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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Picromite 5.05.04: Buster + Pi4

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PeterB
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Joined: 05/02/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 639
Posted: 11:20pm 03 Jan 2020
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G'Day Volhout

I'm sorry you have given up.
I have stopped working on PI because I don't need it and I'm too old to go down another path. It did seem to work and that was probably due to the DIGITECH USB to WIFI cable which provided 3 USB connectors for keyboard etc. I also bought a W version but never got to try it.
Old age is catching up with me and having a wife in a nursing home and having to manage the house and being a lazy sod and and etc.
I'm a bit surprised that no one seems keen to risk their sanity with PI, it never really appealed to me but I thought it was popular with younger geeks.

Peter
 
JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3641
Posted: 11:25pm 03 Jan 2020
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I expect someone will want them, sooner or later (I would but already bought plenty).

John
 
robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2282
Posted: 01:43pm 04 Jan 2020
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the problem with the RPi has always been that it is a neat solution looking for a problem to solve. BrianP touches on this in another thread:
https://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewTopic.php?FID=16&TID=11919

the 'killer appliances' that 'everyone needs' are:

1. media player. a RPi3 running OSMC + Kodi makes a brilliant media player with just a HDMI cable and plug-pack connected.

2. ultra-cheap desktop. i've run a RPi3 like this, glued to the back of a monitor, and it is great. again, real simple setup - wireless keyboard+mouse, HDMI cable to the monitor, plug-pack for power.

at this point, alas, we start to scrape the bottom of the barrel...

3. retro-gaming console. there are a few distros out there that achieve this, including some that allow the mechanically-minded to build a complete arcade box. cool, but not too many folks go down this path; also a PC can do pretty much the same thing.

4. MMBasic for RPi. some folks manage to make this work, some (as we have seen) fail. while the RPi zero is a popular starting point, the tiny board requires procuring cabling that costs at least as much as the zero, as every interface connector needs an adapter to get to a standard size/shape of socket. unfortunately the RPi has never made it to being a CMM successor - to do so would require going down the path taken by OSMC + Kodi, where the underlying O/S is completely subsumed by application (MMBasic).


just my opinion, mind you! i have a RPi A+ sitting nearby just waiting for the right version of MMBasic to pop into existence.


cheers,
rob   :-)
Edited 2020-01-04 23:49 by robert.rozee
 
lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 2989
Posted: 02:22pm 04 Jan 2020
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  robert.rozee said  . . . while the RPi zero is a popular starting point, the tiny board requires procuring cabling that costs at least as much as the zero, as every interface connector needs an adapter to get to a standard size/shape of socket.


Point well taken, but it is easy to connect i2c and 3.3V serial with flying leads (Dupont cable). And the ZW is far superior to the Z in terms of ease of communication--well worth the additional $5. The biggest problem I have found with the RPi is eventual corruption of the SD card causing failure to boot.

So what has wifi and no SD? ESP8266 (though it has limitations), and ESP32 (which can support an SD card but doesn't rely on it for booting. That's at the low-cost end; I'm sure there are many others (not to mention MMBasic module + ESP8266).
Edited 2020-01-05 00:23 by lizby
PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed
 
JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3641
Posted: 03:35pm 04 Jan 2020
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It may be that the RPi was designed as a solution to very different problems than the 'mites.

Looking at the RPi from a 'mite point of view (the sort of view a 'mite user is likely to have) isn't wrong but the resulting comments are probably to be expected.

Or, if you think of the problems solved well by each they do overlap but not much.

John
 
PeterB
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Joined: 05/02/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 639
Posted: 04:58pm 04 Jan 2020
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All I said was "would anybody like a pie?"



Peter
 
hitsware2

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Joined: 03/08/2019
Location: United States
Posts: 705
Posted: 10:17pm 04 Jan 2020
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For a simple Basic install on RPi :

sudo apt install basic256
my site
 
Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 3422
Posted: 09:36am 06 Jan 2020
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My Pi Zero has a second chance.

Installed RISK-OS-Lite on it, boots directly (1 second) into BBC basic.
I am not sure BBC basic will satisfy my needs, since it does not have all the IO support (SPI, I2C etc). But I'll start playing with it.

