ericgibbs

hi Bill,

>>> I'm looking for a good screen capture program (I use Snagit but it's not free)

Try 'screenhunter1.1' its freeware...

http://www.wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm

__________________
Eric
"Good enough is Perfect"

PIC tutorials:
Gramo's: www.digital-diy.net/
Bill's: www.blueroomelectronics.com/

3v0

Bill,
I have been using capture from analogx for many years.

http://www.analogx.com/CONTENTS/down...em/capture.htm

blueroomelectronics

Well I can stick with Snagit as it's paid for and includes a nice editor and a printer to .png capture.
But submitters can use whatever's handy.

I'll look at those templates in Open Office.

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com

Hero999

Did you read my previous post?

__________________
What's so bad about Microsoft?

Get Opera it's simply a superb browser.

blueroomelectronics

Of course, print screen works but is very basic and has no edit facility, a simple paint like Open Office draw works.

The embedding font in Open Office is excellent, I have a keycaps font (looks nicer than <CTRL> <S> IMO) see above MPLAB example.

And I will look into open office styles, a good template would take alot of the work out of the edits.

I really like the old Parallax layout for documents, here's an old sample.

Attached Files

HWT13.PDF (28.4 KB, 25 views)

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
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kchriste

I'm with Hero999 on this. With PrintScreen or ALT-PrintScreen you can paste into any graphics program and edit to your hearts content. Why have another program running in the tray?

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blueroomelectronics

Since the screen cap has so many possible solutions use whatever you see fit.

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com

ThermalRunaway

The first program I ever wrote on my own was a program to flash an LED. Even that didn't work properly first time, because I'd neglected to consider how fast the PIC would run my program - the LED lit continuously!

After I had slowed the PIC down the LED could be seen to flash, and the interesting part was that it stayed off a lot longer than it was on. That was because of the length of time taken to run the code to setup the TRISA register and output the data etc. After the LED had been turned on, turning it off was the very next instruction in my program so it didn't stay on very long at all!!! After that I modified the program so that the LED would flash with a 50/50 duty cycle and I included some delay routines that allowed me to run it on it's standard clock frequency. Learning PIC programming is probably the most fun I've had with Electronics.

I'd love to help out with the book but I'm very much learning myself at the moment. I'm currently tackling my first "real" PIC project, and that may be of interest to you - I'll get in touch when it's finished.
Other than that I'm more than happy to proof-read your documents. Because I'm still a "beginner", I haven't forgotten what it was once like not to know how to program MicroControllers. That's quite important because once you've become quite experienced you forget this and you take some things for granted that a beginner would not. For this reason it can be hard for an experienced person to write a book aimed at an inexperienced person. So I think proof reading would help you.

Brian.

__________________

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Electronics Test Development Engineer
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blueroomelectronics

Care to share what your "real" PIC project is? Of course we're curious.

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com

ThermalRunaway

Yeah it's no big secret or anything. Basically I'm writing some software for a PIC which will allow the use of the RC-5 protocol for infra-red communication. Not a new thing, and I know you can get dedicated ICs for communicating with infra-red, but I just wanted the experience of writing a program to communicate data using an existing protocol. I've got loads of RC-5 remote controls around my house so I can use them to test my design with (I'm doing the receive side first).

Brian

__________________

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Electronics Test Development Engineer
---------------------------------

Nigel Goodwin

The transmit side is trivial, I've used my basic Sony SIRC's transmitter routines to do RC5 (and RC6) a number of times - it's only a few minutes job.

The receive side is more difficult though, my radio module tutorial basically does RC5 type decoding (Manchester decoding) - and if you check the link to the source where I got the basic routines from, there's more about it there.

The reason I choose Sony SIRC's for the IR tutorial is that it's so much easier (probably the easiest IR method), and there's no shortage of Sony remotes about - but RC5 is definitely the worlds most popular system.

As a matter of interest?, I first wrote routines to decode the Sharp remote system - but that was a LONG time ago - I analysed the output from a Sharp remote using a 386 DOS laptop. Back then there weren't loads of websites that told you all about the different protocols.

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PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
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Hero999

I'm sorry, it turns out that I was wrong about that, it doesn't embed the font at all, what it does it select a the closest font on your machine to the one used in the document.

__________________
What's so bad about Microsoft?

Get Opera it's simply a superb browser.

blueroomelectronics

Then I'll post the keycaps font on my site, I've already posted 'Crystal' as it a monospaced font with a danish zero. Great for program listings.

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com

bryan1

Out of cuirostiy Bill I have noticed you frequent the microchip forum so you must of seen the minibasic thread in the pic 32 forum. Both Mike and Dario are doing leaps and bounds on bringing good ol' basic to the 18f and pic32's.Athough it's still in it's infancy give the boys time and good ol' basic on a huge 512k pic will be a breeze to learn. The more people i can expose to this minibasic will bring the concept closer to reality and the people so whynot include that option. Why bother with a picaxe whan minibasic with do and it's open source.

I appologise if you see ths hijacking your book but everyone seems to know basic in 1 way or another and this project will hopefully with open source become main stream.

Cheers Bryan

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" The only way to avoid human error is to avoid the use of humans"

blueroomelectronics

Thanks bryan1, I haven't read much of the PIC 32 thread but I'll take a look. In the meantime I've been tinkering with Swordfish BASIC and it's really quite good and the free SE edition is quite useful. I've looked at gramo's code for it and it was easy to translate for the wee Junebugs 18F1320 PIC.

__________________
Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com