hiya all
im designing a picaxe project...i've got a windoze programmer from reved.uk but they dont do linux...i keep losing work cause windoze doesnt like the programmer...the serial interface was easy,but the basic programmer is no good for me...does anyone do a basic picaxe programmer for linux?...i use xandros(debian) linux...

 

Hi,
I am also looking for software that will run under linux or DOS to program the PICAXE, and am prepared to help write it if there is enough help out there. I am a bit surprised this hasn't been done already, given the ease with which normal PICs can be programmed, but realise there are some difficulties in obtaining information about the protocol before work can start. Has anybody found out if the PICAXE internal/programming specs are likely to be released by the suppliers??

Mark

 

Im not a linux guru by any means but every once in a while i dabble in it and have many live distrobutions. Have you tried to use wine the windows emulator to run the proper windows program. Just curious

 

It's not a question of 'programming' the PICAXE, it's already programmed with a BASIC interpreter, it's a question of reverse engineering the transfer protocol that the PICAXE uses to transfer the P-code to the data EEPROM.

However, as well as that, you've got to write the application that creates the tokenised P-code that the PICAXE runs - so you would have to reverse engineer all that as well.

As for why it's not been done?, that's quite simple, it's mainly a cheap low spec system used by school kids - so it's not really worth playing with. You would probably be better employed learning to write PIC assembler, where you can download LINUX programmers and assemblers - and if you really want?, write a BASIC compiler that runs under LINUX.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

I haven't tried running the rev-ed software under Wine myself, but according to somebody else it hangs at the end of installation. I realise I could simply use a normal PIC (etc) rather than PICAXE, but PICAXE projects are becoming the defacto standard in some magazines (like Silicon Chip), and the code required to publish the firmware is small and easy to read/discuss/understand, so I'd like to "program" or "cross-compile" (or whatever you'd call "create & download BASIC code into") these popular picaxen if at all possible from my nice reliable Linux system. Apart from that, it is nice to not have to rely on one supplier for the only program to make these chips useable, and I do have some ideas for rapid software development that I'd like to implement.

Mark.