Farewell

premelec

Senior Member
Thanks for all the wonderful information and for sharing your projects. I love Picaxe products and have enjoyed a decade or two of using them, however my health has deteriorated in the last month. I have stopped all electronics entirely expecting to power down soon.
Keep up the wonderful forum and discussions. Happy coding! EOF
 

lbenson

Senior Member
I'm sorry to hear that. You were already a forum veteran when you responded to one of my earliest threads in September, 2007. Here's hoping you experience a turn-around. We will all come to the point at some time when we lay down our soldering irons.

Thanks for your many contributions, and for your stories from before the times when everything became digital. I don't have a great understanding of anything electronic beyond 0's and 1's.
 

erco

Senior Member
@premelec: We are all saddened to hear that, you have been a steadfast pillar of this wonderful online community, and you have helped countless noobs like myself many times. Of course you will be missed! I hope your situation stabilizes at a manageable level. Even if you are not actively building or coding, perhaps you can look in on us now and then to make sure we continue the fine work you helped start. God bless you, my Picaxe Brother.
 

David HK

New Member
It's always very tragic to read farewell notes. I too am not so far off from sailing in the same ship.

I have read your articles frequently and find them refreshing and interesting, but alas I have forbidden myself to to get involved in PicAxe adventures because I am too old.
 

manuka

Senior Member
Oh dear - here's me thinking you were moving on to other micros, but this sounds more like "throwing the big switch"... MANY thanks for your companionable forum contributions (~3,500 !) over the years & best wishes for whatever lies ahead.
Stan. in NZ (also nearing a "cold iron" stage)
 
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rq3

Senior Member
Thanks for all the wonderful information and for sharing your projects. I love Picaxe products and have enjoyed a decade or two of using them, however my health has deteriorated in the last month. I have stopped all electronics entirely expecting to power down soon.
Keep up the wonderful forum and discussions. Happy coding! EOF
premelec, please know that you have been a great resource to a great number of people. I will miss you.
 

Jeff Haas

Senior Member
I'm sorry to hear that, but thank you for all the insightful posts over the years! You made a great contribution to the community.
 

Flenser

Senior Member
@premelec, the PICAXE forum is the friendliest and most helpful that I'm aware of due to generous assistance that is given to other forum member by people such as yourself.
 

erco

Senior Member
I very much hope we are all around to see picaxe 08M3.
I plan to be there. I'm 60 but in pretty good shape AFAIK. I have twin 12-year old daughters (thus 2 college tuitions to pay for) so I'll be Picaxing for the foreseeable future.
 

julianE

Senior Member
I'm 60 but in pretty good shape AFAIK
I'm just a little younger than you and I think we might be at the forum's children's table.
if it weren't for failing health, getting old is delightful, stupid things that tripped me up when i was younger are very trivial now.

I think the microcontroller fad is nearing an end, i barely see anything interesting on even the 'duino front. fairly certain we'll never see an 08M3.
 

lbenson

Senior Member
I think the microcontroller fad is nearing an end
You mean "the nth microcontroller fad is nearing an end"? For those of us who have been doing it for 40+ years, it doesn't seem like a fad, maybe more like a set of waves of interest.

To me, there have always been new toys, and there remain unsolved "household resiliency" and convenience issues--at least unsolved at a reasonable price and for a wide range of locales and situations.

We tinkerers won't scale up our personal solutions to resolve these issues, but I have seen instances where Chinese manufacturers appear to have picked up on designs from hobby forums. "Internet of things" still provides scope for hobby inventors, even if it takes the big boys running with it to make it widespread. Premelec's skillset still has value. And it's fun.
 

Buzby

Senior Member
@premelec, I'm sorry to hear that you are not too well.

I've enjoyed reading your posts, and have learnt from them as well.

Hope all goes well for you.

Cheers,

Buzby
 

wapo54001

Senior Member
I'm just a little younger than you and I think we might be at the forum's children's table.
if it weren't for failing health, getting old is delightful, stupid things that tripped me up when i was younger are very trivial now.

I think the microcontroller fad is nearing an end, i barely see anything interesting on even the 'duino front. fairly certain we'll never see an 08M3.
@premelec, I hope you will visit the forum again to know about the people here that you have affected with your news. Yours and my first posts were in 2005 and 2006; we’ve both been here a long time, and you have always been part of the warm and tolerant environment. I hope that you find contentment in the knowing of that.

I remember the heady years around 2005 when you first posted when a person had to log in multiple times a day just to barely keep up with the firehose of information and new projects and new chips and new features and nifty peripherals that were being introduced by Rev-Ed and by the members of the forum. Hippy had two or three helpers to keep up with all of the questions that were being asked.

Back then, we were the proof-readers of the documentation, the testers of the chips and we found the errors to be corrected and novel ways to use the product, but it was all for the benefit of the schools, and Rev-Ed has never wavered from it’s main focus – to introduce technology and programming in schools and, other than helping to improve the product, we were never central to that.

If you could graph the number of forum logins-per-day from 2005 to now, it would tell the story. That decline is why the forum has become the final bastion of folks like premelec who has made his last post and me, who at age 76 will someday soon make mine (or not), and why most of us are in approximately the same boat. Very few new faces in this group because the world has moved on. I come here when I need a “fix,” a taste of familiar and knowledgable voices who are my technology comfort-food.

