hippy
Ex-Staff (retired)
We seem to get quite a few problems with people who cannot download which are coupled with their not being entirely sure if they have a PICAXE or bought / received a blank PICmicro by mistake. Almost impossible to resolve if it stubbornly won't work.
How about pre-loading PICAXE's with a program so they flash a LED with some obvious pattern ( maybe morse ) when first powered-up ?
At least that way we can determine if they actually have a PICAXE to start with. If they've never been able to download it is unlikely they've ever over-written the factory delivered program. It would also be useful to everyone just to confirm a PICAXE was working even before trying download.
The only risk is that someone could connect a PICAXE straight to hardware, turn it on and find this damaged what hardware they had because this behaviour wasn't expected. I think that's minimal risk anyway and anyone who has designed something like that is simply storing up trouble for themselves in the future. Potential damage can be minimised by only doing this flashing for a short while after turn-on or reset. Serial Out can be toggled AFAIR on all PICAXE so that would be a good candidate with minimal risk. The program doesn't have to just flash a LED, it could also send a message which can be viewed using Terminal, that would prove the connection was okay even if download wasn't working.
The only other design criteria is that the LED flashing program doesn't use Pause or anything which requires the device to be reset or power-cycled to allow the first download.
How about pre-loading PICAXE's with a program so they flash a LED with some obvious pattern ( maybe morse ) when first powered-up ?
At least that way we can determine if they actually have a PICAXE to start with. If they've never been able to download it is unlikely they've ever over-written the factory delivered program. It would also be useful to everyone just to confirm a PICAXE was working even before trying download.
The only risk is that someone could connect a PICAXE straight to hardware, turn it on and find this damaged what hardware they had because this behaviour wasn't expected. I think that's minimal risk anyway and anyone who has designed something like that is simply storing up trouble for themselves in the future. Potential damage can be minimised by only doing this flashing for a short while after turn-on or reset. Serial Out can be toggled AFAIR on all PICAXE so that would be a good candidate with minimal risk. The program doesn't have to just flash a LED, it could also send a message which can be viewed using Terminal, that would prove the connection was okay even if download wasn't working.
The only other design criteria is that the LED flashing program doesn't use Pause or anything which requires the device to be reset or power-cycled to allow the first download.