If I cracked open any commercially available product, would I find a PICAXE

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IronJungle

Senior Member
A little off topic from the typical technical discussions, but this is a PICAXE curiosity of mine none the less....

Is there anything that a typically consumer would buy (toy, microwave, remote, etc.) that has a PICAXE in it? I would think the answer would be "no" because it is aimed at the education/hobby market and PICAXE bootloader would add a small cost to the raw materials that could be avoided with a naked PIC.

Still, just wondering.
 
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bluejets

Senior Member
I think the people here already supply the picaxe at close to so-called "bare" pic price.

A manufacturer may well prefer one or the other depending on the program it is required to run. It would depend on the end cost.

Pic programming in assembly, as I understand it, gives options and access not available with the picaxe.
 
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inglewoodpete

Senior Member
IJ, Your terminology is perhaps limiting. Define "commercially available". If you mean "mass produced", then the answer is probably no.

However, there are things like development boards that may be sold with PICAXE chips. Do they count?

I have been involved with a few "commercial" projects where I have made a few thousand dollars. I have specified that the microcontrollers used were PICAXEs because they do the job and are cost effective for me to program. However these are never going to be "off the shelf" products.

In line with my experience above, I think the PICAXE will be a basis of many commercial but bespoke products or projects.
 
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Grogster

Senior Member
Not in Texas perhaps, but three of my major product lines are PICAXE based commercial units.
In my case, they are modular in that the PICAXE is the main CPU of the product, but interfaces with other 3rd party modules to complete the system.
 
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srnet

Senior Member
IronJungle said:
I would think the answer would be "no" because it is aimed at the education/hobby market and PICAXE bootloader would add a small cost to the raw materials that could be avoided with a naked PIC.
Click to expand...
Its misleading to describe it as a boot loader, PICAXEs do have one, but they also have all the firmware code that does all the work.
 
hippy

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
PICAXE is used commercially, is used within what I would describe as consumer product.

Not every commercial venture seeks maximum profit and/or minimum raw material costs and some are quite happy with short development times and code that works and does the job.
 
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Goeytex

Senior Member
I am sure that there are a few commercial products that use a Picaxe. (I have designed a couple). But I would venture to guess that these are not produced in the hundreds of thousands of units. It simply would not make financial sense in a competitive market where an 8051 type, or an ST7/9 can be thrown on a board for less than 50c..

I think the people here already supply the picaxe at close to so-called "bare" pic price.
Click to expand...
What is your definition of close? The markup is not that small at between 100% to 400% depending upon the chip, the supplier, and
the quantity. But is still fairly reasonable for low volume IMO.

$9.45 is kind of pricey for a 28X2 here in the States/Canada when the Bare PIC runs about $2.00 ea ( QTY 100). But Rev_Ed is not the only one getting a slice of the pie.

REV-ED offers a nice discount of up to 25 Percent on large quantities of some chips. However, shipping costs
from across the Pond kills most of the discount. ( £95.00 for 105 28X2 Chips)

I am pretty sure that Rev_Ed would consider even deeper discounts if someone wanted to order 500,000 chips. :)

Side Note: Several years ago when I was contracting with a company on a U.S. Military project, the programmer got very sick and could not complete the code. WE were looking at missing a demo deadline and a $500,000 contract.

The system was designed to use an 8051. I had no experience with programming an 8051 and what code was there was not not commented well and was incomplete. So I ordered several Picaxes and in less than 4 days days had a working prototype to demo. The company got the contract, but the final product still used the 8051 due to cost. This is one way that the Picaxe can really shine.
 
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Grogster

Senior Member
Goeytex said:
Side Note: Several years ago when I was contracting with a company on a U.S. Military project, the programmer got very sick and could not complete the code. WE were looking at missing a demo deadline and a $500,000 contract.

The system was designed to use an 8051. I had no experience with programming an 8051 and what code was there was not not commented well and was incomplete. So I ordered several Picaxes and in less than 4 days days had a working prototype to demo. The company got the contract, but the final product still used the 8051 due to cost. This is one way that the Picaxe can really shine.
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Yeah, that's what I love about the PICAXE too - fast code-development turnaround compared to other platforms or raw PIC code(yuk - no thanks!). I did not used to comment my code, but now I always do it. I thought: "I'll remember how it does it", but that came back to bite me a few times, and I had to teach myself how I wrote the code on non-commented projects, so that "I'll remember it" idea was definitely false-logic! :D
 
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