If any new chips are announced or new capabilities like precision math, better I2C, etc that have been forever discussed and desired but never implemented should suddenly appear, it will be because that capability is needed in the schools not because it is needed here. But that’s fair – how many among us any longer care about precison math or I2C in the Picaxe? Precious few, I’d guess. It would have been great to have those capabilities ten years ago but now the momentum is gone and it is what it is, we were never the target audience. Programming for fun or profit is still fun or profitable, but we really are dinosaurs here. Nevertheless I’ll wear my dinosaur badge proudly and continue to visit and benefit from the knowledge and kind advice of the few who are still standing. Sincere thanks to premelec for this opportunity to pause and contemplate what has been, and what is.
 

papaof2

Senior Member
Dinosaur? I probably resemble that remark, having purchased my first PICAXE book in June of 2006. On the other hand, I have PICAXE projects which have been running 24/7 since at least 2008. Perhaps a dinosaur, but a reliable one ;-)
 

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
Thank you for your service and support to the PICAXE community over the last 2 decades. You have made a real, positive difference to many people. We will all miss your contributions.
 

julianE

Senior Member
I remember the heady years around 2005 when you first posted when a person had to log in multiple times a day just to barely keep up with the firehose of information and new projects and new chips and new features and nifty peripherals that were being introduced by Rev-Ed and by the members of the forum. Hippy had two or three helpers to keep up with all of the questions that were being asked.
Wapo I fully agree with your post.

I highly approve of fads they make for exponential growth and benefit many. And they also fade. This is the only forum I take part in because the people on here are not the fad types they don't go from photography to bicycles to whatever the next fad is. I am grateful for all the help I have received from this forum and premelec has been a fountain of information. There are plenty of projects to be still made with the present picaxe offering.

Thank you all for having the most civilized forum on the web, let's hope if there aren't more of us that there aren't less of us.
 

Flenser

Senior Member
I think the microcontroller fad is nearing an end, i barely see anything interesting on even the 'duino front. fairly certain we'll never see an 08M3.
Julian,

Yes, but in the education space that RevEd cater to couldn't that mean it has simply transitioned from something new and exciting for STEM courses in secondary schools to more of a reliable workhorse?
 

bogbean

Well-known member
sorry to see your farewell premelec, you were the first person to comment on my first project, thank you for the encouragement and for everything you've given here.
 

neiltechspec

Senior Member
Sad news but best wishes anyway.

I think an awful lot of users / posters (me included) are approaching that situation.
 

John West

Senior Member
I am an old friend of Premena's, and I live about a mile away from him here in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Please consider this an official announcement of his passing. I believe he was 88 years old. He was an amazing, knowledgable and caring man, and he particularly cared a lot about the Picaxe Forum and helping others with their projects. The forum and I have lost a good friend. I know many others will continue helping one another here, as the forum is a wonderful technology asset for both learning and doing.
 

lbenson

Senior Member
Thank you for the notification. I can only hope that I will be as cogent and helpful into my 80s (not so far away).
 

manuka

Senior Member
Very thoughtful of you John. Given Premena''s age no doubt as a teen he cut his e-teeth with thermionic WW2 surplus gear -much as I did. A background account of his pre PICAXE years may hence inspire younger Forum users. Stan.in NZ
 
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John West

Senior Member
You will be pleased to learn that all of his Picaxe projects and chips were boxed up and sent to someone in Ohio who will appreciate them and continue to use them, including a project of his I enjoyed that reads the temperature and broadcasts it acoustically in Morse code every 30 minutes from wherever it is placed. He had them running in various rooms of his house, and I would catch the CW as we were talking, and spend a moment deciphering the temperature each time. As he was an old 40+ wpm CW expert he would copy it unconsciously and could recite each temperature at any time. He was an amazing guy, and he had a great deal of fun with Picaxes.

For him, and for me, growing up in an era when the first tools we needed for a project were metal punches and files to chop out the chassis holes for the tubes (valves,) and where even a simple project would cost us nearly a week's wages and take weeks or months of our spare time to construct, the idea of using a tiny $2 Picaxe chip and quickly and simply typing on a keyboard what we wanted a project to do was almost magical to us. We both understood precisely the semiconductor theory and processes behind it all, (he had a degree in physics from the University of Chicago and spent his entire life immersed in the field of electronics.) But it never ceased to amaze either of us that with a couple of sensors and relays, and writing instructions in simple Picaxe BASIC code we could turn the tiny Picaxe processor chips with their analog and digital I/O's, into little robots to do our bidding. And we could do it for the cost of lunch at McDonald's, and in less time and with less effort than it used to take us just to punch out the chassis holes for the simple electronic amplifiers and CW transmitters of our youths.

Electronics grew up over the decades, just as we did. We both thoroughly enjoyed the ride along with it. And we have both enjoyed the magic of these inexpensive little Picaxe chips. I know it gave him something fun and quite useful to do in his old-age, and it is doing the same for me.
 

manuka

Senior Member
Well said John & your early e-experiences parallel my own here in NZ. Aside from WW2 era thermionic devices most modern e-items then were locally so elusive & costly that I imported from Britain, with a round trip (via pen & paper ordering & sea mail delivery) of months. I well recall the excitement ~1964 when Clive Sinclair's MAT100 (micro alloy transistors) arrived, costing ~$30 EACH in modern terms...

Sir Clive (recently R.I.P.) no doubt became a PICAXE fan? Stan. (ZL2APS -since 1967)
 

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hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
This is such sad news. Unfortunately an inevitability for all of us. I just hope I and everyone else can keep going and contributing for as long as premelec did.

We have indeed lost a good friend but his contributions will remain with us. There is in my opinion no better legacy than leaving behind knowledge and wisdom which helps, benefits and encourages those who follow us, and premelec certainly did that. Belated thanks for all that you gave us.
 
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