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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Introducing the Colour Maximite 2

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nasi
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Joined: 08/07/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 16
Posted: 01:13pm 07 May 2020
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Where is the network interface.

I am happy with my two maximites to get another will just be retail therapy.

Dont want my pile of:

Arduinos
Pics
Picaxes
ESP 8266s
STM32s
XT 8088 vintage stuff
Micro ATX boards
Raspberry Pis
and last but not least maximiiiiteeessss.

To get any bigger.

Gee I summed it up in text their and it dont look so big in a list.

Nice looking unit Geoff well done
Edited 2020-05-07 23:14 by nasi
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8573
Posted: 03:57pm 07 May 2020
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More pics

These pictures show the V2.1 motherboard as included in the construction pack. Unfortunately due to operator error (me being an idiot) there is no top silkscreening on my PCB. The gerbers in the construction pack are complete and correct. The pictures show the 8MHz crystal on the Waveshare PCB removed and the optional 8MHz oscillator fitted to the motherboard. This was done purely for test purposes and is normally not required.

Note how the 10uF tantalum capacitor below the SDcard socket is laid on its side. This is explained in the construction pack and is needed to provide clearance from the Waveshare PCB.





 
TassyJim

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Joined: 07/08/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 5895
Posted: 10:02pm 07 May 2020
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  Turbo46 said  
I was thinking of Maxman where the screen is composed of fonts as I understand it:
  Quote  64,240,97,110

I don't know if Nick is still monitoring the forum and/or he is interested in updating his games to the CMM2 or not. Even if I could do it, I don't think I could share them.

Bill


Maxman screen font characters are 240 x 64. 'pacman monsters' are 20 x 20.
FontTweak has no problems reading and converting to the new format and the CMM2 has no problem displaying them.

Jim
VK7JH
MMedit   MMBasic Help
 
Turbo46

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Joined: 24/12/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 1593
Posted: 10:09pm 07 May 2020
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  TassyJim said  Maxman screen font characters are 240 x 64. 'pacman monsters' are 20 x 20.
FontTweak has no problems reading and converting to the new format and the CMM2 has no problem displaying them.


Great news   Thanks Jim.

Bill
Keep safe. Live long and prosper.
 
flasherror
Senior Member

Joined: 07/01/2019
Location: United States
Posts: 159
Posted: 12:00am 08 May 2020
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  matherp said  

  Quote  The other next crazy idea is:
If MMBasic runs so fast, is it possible to write a workable multitasking OS and actually split a program in separate tasks?


This is easy to do using timer interrupts and a trivial main program function launcher. If you need more use a Pi or PC


What about "thread" extensions to MMBasic like in
http://dimitech.com/downloads/mmbasic_iceemite_additions.pdf
This looks like a proprietary language extension but not sure how useful something like this might be without some sort of sync lock or whether it is overkill for most programs.
Edited 2020-05-08 10:02 by flasherror
 
Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9059
Posted: 01:48am 08 May 2020
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@ robert_rozee: Nice colourful chart you made there!  

@ EVERYONE: The photos that matherp posted of the all-in-one PCB is the one I plan to sell from my website long-term, but short-term I will sell the modular one.  As Peter mentions, can't get the damn ARM processor chip at the moment, so having assembled boards to sell is not possible right now.  NZ's international freight is still closed anyway till we drop into level-2 virus alert.  This is scheduled for this coming Tuesday - IF the government are happy enough with the figures etc.

I will be offering the unit exactly as Peter has described his one in the photos he posted, in that the top side will be factory-assembled, but the kit builder still has to fit the SDRAM chip and caps on the bottom layer, and all the remaining through-hole parts.

@ nasi: No network interface.(unless you are joking! ;) )  You could add one easily enough via a WiFi module or Ethernet serial module connected to the console pins on the USB host DIL socket.  I did that with a WizNet-107SR module, and successfully tested a MM2 to the WAN once I setup port-forwarding in my router, then other forum members were able to leave me messages in the editor.
Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
 
Trent Jackson
Newbie

Joined: 04/05/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 34
Posted: 02:11am 08 May 2020
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WoW

Without a doubt Geoff is my peer to look up to in the hobby design world of technology, and likely everybody's mentor of choice if it came to the crunch. Geoff has had over the years hundreds of pages of publications in books, magazines and online.

I will be building this Colour Maximite 2 project in due course of time. Congratulations Geoff on yet another excellent design. Cannot wait to build the kit. I love building kits. In fact on minimum wages I would be happy to sit at a table building kits all day long amongst professional people.


Trent W. Jackson
 
Chopperp

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Joined: 03/01/2018
Location: Australia
Posts: 1032
Posted: 02:26am 08 May 2020
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  Grogster said  
@ nasi: No network interface.(unless you are joking! ;) )  You could add one easily enough via a WiFi module or Ethernet serial module connected to the console pins on the USB host DIL socket.  I did that with a WizNet-107SR module, and successfully tested a MM2 to the WAN once I setup port-forwarding in my router, then other forum members were able to leave me messages in the editor.


Hi Grogs

Are you (or others) able to supply more details on how you actually connect a 'Mite to a network using the modules listed above.

I noticed TassieJim had an ethernet cable connected to his CMM-2 setup.

Thanks
Brian
ChopperP
 
Trent Jackson
Newbie

Joined: 04/05/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 34
Posted: 04:40am 08 May 2020
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I recently observed the youtube videos on the graphics capabilities of this dynamite microcomputer we have here. This seems like a perfect transition for Blitz Basic game programmers.

