Picaxe Manual Copyright Question

[tiiiim]

Ladies and gents,

I've been asked to make a writeup of one of my projects for display on the internet. I'm thinking of including a small section about the picaxe (well, I'd have to as the project includes it) and would like to use some of the circuits from the manuals.

Question: who owns/maintains copyright on these manuals (I guess rev-ed), and can I shamelessly copy/paste the appropriate circuits into my writeup - the images will of course be properly attributed and referenced (manual number/page number)? I'm hoping that someone from rev-ed will be reading this and allow it - if not then I can easily draw them myself (but I'm crap with schematic software...)

Thanks!

 

[westaust55]

Yes Revolution Education (Rev Ed) hold the copyright to the PICAXE manuals.
I would suggest that the usual line is that you can download, use and print for your personal use but not copy any part for profit or commercial use.

An email to rev Ed to: picaxe @ rev-ed . co . uk
with the spaces removed (to avoid spammers)

should receive a response if you do not received a response from Techncial under this thread.

 

[tiiiim]

I can confirm that this would be for a non-profit, non-commercial use.

Thanks for the response. I wasn't sure if Technical was from rev-ed or not, but now I know and I'll see if they respond. Otherwise, email it is.

Thanks again!

 

[hippy]

Yes, Rev-Ed own the copyright. I cannot personally see problems with reasonable fair use but I will seek an official response.

An alternative to using schematic software is to draw circuits by hand. A trick I used was to draw them twice as large as needed on large-squared graph paper then photocopy reduce them. That takes kinks and wrinkles out of lines and removes the square grid. Use a reasonable thick black felt-tip so it's clear when reduced. Nice labels can be created in a text editor twice required size, printed, cut out and glued on.

One of the educational mags ( I think - I can't recall its name ) included hand drawn circuits on graph paper and they looked very impressive.

 

[westaust55]

There are several ways to cheaply draw your own circuits in a tidy fashion.

MS Paint (free with MS Windows) and even Excel has a fair drawing package for lines, circles text etc which I ahve used in the past.

 

[KMoffett]

ExpressPCB has free schematic and PCB layout software. Its schematic program is pretty intuitive, has a good library of components, new components are easy to create, and the schematics look good...in my opinion. An example:

Ken

 

[Technical]

If it's for educational (non-commercial) projects, and is correctly acknowledged and referenced, then this is fine.

 

[slimplynth]

Yes, Rev-Ed own the copyright. I cannot personally see problems with reasonable fair use but I will seek an official response.

An alternative to using schematic software is to draw circuits by hand. A trick I used was to draw them twice as large as needed on large-squared graph paper then photocopy reduce them. That takes kinks and wrinkles out of lines and removes the square grid. Use a reasonable thick black felt-tip so it's clear when reduced. Nice labels can be created in a text editor twice required size, printed, cut out and glued on.

One of the educational mags ( I think - I can't recall its name ) included hand drawn circuits on graph paper and they looked very impressive.

I have some electrical engineering manuals, tiny booklets really. Hand drawn circuits and notes that are very easy on the eye - nice effect. Good idea with the photocopying hippy, cheers.

 

[tiiiim]

If it's for educational (non-commercial) projects, and is correctly acknowledged and referenced, then this is fine.

Thanks. I'll acknowledge Revolution Education Ltd. and reference the manual number/page number and add the hyperlink to the manuals from this forum...

To all the others: what is this pen and paper you speak of?

 

[Wrenow]

Another choice you might want to be aware of is Inkscape - http://www.inkscape.org/

It is a vector based program, not a paint program, much like Corel Draw, but is available for free for both Windows and Linux platforms. Pretty slick trace and export functions (I like them better than my older Corel equivalents). As an example, it took about 30 seconds to do a quick trace of the GIF circuit above and export to a PDF PNG and WMF.

Cheers,

Wreno