the lack of an easily accessible software library and I am constantly amazed at how quickly the Arduino community makes interface code available for the latest smart sensors, GPS receivers and mass storage etc. Of course it helps that 'their' compiler supports object oriented programming but it should still be possible to provide some PICAXE code for bildr. Maybe we could start with interface code for a range of I2C devices and radio links?
 
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Dippy

Moderator
That would definitely be useful.

But why don't people put more things in 'software snippets' if you want libraries?
 
techElder

techElder

Well-known member
Perhaps because there is no concept of Global and Local variables in the compiler? Every time I gather up someone else's code, I fight with variable names.

If the compiler had a simple "Function" concept, I would be happy.

Perhaps I'm just not working hard enough with variable naming conventions.

Dippy said:
That would definitely be useful. But why don't people put more things in 'software snippets' if you want libraries?
Click to expand...
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Yes, we know. We have to work with the tools we have.
I used "library" as a general (and inaccurate) term for snippets, procedures and subroutines.
Variables and variable space will always be an area which concentrates the mind ;)
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Yes, that's nice.

And it could be made even smarter. Like the parametric search structure on some of the big supplier websites like Fanell/RS etc.... I'll leave that to the web authors and chappies with some imagination and time.

One of the clever people here could write and host something flashy and call it something more imaginative than WIKI :rolleyes:
 
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