It would have been nice to have MMBasic do the same. Dump linux just port MMBasic to the bare metal, or on a simple RTOS.
PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS
 
PeterB
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Joined: 05/02/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 639
Posted: 10:09am 06 Jan 2020
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No body seems to want my pies (with or without sauce) so my offer is still open.
If you PM your address I'll post them to you. None of my descendants are particularly interested in micros so when I go a lot of my stuff will go to the tip.
I had MMBASIC running on the RPI ZERO but didn't get to try the W version. Too lazy.
I don't think it would send me broke to pay for the postage and at 82 it doesn't matter much anyway.
Let me know what you decide.

Peter
 
PeterB
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Joined: 05/02/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 639
Posted: 09:02pm 06 Jan 2020
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G'Day All

The competition has now closed

Peter
 
TrevorH
Senior Member

Joined: 06/04/2018
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 142
Posted: 11:28am 02 Jun 2020
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Hi All

I am trying to get to grips with using a Raspberry PI3 with the official 7 inch screen (HDMI I think)
which is connected to the ribbon cable display port.

Have got it all working using ssh from my Imac, I can draw circles etc and load images but gui commands do not work as i get "Display not configured"

I have done "option lcdpanel hdmi" , is there anything  I have maybe missed or is not in the Manual?

MM.ver is 5.0504, manual is 5.05.02

I am new to the PI, and not very good with command line stuff.


Trevor
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8516
Posted: 11:47am 02 Jun 2020
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  Quote  I have done "option lcdpanel hdmi" , is there anything  I have maybe missed or is not in the Manual?


Its a feature (AKA bug). Clearly no-one else has tried that before. The fix is trivial but I need to set up a development environment before I can do anything as I haven't touched the Pi code for ages. Might be a week or two.
 
TrevorH
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Joined: 06/04/2018
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 142
Posted: 11:53am 02 Jun 2020
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Hi Peter thanks for your reply, should I use an earlier version of the PI code, if so which?

Trevor
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8516
Posted: 12:16pm 02 Jun 2020
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  Quote  should I use an earlier version of the PI code, if so which?s


No, the bug is generic - sorry. It will work OK with any display other than HDMI
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8516
Posted: 04:26pm 02 Jun 2020
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Try this


mmbasic.zip

Completely untested and may have broken something else as I had to completely re-create the development environment

Update: I've now tested it on Raspbian Lite and the gui elements display but you have no way of activating them - no touch, no mouse so that is why no-one used them
Edited 2020-06-03 03:36 by matherp
 
Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 3422
Posted: 07:36pm 04 Jun 2020
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Dear Matherp,

I really hesitate to bother you again about mmbasic on the Pi.
Since my struggles with the Pi Zero, I decided to purchase a Pi-4 and try it again.

I installed Raspbian on it through NOOBS, and that works.

Raspbian updated itself automatically to the latest level.

I went to the website in your first post, and tried installing PIGPIO.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt-get install pigpio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
pigpio is already the newest version (1.71-0~rpt1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 21 not upgraded.
pi@raspberrypi:~ $


Apparently PIGPIO is installed in Raspbian Buster.

Then I unzipped mmbasic from the first post and tried to run it from the terminal.

pi@raspberrypi:~/mmbasic $ sudo ./mmbasic
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioWrite: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetPullUpDown: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioWrite: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioWrite: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
2020-06-04 21:11:12 gpioSetMode: bad gpio (68)
Segmentation fault


Honestly, I tried several times, and tried rebooting the pi. I checked the CPU temperature (can still put my finger on it without burns...;)

Score:
I ONCE was able to start mmbasic correctly. Did nothing different.
I achieved 90% the above behaviour (sometimes the list is very long before the segmentation fault)
I achieved 3x a similar behaviour wich ran endless (did not stop).

In the task manager the mmbasic task uses 25% when in the endless fault behaviour (probaly uses 1 full CPU), which can be killed with

sudo kill xxxx (xxxx=PID)


However, in the task manager 1 occurence of mmbasic remains (cannot be killed) with 0% CPU power, consuming 74Mbyte virtual memory.

