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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : I wanna hear from the negative nellies....
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| Tinine Guru  Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
All I ever read is "can't do that" but absolutely ZERO contributions from yourselves: Talking to to you Mixtel90 and JohnS Everyone's new idea is a flop.....Where are yours???? Thinking we're similar generation because I just turned 63 BUT I have the same fire in my belly that I had @ age 30 (when I transformed an entire industry). So what do you guys got? Craig |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Yeah, this is where we get the real crickets. So sick and tired of the armchair "can't do" "experts". |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9060 |
I can sympathize with your frustration on that issue Craig, but be careful - threads like this can EASILY start flame-wars and that won't be allowed. I'll lock the thread. The consequence of being on a forum, is that some contribute, some do not, and others are critical of things, but that is the nature of the beast with a forum. If everyone agreed on everything, it would be a pretty boring place.  I think there are quite a few members here who have NEVER posted - they just like to read the threads. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Whatever....it's less chance of competition, I guess  Craig Edited 2023-01-18 12:01 by Tinine |
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vegipete Guru Joined: 29/01/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 1082 |
I'm a bit stymied by the Android end of things. I have RFO Basic on my phone, I've examined B4A a bit, yet I've done nothing. (Perhaps mostly because I've got too much to do.) Craig, your tablet based UIs look awesome. There is enough of a hurdle there that I haven't yet tried to do something similar. If you were to create a minimal tutorial on how to make it work, with specific hardware and examples, I would definitely read and try. I might even have an HC-05 or something around here... Visit Vegipete's *Mite Library for cool programs. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Heck the guys doing the PIO stuff are using infinitely more brain horsepower but maybe a get-me-started thing might be in order. I have always been a shortcut (cheat) guy. If I can't pick it up in minutes, I quit. I caused a huge stir in my industry in the late 80s with my "impossible" DOS GUI stuff....No, I fricken cheated I pre-painted my screens and stuck them in the upper 384K RAM and just loaded them into video RAM on demand. I was regarded as a software genius...I knew *nothing* at the time I do the same with Android. Always pre-painted bitmaps. I never programmatically draw a button or text input box. All pre-painted in paint.net, etc. Craig |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1779 |
A couple of years ago I looked at a Nextion display that appeared to use a similar concept. It compensated for it's serial interface by having its own CPU and memory. You preloaded it with images, graphic objects, fonts and drawing commands which your MCU called up an placed as required. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Absolutely. For example; Let's say you want to create a button with an ON and OFF state. Simply create two separate buttons and replace one with the other. This is a quick way to do it By playing with colours, borders, shadows, etc., one can create the appearance of button-up and button down. When happy, download the .png images. A gauge looks/sounds like a horrendous prospect because if one wants photo-realism, involving "lighting" and "shadows", forget drawing the pointer. Instead we have an image for every single position.  An amazing tool for this is Knobman Take a look at the gallery The easiest route is to select from the gallery, bring the selection in to the editor and modify to suit. When downloaded, one ends-up with a "film-strip". This is how the animation happens. We see this a lot with audio-equipment SIMs where they generate a photo-realistic appearance of vintage gear. Craig |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5714 |
Sorry, Craig, I'm far too busy to play troll games a present. I have my turntable power supply to finish before I can listen to some vinyl again. I've been sorting out the enclosure for the external power supply, a 7-core control lead to the turntable, new arm leads (more complicated than you'd think at first) and various mechanical mods. The turntable has had a *complete* rebuild - there's not much of the original left now even though it doesn't look much different. There's a second turntable on the CAD. This is the one using a PicoMite for speed control via a synchronous motor. I'll be starting on the breadboard for that very shortly. It's not a simple, straightforward plinth either. It has a split plinth, with the motor & electronics on the bottom one and a belt drive to the platter on the top one, which also