Hi all,
I'm moving into an area in which I have no technical experience. A search of this forum's database hasn't thrown up anything useful, and so I'm hoping for assistance from anyone who may have already been down this particular route. I am looking to control a number of PICAXE28X2s from my PC for my model railway project. Communication must be bi-directional between PC and any given PICAXE, but the PICAXEs do not communicate with each other. At the moment, I am thinking of the following, though since my plans are embryonic, many things could be changed.
I need to write a user interface, and I am planning to do this in tcl/tk since I have some experience of this language. Now comes the big leap. I'm assuming that this UI can (be made to) output data to a port. Communication would be via an AXE027 cable to the microcontrollers. This would require me to build a dedicated interface PCB, but that shouldn't be a problem. Protocol would be I2C with the PC as master and the PICAXEs as slaves. In the first instance there will be two slaves but ultimately there could be up to, let's say, 15. Another consideration is that each PICAXE is itself an interface to further PICAXEs, the communication protocol for which uses the interrupt. I presume that I would therefore need to poll the PC to PICAXE interface for activity.
Hopefully there's enough detail there for you to understand my requirements. Is it even feasible? Could it be improved (without going to a lot of expense)? Thanks for any and all advice.
Roger.
I'm moving into an area in which I have no technical experience. A search of this forum's database hasn't thrown up anything useful, and so I'm hoping for assistance from anyone who may have already been down this particular route. I am looking to control a number of PICAXE28X2s from my PC for my model railway project. Communication must be bi-directional between PC and any given PICAXE, but the PICAXEs do not communicate with each other. At the moment, I am thinking of the following, though since my plans are embryonic, many things could be changed.
I need to write a user interface, and I am planning to do this in tcl/tk since I have some experience of this language. Now comes the big leap. I'm assuming that this UI can (be made to) output data to a port. Communication would be via an AXE027 cable to the microcontrollers. This would require me to build a dedicated interface PCB, but that shouldn't be a problem. Protocol would be I2C with the PC as master and the PICAXEs as slaves. In the first instance there will be two slaves but ultimately there could be up to, let's say, 15. Another consideration is that each PICAXE is itself an interface to further PICAXEs, the communication protocol for which uses the interrupt. I presume that I would therefore need to poll the PC to PICAXE interface for activity.
Hopefully there's enough detail there for you to understand my requirements. Is it even feasible? Could it be improved (without going to a lot of expense)? Thanks for any and all advice.
Roger.