Is Picaxe Dead?

bpowell said:
I think the ONLY commands that "leverage the capabilities of the chips to the max ..." are those which configure / enable the core-independent peripherals (PWM, timers, etc.) Otherwise, you're running through the interpreter.

That being said, speaking for myself .... 80 - 90% of the projects I've built only really need to be faster than ME, not as fast a lightening ... so PICAXE works. But, I've also had projects where I want things to be much faster ... and I've enjoyed embedded PIC development for that ... I mean ... if you haven't played with Direct Memory Access ... you're missing out! :)
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bpowell said:
I think the ONLY commands that "leverage the capabilities of the chips to the max ..." are those which configure / enable the core-independent peripherals (PWM, timers, etc.) Otherwise, you're running through the interpreter.

That being said, speaking for myself .... 80 - 90% of the projects I've built only really need to be faster than ME, not as fast a lightening ... so PICAXE works. But, I've also had projects where I want things to be much faster ... and I've enjoyed embedded PIC development for that ... I mean ... if you haven't played with Direct Memory Access ... you're missing out! :)
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DMA is fantastic and I've used it quite a lot with my experiments in audio, coupled to SPI, and getting 'frames' of audio to load into memory in the background. Parallel processing in it's truest sense. But I must admit it's sometimes taken ages to get working properly (and a lot of cost with licence renewals to get compiler optimisations!).
 
Jeremy Leach said:
But I must admit it's sometimes taken ages to get working properly (and a lot of cost with licence renewals to get compiler optimisations!).
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Yeah, the setup was the tricky part ... but it's all there in the datasheet ... you just need to re-read it about 100 times! Still, that's kind of the stuff I find fun about the hobby ... and for me, it's strictly a hobby. I'd be very stressed if I were trying to get DMA working for a work project and I was under a deadline.

Along that hobby track: I haven't had a need to optimize further than the free version of XC8 will give me ... given how much space is on chips now (128KB for code space?!) my humble little projects fit in there nicely.
 
bpowell said:
Yeah, the setup was the tricky part ... but it's all there in the datasheet ... you just need to re-read it about 100 times! Still, that's kind of the stuff I find fun about the hobby ... and for me, it's strictly a hobby. I'd be very stressed if I were trying to get DMA working for a work project and I was under a deadline.

Along that hobby track: I haven't had a need to optimize further than the free version of XC8 will give me ... given how much space is on chips now (128KB for code space?!) my humble little projects fit in there nicely.
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The optimisations I've used are more because of execution speed and getting the highest processing throughout that I can. I've never actually run out of programming space at all.
 
Well retired South Seas old timer "Manuka" here! I still occasionally browse this forum but haven't contributed for years & am now more involved in non electronic activities. Herewith a few e-musings -

I cut my teeth electronically 60+ years ago as a teen in early 1960s ham radio (then -gasp- largely thermionic!), & eventually went on to an associated NZ/Australian & UK technical & educational career.

In this context my PICAXE enthusiasm & promotion was quite recent as it began 2002 (while NZ tertiary teaching) & probably peaked during a long run of PICAXE articles (many 433 MHz data slanted) I penned for the Australian "Silicon Chip" monthly.

Yes -20+ years ago (although recent for an old timer!) & a telling duration given e-tech's white hot progress...

That early Y2k era predates such now common e-tech as BT, WiFi, SD cards, Lithium rechargeables,smartphones & even -gasp- now ubiquitous USB & white LEDs. Of course today's numerous powerful & cheap microcontrollers (& languages like microPython) were still to come.

PICAXE's,although serial programmed, then had few rivals & were superbly "can do" & cost effective beside such offerings as US sourced BASIC Stamps. I recall a degree level student saying he'd achieved more on a project in a few hours with PICAXEs than he'd managed in weeks with raw PICs. That remark rather reminded me of the mid 1970s when HP programmable calculators bypassed the need to program punch card style in Fortran. PRODUCTIVITY!

