Running Multiple PICAXEs from the same Power Supply

[mccheesy]

I have a question that I feel like I admittedly should know the answer to, but would it be possible to run 2 picaxes (both 20M2's) off of the same 3-AA battery pack?

One picaxe is already hooked up to the battery pack and has an IR sensor, a piezo buzzer, and an LED hooked up to it, the second 20M2 would have one more LED hooked up to it.

I feel embarrassed to even be asking such a fundamental question, but I would prefer to ask it than accidentally damage a perfectly good part.

 

[lbenson]

It depends on the load, of course, but on its own, the picaxe (20M2, etc.) just sips power. What you are talking about would run a long time on 3-AAs (provided the buzzer wasn't high power and on for an annoyingly long period of time and the LEDs were not, say, high-power modules).

Basically no risk of damage if correctly wired, but a question does arise--why two PICAXEs for such a scant amount of I/O?

 

[mccheesy]

It depends on the load, of course, but on its own, the picaxe (20M2, etc.) just sips power. What you are talking about would run a long time on 3-AAs (provided the buzzer wasn't high power and on for an annoyingly long period of time and the LEDs were not, say, high-power modules).

Basically no risk of damage if correctly wired, but a question does arise--why two PICAXEs for such a scant amount of I/O?

I need one that is constantly running a ForNext Loop of oscillating values that I can use to make my LED smoothly change in brightness while still having control of the program via a remote and not being locked into that loop.

It does seem like sort of a waste to have an extra picaxe needed just for that, but I haven't found a good way to go about this on a single chip

 

[AllyCat]

Hi,

I don't normally recommend the "multitasking" feature (using multiple STARTn: labels) of all the M2s, but it should be far easier than connecting up two 20M2s. In fact I'd be aiming to do what you've described with ONE 08M2.

Cheers, Alan.