Recently I bought the tellymate shield and was pleased to find how easy to use it was. Control with the PICAXE is a lot simpler than I thought it would be and the documentation is brilliant. The shield comes up alot on the forum when someone asks "Can I display graphics on a TV?" so I thought that I would give a quickstart guide in case anyone wants it.
The tellymate shield is driven by pins S.1 (Tx) and S.0 (Rx) via simple serial commands, so the simplest example is:
The baud rate and other options are selected via the jumpers on the shield (see here) but you need to be using "T" rather than "N" type bauds for it to work. For the examples here we will be using 1200 baud so the first 3 pins need to be set to off on off
You can print any ASCII character with this method and you can print any charater in code page 437 by sending the corresponding number:
creating a simple pipe.
Now lets try using control codes, for a full list see here but I will guide you through the most common.
For the following code you need the line:
at the start as the ESC character is used whenever you are sending control sequences to the Tellymate.
The ASCII characters A,B,C,D all tell the cursor to move up,down,right,left respectivly, so
will move the cursor Up, then Right.
Notice how the letters are encased in quotemarks meaning the PICAXE actually sends the ASCII value to the Tellymate, so
does the same.
These are the fundamentals of sending control codes to the Tellymate: ESC followed by the letter corresponding to what you wish for it to do in quote marks ("") or the number the letter represents.
TIP: It may be easier if you use the SYMBOL command to define the letters into something more obvious:
If you want to jump to a random place on the screen it is often better to use "Direct Cursor Addressing", basicly meaning that you give the Tellymate coordinates to move to.
This means that we will need to send parameters after the control codes to tell it where to go, moving the cursor directly requires oddly sent data which can confuse you: (in pseudo code)
so to move to (10,17):
There is also a custom character bank but I have not been able to play with it yet so will add later.
Jamster
The tellymate shield is driven by pins S.1 (Tx) and S.0 (Rx) via simple serial commands, so the simplest example is:
Code:
serout S.1,T1200,("hello world!!")You can print any ASCII character with this method and you can print any charater in code page 437 by sending the corresponding number:
Code:
serout S.1,T1200,(200,205,205,205,188)Now lets try using control codes, for a full list see here but I will guide you through the most common.
For the following code you need the line:
Code:
SYMBOL ESC = 27The ASCII characters A,B,C,D all tell the cursor to move up,down,right,left respectivly, so
Code:
serout S.1,T1200,(ESC,"A",ESC,"C")Notice how the letters are encased in quotemarks meaning the PICAXE actually sends the ASCII value to the Tellymate, so
Code:
serout S.1,T1200,(ESC,65,ESC,67)These are the fundamentals of sending control codes to the Tellymate: ESC followed by the letter corresponding to what you wish for it to do in quote marks ("") or the number the letter represents.
TIP: It may be easier if you use the SYMBOL command to define the letters into something more obvious:
Code:
SYMBOL up = 65
SYMBOL right = "C"
serout S.1,T1200,(ESC,up,ESC,right)This means that we will need to send parameters after the control codes to tell it where to go, moving the cursor directly requires oddly sent data which can confuse you: (in pseudo code)
Code:
send: ESC,"Y",Ypos+32,Xpos+32
Code:
serout S.1,T1200,(ESC,"Y",49,42)Jamster