Anyway, I could use some advise.

- do I need to remove PIGPIO version 17.1 and replace it with 7.1 ?
- is there anything I am missing ? Noticed you also had a file called "start" in your folder where mmbasic resides. and a file AUTORUN.BAS. I have neither, only "mmbasic".

regards,

Volhout

edit: I have been able to get a little closer to the cause of my problems.
I am running mmbasic in a graphical desktop in a window.
I re-installed mmbasic and noticed the "hidden file" named ".options". I did not touch that file. I did not move anything, just left it where it unzipped.

Now I can start mmbasic with sudo ./mmbasic from the folder it is in.
I can close mmbasic with quit, close the window, re-open it, and start mmbasic again.

If I choose to close the window without "quit"-ing mmbasic, I can not restart mmbasic anymore. I get the above mentioned errors. What is more, I cannot even reboot the Pi 4 anymore. I need to repower it.

So if you (once) close mmbasic without quit-ing, you must repower the unit. In one instance I even locked up the Pi-4 completely. stripes in the screen, mouse dead, keyboard dead.

Anyway, I can get it to now run....
Edited 2020-06-05 06:46 by Volhout
PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8516
Posted: 09:50pm 04 Jun 2020
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  Quote  If I choose to close the window without "quit"-ing mmbasic, I can not restart mmbasic anymore. I get the above mentioned errors. What is more, I cannot even reboot the Pi 4 anymore. I need to repower it.


Closing the window without quitting leaves two pigpio threads running. In this case you can't restart MMBasic. It is essential that it is closed cleanly.

This issue seems much worse with Buster and the PI4 than with previous releases and/or lesser Pi's not sure why and way outside my competence.
 
capsikin
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Joined: 30/06/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 341
Posted: 06:40am 04 Jul 2020
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Hi Peter, I just wanted to say I like the Pi-cromite system, and I've been enjoying doing some graphics programming on it.

I set up a Pi-cromite 5.05.04 based on a Raspberry Pi 3B and Buster Lite. I used the pigpio from the Buster packages rather than compiling the recommended version, but it still seemed to work.

Caspian
 
lew247

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Joined: 23/12/2015
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1676
Posted: 08:34am 04 Jul 2020
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  matherp said  
the gui elements display but you have no way of activating them - no touch, no mouse so that is why no-one used them

Is there a specific reason you can't use touch with mmbasic? using a hdmi touchscreen
Is there a way it's possible to get it working?
 
lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 2989
Posted: 10:11pm 28 Nov 2021
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  matherp said  Try this
mmbasic.zip
Completely untested and may have broken something else as I had to completely re-create the development environment


Based on the following, I tried the above again with Bullseye:
  led-bloon said  
  Quote  PS Pi-cromite runs quite well on both versions although not fully tested!

My apologies, the above is an over-simplification of the software performance.
I got a command prompt. I ran speedtest.bas ok. From memory, that's about it.


Findings regarding GPIO manipulation:

SETPIN works and pin(x)=0|1, ?pin(x); ?tempr(x) works; i2c works (tested on MCP23017); SPI fails for an max7219 8x8 led matrix (MOSI-only to DIN on the module side) (bit-banging it works, so I know I've got the pins and the sequencing right); PWM works, but won't allow termination with Ctrl+C and disconnects from the network and won't allow reconnection--only power-cycling gets back in. HDMI produces output, but evidently based on 80x27 pixels instead of 640x480 reported by mm.hres and mm.vres.

(Any issues could be caused by my incorrect options or code.)

LINUX MMBasic Version 5.05.04
Copyright 2011-2018 Geoff Graham
Copyright 2011-2018 Peter Mather
> option list
OPTION DISPLAY 27, 80
OPTION LCDPANEL HDMI
OPTION I2C 3, 5
>
(OPTION DISPLAY is set automatically.)

With these hopeful signs are you interested in looking at the Pi-cromite again?

If not, I'd like to take you up on your prior offer and look at the code myself.
PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed
 
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