Arduino lets people who would be scared to death by C to program in C without realising it...

I think it's an important result... any attempt at turning into a supposedly "real IDE" will destroy this...

Look at Eclipse... it's a pain in the ass for me imagine for a beginner..

I'm not a beginner and I use Arduino to code... it's simple and it gets the job done...

Arduino is not just for beginners... is for people who want to get the job done... if you are more interested in the tool then the result the makefile is your friend...

m

If you don't like the arduino environment/language I recommend the website avrfreaks.net, it's more about using raw c on avr boards...

power the LCD from a separate power supply
i

if you power the backlighting LEDs from arduino the voltage drops too much and the processor goes crazy

massimo

Acutally it would be possible to make a lib that can be used both with 4 and 8 bit

i'm sure some cleaning is needed and adding the same print methods as the Serial object would be perfect..

if somebody is up for the challenge that would be perfect..

massimo

here's a hint

define your own delay function, call it mydelay, that returns an int

break down any delay into multiple 10 msec delays using a for loop
every time you wait for 10msec you check an input, if the input has changed
you quit the for loop and return TRUE otherwise you finish off the loop and return FALSE

when you use mydelay you check the return value, if it's false you go on to the next step otherwise you break out of the animation loop
 it's a bit crude but it doesnt require an interrupt and it works at a 10msec resolution

(please note that the for loop and checking the input uses a fee microseconds therefore on long delays you might need to compensate the extra time)

the analogue pins on the mini are numbered between 0 and 7

just use a number between 0 and 7

analogue pins are treated differently from the digital ones so there can be an analogue pin 0 and a digital pin 0

massimo

hello


datarate over wireless connections i always a bit of a gamble but... let's try
theoretically it could work...

the only problem is when there is a lot of traffic in that band (Wifi, bluetooth, other 2.4GHz thingies)

another factor that might slow down your module is if somebody is doing a discovery of the bt devices in the area.
that tends to hog the bandwidth and CPU time of the modules... now if somebody would be running a lot
of discoveries they would kill your performance pretty fast.


you should try the Firmata protocol on PD as a test, it has a very compact protocol and it has been adapted to the BT board

find it here http://www.tinker.it/en/Teaching/Bluetooth

massimo

Usually PIC C compilers are commercial products for which you pay good money... while the avr-gcc is free... it's a tradeoff..

atmeg16 is not supported by arduino now but the atmega168 is and that might have enough space for your project


massimo

What language did you use on the PIC?
Do you know that the latest Arduino board has 16kb of code space?

remember that arduino is an OSS project and it's using the avr-gcc that might not be the most efficient compiler on earth.


massimo

if you compile your assembler code into an hex file you can upload it with uisp or any software that supports the stk500 protocol

the serial speed during upload is 19200

you can expect a gain in speed and and size now the issue is : is it worth going through the pain of learning assembler for what you're going to gain?

massimo

you can use pinmode anywhere in your code... you dont need to modify setup to do that

or make a class that has a method that gets executed in setup() and you can make some last nanosecond changes to the code

massimo

tom

thanks for the contribution!

remember that arduino 0005 doesn't exist yet

it's marked 0005 in the svn but we're still working on it


massimo

true

we might just drop the old library for version 5
maybe we should run a poll

I'm sure we can optimise quite a bit of code.... the linker is a very important piece of the whole system
that we need to understand a lot better


massimo

Dear Friend


If you so in a hurry you should search the forum first... this question has been asked before

Anyway C++ on which operating system? the only thing you need is to be able to talk to the serial port and this is done slightly differently depending on the operating system


for example typing "c++ serial windows" into google leads to this -> http://www.codeproject.com/system/serial.asp

if you need linux or mac just type the right word into google


massimo

Tom

thanks a lot for your contribution.
Since I've starting to use PD to teach i've see some of your work, congratulations.


Just a little comment on the code issue... We will  release into the wild a new version of arduino which
supports processors with 16K of code... this will solve most of the problems.

Official launch I think will be at Ars Electronica but some betas will be available much earlier.

I'm porting the bootloader right now

massimo