But it's now 2025 & I've rather lost touch with even NZ/Australian educational micro preferences,although apparently Raspberry Pi based setups tend the norm for senior students. (Refer an Australian MMBASIC Pico 2 based kit just released).

In Britain the BBC micro:bit (V.2) seems popular for 11-12 yo STEM teaching, no doubt boosted by it's self contained design easing classroom setup & "tidy up time" clutter.

All up, & although PICAXEs are/were schools focused, it could be that hobbiests are NOW the majority users...

To help keep things in perspective perhaps those involved with their region's STEM e-education could inform of the actual state of play?

Stan. (Wellington, New Zealand) ZL2APS
 

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I've just come back to electronics after a break and want to get back to Picaxe projects again but the programming tools for Linux seem somewhat out of date and picaxecloud.com just times out.

Does anyone have any recommendations? So far, I've been running Axepad in an Ubuntu 14 VM.

Thanks in advance,

Jools
 
bpowell said:
I don't agree with this ... there are certainly more powerful 8-bit, 8-pin chips than the 12F1840 (PICAXE 08M2) ... some with 2x or 4x the RAM, 2x the flash storage, more UART, configurable logic blocks, etc. The PIC16F17115 for instance. As for the 18F14K22 (PICAXE 20X2), I've started playing with the PIC18F16Q41 which has 4x the storage, 8x the RAM, More timers, CLC, etc. There's even 20-pin chips that are nearly identical to the 20x2, but include a USB module.

Microchip has been marching along.

​

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Going back to the original topic ... motivated by Bpowell's remark,

What I could appreciate as a "compromise" solution (with likely limited implementation effort for Rev-Ed as I suspect) succeeding the 08M2 (based on 12F1840): A new 08M3 (based on PIC16F17114 or 115) implementing both:

1. As a baseline: the current Picaxe BASIC command set for the 08M2 - which definitely will satisfy all educational purposes which is at the core of Rev-Eds venture,
2. Adaptations to the POKESFR/ & PEEKSFR commands, allowing all internal modules of the new PIC16F17114/5 chip to be addressed and configured - as a gift to the "professional hobbyists" seeking to use the full potential of the new device (like the OpAmp, numerical oscillator etc.).

Of course, similar reasoning holds for the 14 - and 20-pin devices in the M2 series, as well as the X2 series devices.
I can imagine that this would be possible with not too much effort since both chips are based on the same Mid-range Enhanced Core architecture, it seems just more exiting modules and increased pin mapping flexibility in the newest chips ... .

Am I a dreamer, or is there some hope ;)?

/Jurjen
 
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I just want to remind everyone, just cuz I keep seeing it pop up, there are the X2 chips that are quite a bit more powerful than the M2 versions. Just saying.
 
I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, but what about In Circuit Debug?

PE5 has a 'Connect' feature in the menu which just shows a message box saying that feature is in development.

Did that feature ever get implemented? I can't see it in the latest version of PE6. (The crude 'debug' command doesn't count)

This is one thing a certain 5-letter competitor got right first time out of the gate, using the same serial download cable as PICAXE and no additional external hardware.

It's also a particular weakness of Arduino. Arduino IDE 1.x doesn't have it at all and I believe the newfangled Arduino 2.x IDE has this feature if you have an expensive Atmel ICE, a requirement which is to be expected because it runs compiled code. This is a feature that is very useful in education, a potential advantage over Arduino, and it's good educational experience for students who will eventually use things like the MPLAB ICD in industry (or more likely Segger J-Link on this newfangled 32-bit ARM stuff that is very popular now).
 
No, we actually never got to see the Circuit Debug functionality supported on Picaxes. Plain 'Debug' functionality, although slow, can give you quite a bit of details of what is happening on your Picaxe and it has indeed been very helpful to me when things didn't go as 'programmed'.
Arduino is (still - I think) using the serial monitor to see what is happening, but this is more of a 'console output' type of debug.
 
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