What's next after M2?

steliosm

Senior Member
It's been 9 years since the M2 chips were released, at least for the 8, 14 and 20 pin versions. Since then I haven't seen any announcement on this forum for new chips to be released. Don't get me wrong, M2 chips are still a great option for doing quite a lot of things, but looking at similar companies like Adafruit and Arduino they both have released quite a few products and created additional product lines over the last 9 years. My question is, does RevEd plan to stick around and if it does, does the plan only includes selling their product for education mainly and hope that schools don't discover alternative solutions?
 

oracacle

Senior Member
The appearance of the lack of forward movement had, for me at least, made the platform feel a little stale.

That being said, some of the stuff I've been, and still am working on run of the mill Arduino can't keep up which is why I'm starting to mave towards Teensy instead.
 

AllyCat

Senior Member
Hi,

Maybe the basic PICaxe chips haven't been updated for some time, but the PE has, with the addition of another program "slot" (and Table memory) in most of the M2s, for example. IMHO very few PICaxe users actually employ the existing chips anywhere near to their full capabilities, such as the 512 bytes of RAM, Weak Pullup resistors, Comparators (with internal DAC bias), Interrupt on Change flags, Very Low power consumption, etc., etc.. Of course it might be "nice" to have a few more updates to the Program Editor, but there is already some confusion with "too many commands to do the same thing".

Also, there is a definite advantage in its continuity, or "Backwards Compatibility", particularly in an Educational environment. It seems to me that too often an Ard**no application gets "broken" because a "Library" function has been "updated". Recently, I was surprised to see a "new" product that used an "8051 core", for which I was writing (Assembler) Code more than 30 years ago. If PICaxe ever offered a genuine assembler capability (not really a hint! ) then I think I could probably pick up the PIC coding that I was writing in the 1990s. And some of the components still in use, like the 555 timer, were designed around 50 years ago! :)

Cheers, Alan.
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
My question is, does RevEd plan to stick around and if it does, does the plan only includes selling their product for education mainly and hope that schools don't discover alternative solutions?
Perhaps you need to ask Microchip, rather than RevEd?

The UK Trademark "Picaxe" is owned by "Microchip Technology Incorporated"... (See here)
 

Buzby

Senior Member
The UK Trademark "Picaxe" is owned by "Microchip Technology Incorporated"... (See here)
It's a bit weird. If you follow the link you posted, and look at all the UK trademarks owned by "Microchip Technology Incorporated", Picaxe is the only one.

I would have expected a huge list, such as those listed here : https://www.microchip.com/en-us/about/legal-information/microchip-trademarks

Even weirder, 'Picaxe' is not in the huge list !

EDIT : It looks like RevEd did originally own the trademark, but assigned it to new owners in 2006. See here : https://www.ipo.gov.uk/trademark/history/GB50000000002388482.pdf

Another EDIT : This thread from 2006 adds more murkiness to the pot : https://picaxeforum.co.uk/threads/att-technical-picaxe-powered-labeling-advertising.4088/
 
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steliosm

Senior Member
The trademark on Picaxe and who actually owns it is indeed weird. But this is something between RevEd and Microchip Technologies. I only care about RevEd and us, the customers.

Alan what was that 'new' product that had a 8051 core?
 

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
PICAXE products are based upon PIC microcontrollers from Microchip. Any new PICAXE generation chip therefore requires a suitable new (ie enhanced, improved and/or new features) base level PICmicro to enable any new generation of PICAXE chips to be developed. As new PICmicros are released every year they are always evaluated to see if they add any significant feature improvements over the existing generation PICAXE chips.

Releasing a new generation of PICAXE chips is always a huge task, therefore the base level improvement in the raw PICmicro chip has to be quite significant to justify this.
 

Buzby

Senior Member
Releasing a new generation of PICAXE chips is always a huge task, therefore the base level improvement in the raw PICmicro chip has to be quite significant to justify this.
There do seem to be a whole raft of new goodies in the Microchip PIC world. See https://www.microchip.com/design-centers/8-bit/peripherals/core-independent

I can see uses for the MathsAccelerator, AngularTimer, TemperatureIndicator, and the CLC.

These 'core-independant' peripherals fit well with the PICAXE ethos, so maybe an M3 isn't that difficult from a code point of view, but I've not checked how much flash they have, which limits the size of the interpreter.

To make more efficient use of 'interpreter space', an M3 could have compiler which modifies the interpreter, not just the downloaded program. Some 'compiler switches' to turn off unneeded functions ( I never use TUNE, and that must occupy a fair chunk. ) would allow space for new functions.

PE6 was flaunted as the door to a new PICAXE world, but it's just a rose-tinted window without some new chips to work with.
 

erco

Senior Member
Some new dedicated I2C functions to simplify using sensors, LCD displays, RGB LEDs etc would be nice, much like IRIN, ULTRA, READADC, etc.
 

steliosm

Senior Member
Hello Technical, thank you for taking time to reply to this thread.
Yes, I do understand the effort required to include a newer chip in you range. Still, I more interested in the features that you wish to include in newer chips. As Buzby said, there are new peripherals available on the Pic chips that can be used. I also like very much erco's suggestion. Specialized functions for some demanding tasks could also help push Picaxe in places it can't go at the moment, e.g. Neopixels and not the hard to locate and not-so-cheap APA102 RGB led strips.

Is there a plan of what you want to include in the next Picaxe product?
 

bag57pipe

New Member
I’m surprised there has not been more discussion on this topic, compared to a lot of products currently on the market picaxe is not the cheapest quickest or necessarily the simplest to use I have been playing with Madlabs jelly bean it plugs directly into the usb port and the syntax is very much like picaxe but it runs compiled basic. Having said all of that I thought the primary purpose for picaxe was education though not a teacher myself I can appreciate the need for something simple and robust, getting kids all turn to page 32 of book X in less than five minutes can be a challenge, I shudder how long practical exercises in lessons lasting only an hour would take, possibly weeks?
Schools get a discount (good) on their purchases and there are educational resources on site so as an educational tool picaxe is probably the route of least resistance. My only bone of contention is the original picaxe mission statement did hint that old people like me would also benefit from a bit of education, mine got badly disrupted when my frequently quirky BAS 800 became unusable with PE5 because some of the software is 16 bit and new windoz don’t like it. PE6 has no covert basic to assembler at all.
Ok the assembler only supported a few very basic commands but for blink L.E.D, traffic lights, scan the keypad, blink more L.E.D’s it’s all that was needed a few cut and paste code snippets for I2C, serial, L.C.D probably would have taken care of the rest.
Will PE6 ever get out of the beta will convert basic assembler ever get reinstated will I ever find a use for a redundant BAS 800
 

geezer88

Senior Member
For my projects, the picaxe mpu has plenty of power. What I would like to see more development on is a wider range of functions. If the editor was
able to load extra precompiled functions as needed, it would be great to have floating point math, better trig functions, etc.

Tom
 

fernando_g

Senior Member
Another retired geezer here.
Also for me, the PICAXE satisfies my need for the projects I do to entertain myself. They are not extra challenging nor do they require IoT connectivity.

Having said that, there are projects which have struggled with execution speed.

Therefore I feel Buzby's suggestions have merit.
 
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