supports the arm. There are compression springs between the top and bottom sections to give isolation from footfalls and motor noise. The platter is driven using a longer belt with an idler pulley opposite the motor to reduce sideways "wobble" of the bearing. This has also involved stuff like modifying a Thorens outer platter so that it will fit a Linn inner platter 'cos I'm too much of a skinflint to pay Linn 200 quid when I can get s/h Thorens for 25 quid. :) On/Off and speed change software is done. There's the speed monitoring and trimming software to work out now, using an optical sensor to detect a black stripe under the platter to time each revolution. A lot of this is mechanical stuff, sorting out which of the five layers that make up the plinth (two bonded together for the top, three for the bottom) has which holes or routed sections, with depths where applicable. Where concealed wire runs are. Designing a 2-colour illuminated switch that is less than 1" high and will go through an absolute minimum of 1" of wood. Sorting out how to sandwich a 4mm thick aluminium plate inside the top plinth between the armboard and the main platter bearing without screwing up the relative heights. Making sure that transformer and PicoMite positions aren't going to add noise to the very sensitive cartridge. Getting it so that the platter centre to arm bearing centre measurement is *exactly* 212mm for a Linn or Pro-Ject arm or 222mm for the Grace G707 arm that I have available (and has completely incompatible mounting arrangements) - it has to be able to take either. It's all careful compromise. None of this is going to be of much interest on this group at the moment as it doesn't involve PIOs, 4k displays (or displays of any sort, actually), industrial automation or even updates to MMBasic. Hi-fi (well, perhaps not with much "Hi") has been my hobby in one form or another since the late 60's though so it takes precedence even over computers. Which reminds me - I still have a valve amp to build... Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3654 |
I merely pointed out in the thread asking for a 4K MMBasic that there isn't one. I stated the nearest things that do exist. You offered something else entirely. I pointed out it's a workaround. That's not negative. If you saw it as negative, that's your issue. If you don't like truth, tough. I myself have no need for a 4K MMBasic. I see you blowing your own trumpet LOUDLY and OFTEN. Up to you, but it's not my interest. BTW, It appears you're reinventing what matherp already did - no problem, reinvention happens a lot - itself similar to the way X (etc) on Linux (etc) works. John Edited 2023-01-18 18:51 by JohnS |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5714 |
Oh, sod it. You want an argument... The original question was: Yes, it's a possibility at some time *in the future*. So is the possibility of me winning the biggest lottery jackpot on earth. :) You can get something like using MMBasic for Windows (but I don't think you can get as high as 4k yet, I might be wrong as I don't use it at all). No, you can't get it on any existing stand-alone MMBasic platform. Neither can you get it on any MMBasic platform currently in development AFAIK. Note that, unless you are using a LCD display, you can only directly connect via VGA anyway, not HDMI. Most 4k displays require HDMI. Even if you convert the signal you are at the mercy of the VGA video standard. If you want to connect a MMBasic device to the display on a 4k terminal then that's a completely different question and it's perfectly possible. Any suggestion that a 4k terminal is the same as a 4k display directly connected to a MMBasic device and with MMBasic support for it is obviously 100% wrong though. It can't possibly compete on any level whatsoever. It might give the illusion of being the same on a completed system, but it is pure illusion, just like the illusion of selecting pages on Teletext when, in fact, you were just waiting for them to be broadcast as they went round in a loop. If this simple statement of fact is naysaying then tough. It's an honest answer to the original post. The OP did NOT ask "How can I connect a 4k display to a MMBasic device?" so I did not answer it. I am not going to attempt to connect a PicoMite to a 4k telly simply because I know enough about hardware to know that it's impossible to get a full res, full colour 4k image onto a PicoMite, never mind send it to a display. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3839 |