Thoses who know of me would know that I love making games but do not really like playing them. I made heaps of games in Microsoft's languages during my 20s and 30s. But now that I am much older and I am fluent in much more professional and sophisticated languages - making a game I no longer have the drive / motivation / zest.

Do any of you guys here enjoy making games due to the coding aspect but do not really enjoy playing them?

Trent Jackson
 
Trent Jackson
Newbie

Joined: 04/05/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 34
Posted: 04:56am 08 May 2020
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PS: my soldering looks like a robot or wavesolder machine did the job. I would be willing to build 100's of these kits for a small fee.
 
TassyJim

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Joined: 07/08/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 5895
Posted: 05:18am 08 May 2020
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  Chopperp said  

Are you (or others) able to supply more details on how you actually connect a 'Mite to a network using the modules listed above.

I noticed TassieJim had an ethernet cable connected to his CMM-2 setup.

Thanks
Brian


Well spotted finding the Ethernet cable in my photo.
It didn't show the other end which ha s a GPS connected. No network involved, just re-purposing a cable.

I do have a CMM2 (bare minimum) connected to the net for testing. As usual, I use ser2net on a RPi as the interface.



tassyjim.ddns.net port 44002

I can't guarantee that it will always be there and it only allows one connection at a time so may be busy.

Jim
VK7JH
MMedit   MMBasic Help
 
panky

Guru

Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1094
Posted: 05:36am 08 May 2020
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An update to the pinout diagrams from Rob Rozee and CircuitGizmos -


CMM2-GPIO&CPU module pin usage.pdf

panky
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8573
Posted: 07:43am 08 May 2020
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You are still missing B11 and H4 which are the Nunchuck pins

Vref and VBAT should not be GND. VREF is 3.3 and VBAT is the battery

RESET, PDR_ON and BOOT0 are all system pins and should probably have a colour

E4, E5, E6, F10, H2, H3, H8, G12, D6 and G7 are all reserved to the Display controller

A8 is the test pin and outputs a clock pulse to check the processor is running
 
thwill

Guru

Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3838
Posted: 08:28am 08 May 2020
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Hi folks,

Probably a silly question but how do we generate reproducible streams of "random" numbers, e.g. for predictable testing of games that use random numbers if we no longer have the RANDOMIZE keyword to seed the generator?

Ok, I can actually think of two ways. Write your own generator in BASIC (slow) or treating the bytes of the firmware as random and PEEKing them, though the latter isn't necessarily constant/predictable between firmware versions.

Either way it seems unfortunate if we have lost the "native" functionality.

Best Regards,

Tom
Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8573
Posted: 08:34am 08 May 2020
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The CMM2 has a true hardware random number generator so no seeding necessary

"The true RNG implemented in the STM32 MCUs is based on an analog circuit. This circuit generates a continuous analog noise that is used in the RNG processing to produce a 32-bit random number. "

If you need pseudo random numbers just generate into an array and/or save to disk - remember you have loads of memory. Arrays of over 500,000 elements are possible
Edited 2020-05-08 18:44 by matherp
 
thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3838
Posted: 08:54am 08 May 2020
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  matherp said  The CMM2 has a true hardware random number generator so no seeding necessary ...


Thanks, but it turns out I'm that guy who when given a gold bar complains about the colour.

True random numbers are great but most modern languages still support seeded pseudo-random numbers and it is a shame if we lose this functionality.

Note that to be constant between executions the proposed array solution either requires a big DATA statement or the array data to be read from a file.

(Edit) ... or you include the BASIC code to generate the pseudo random numbers and call that to initialise the array - thud taking the "performance hit" upfront instead of on every random number call. (/Edit)

Nevertheless I am overjoyed and my CMM2 is already on order from the WhiteWizzard.

Regards, Tom
Edited 2020-05-08 19:01 by thwill
Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures
 
WhiteWizzard
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Joined: 05/04/2013
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2794
Posted: 09:00am 08 May 2020
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  thwill said  
Thanks, but it turns out I'm that guy who when given a gold bar complains about the colour.
......
Nevertheless I am overjoyed and my CMM2 is already on order from the WhiteWizzard.

It is a blue PCB (just warning you in advance!).

For everything Micromite visit micromite.org

Direct Email: whitewizzard@micromite.o
 
thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3838
Posted: 09:03am 08 May 2020
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  WhiteWizzard said  
It is a blue PCB (just warning you in advance!).

I'll need counseling  
Edited 2020-05-08 19:04 by thwill
Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8573
Posted: 10:08am 08 May 2020
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For interest the attached is a pictorial demonstration of the random number generation. The program takes 5 seconds to run (240,000 random numbers binned and plotted)

cls
dim a%(799)
for i%=1 to 800*300
 j%=rnd(799)
 a%(j%)=a%(j%)+1
next i%
for i%=0 to 799
 line i%,599-a%(i%),i%,599
next i%
do
loop



 
Turbo46

Guru

Joined: 24/12/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 1593
Posted: 10:15am 08 May 2020
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I am surprised that there is no facility to seed a random number. It could be useful when trying to get repeatable results for testing (please don't ask for an example right now).

Game programming is beyond me I'm afraid but maybe someone could write a step by step tutorial while producing a simple game using some of the clever things the CMM2 can do?

Bill
Keep safe. Live long and prosper.
 
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