"Is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?" Let's all be nice. We each have our own skills, interests and time available. To some this impacts their livelihood, to others it is entertainment and stimulation in their retirement and to others it is support for their mental health <puts his hand up>. Let us focus on what unites us rather than on what divides us. Blegh, I sound terribly new-agey, I'm off for a lie down. EDIT: just because this reply starts by quoting Mick does not mean I am arguing with his post ... I am not. Best wishes, Tom Edited 2023-01-18 21:23 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I'm actually doing stuff and thanks to a bit of abstract, creative thinking, have come up with real-world products that I now see copied all over the world. Maybe a young lurker might be inspired and decide to take control of their own future. There is endless opportunity out there because the "can't-do" mentality vastly outnumbers the "can-do". I am working on a concept right now that nobody (to my knowledge) is shooting for and that would be a huge problem-solver. I dub it MTTR ZERO-H. I have hinted to some in my industry about the possibilities and I get the "yeah, but that's not possible". This tells me that I'm on to something Craig |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3013 |
Mean Time to Repair Zero Hour? (Zero Hours? (Rounding, I guess)) Does sound interesting. Not something that will ever have practical uses for me, but I do very much like the idea of a phone interface for (almost) everything needing an HMI. I've personally used a browser for this, but Craig's method looks much richer and more organic. I like the browser because I can use it to turn on the heat in my house when I'm returning from a trip (but I have much less use for that than I did 12-15 years ago). PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Heck, BINGO! Glad I didn't offer a prize Where have you been? Kinda weird not seeing your posts. Craig |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3013 |
Lurking. The PIO stuff is beyond me (as in: neat, but not something I can see having a personal need for), and I want wifi, so am fiddling with Annex for ESP32 and R-Pi with Lua (since MMBasic for R-Pi doesn't work any more). But I don't have any projects that are very active. From Crystal River, Florida, I get temperature readings from my house in Nova Scotia (heated to 5-ish) and look at my rivercam daily (the cove I live off of is not frozen over for the first time in my experience). I am fumbling with some used solar panels amounting to about 2KW nominal, but my house is deeply shaded and the side-yard where I have them ground-mounted only gets 3-4 hours of sun a day. Just playing. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I don't suppose you got around to testing the battery charging stuff? I'm all set-up with a PSU on my controller that takes 11 - 12v and I'd like to come-up with a UPS solution with no switchover glitches. I remember the diode trick that you applied to your 5v deal. Craig |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1642 |
I got Nextion displays and I hate using the interface to design the screen first then using 8 bit micro to ser print commands. mmbasic supported displays are easier and ili displays useful, cheaper. |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5714 |
Craig: You can use a DC/DC buck boost converter fed from a battery/power supply via diodes. The power supply should have more output than the on-charge battery. You can then leave the battery on continuous trickle charge. The buck boost converter will ensure that the output voltage remains constant at whatever you want - and it can be higher or lower than the battery and power supply voltage. e.g. you could have a 3V6 LIPO battery, charging at about 4V with a 5V power supply. After the (schottky) diodes the voltage into the buck boost converter would be about 4V6 on mains or 3V2 on battery. The buck boost converter could raise this to 6V, for example. It would always be 6V and would remain so until the battery went flat. It would be an excellent idea to monitor the battery voltage and do an emergency shutdown as soon as it started to drop at any speed as it wouldn't take long to die (assuming a protected battery). All this can be scaled up. You could, for example, use 24V of lead acid battery which would be much more rugged. The buck boost converter could be producing 3V3, 5V or 12V from that with pretty good efficiency (over 80% probably). You can use 12V to 12V using a buck boost and the output will only fall when the input drops to 8V or so. If your buck boost is up to it you can feed the charger into the battery and the converter in parallel, but watch the charger as you have to balance any increase in voltage as the battery reaches charge against the max input voltage of the converter. Also the charger has to have enough current capacity to power both at once. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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Quazee137 Guru Joined: 07/08/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 522 |
I was give a few Nextion displays cant even give them a try as noting for Linux to design screens. Next is a hand full of old android tablets I need to update but again they need a windows tool to update them. I found out that the San Diego based company no longer exist and cant even get the tool. That is why "I LOVE MMBasic" I can always reload on the any of chips that has been used. |
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