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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Colour Maximite Beta Testers
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donmck Guru  Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1314 |
Ken got this far with the Gameduino board back in January: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUhsSfW8gxw which became the Olimex MOD-VGA: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/mod-vga-32mb.html There are routines in the DuinoMite source code, but Ken never finished them. Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Gameduino is great... but it doesn't come standard with the Maximite so I'd rather support the more common standard. When the Colour Maximite comes out, I'll be programming the 8 colour graphics that everyone who buys a Colour Maximite will have. The new Colour Maximite will have an Arduino interface so Gameduino is possible but how many will buy it? Will it become a standard? Time will tell. Nick |
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darthmite Senior Member  Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
I have look closer at Gameduino board. It's not a bad board but the functionality lacks of real graphics command. After looking at the gameduino source i see that everything is 'tiled' and then for made fast a line , circle or other graphics it become a hell. And like Nick said , it's not what we get as standard with the MM or the new CMM. That everyone can use the new MM Basic v4 i prefer continue to made some demo's / games who will work out of the box 
And the day i want made a GFX card with a FPGA it will be one with a sdram buffer who can have the full screen at 12 to 16bits colours and a place in this sdram for all sprites and audio buffer. I just have to look how vhdl work , but that is a another story
Cheers. Darth. Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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| cosmic frog Guru Joined: 09/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 302 |
I like the simplicity of the Maximite. If it had all the latest hardware bolted to it there would be no challange in programming it. One of the great things about programming a zx81 for instance was trying to get the most out of its 1k memory. Anyone can write a great game on a computer with all the latest hardware, but on a simple computer like the Maximite it comes down to the skill of the programmer and how the software is written. Dave. |
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| darthmite Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
Hi 
Before i restart to work and get no more free time i have want made some other tests with the last MMBasic v4.0 beta 12. The today tests was a arcade like game ... 
And a little Breakout game ... 
And to see everything move i made a little video 
Arcade / Breakout video The sources codes : 2012-08-05_180002_sources.zip With all demo's in this thread you will have enough examples to start with the new ColourMM
Cheers. Darth. Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Very good darthmite. These programs you are producing show others what the new Colour Maximite and MMBasic is capable of. The important thing to stress to everyone, especially those from outside of the Maximite camp is that alll these demo's are written in simple-to-use *Interpretive BASIC*, no compilation, no C or assembly code but B A S I C. These new graphics commands can be used for more than games. A program to monitor external events via the interface connector (analogue or digital) could be created that loads the screen display with all necessary data readouts such as a graph as shown below. 
The entire pre-drawn screen would load using a single command.. LOADBMP"READOUTS.BMP" The program would read the data coming in from the selected port and a pixel plotted on the rightmost side of the inner blue grid window. The movement of this data can be moved vertically by continuously plotting a pixel in that vertical axis in Green. Using the BLIT command, the content of the Blue grid window can be moved left within the boundaries of the window with a command such as BLIT 11,10,10,10,99,100,G I'm assuming here that the window occupies the coordinates 10,10 for a width of 100 and a length of 100. The G at the end tells it to only move the data on the Green bitplane. This therefore moves the Green pixel to the left leaving the blue grid below untouched. It's quite possible to make something such as this with just a few lines of MMBASIC code, maybe even on a single line if you use multi-statement lines. And all created directly on the Maximite itself, your fingers never need touch a PC or MAC!
It also means you could have more than one of these data readouts on a single screen monitoring several inputs at a time and all being scrolled simultenously on the screen. Ah! My Colour Maximite can't get here soon enough. 
Nick |
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| mookster1 Regular Member  Joined: 10/06/2011 Location: New ZealandPosts: 81 |
I've been playing around with the new PLAYMOD command and that in itself is awesome, let alone the new graphics features (kudos to you Geoff, the work you've done on this is nothing short of impressive! ). Once I've finished writing MaxiWeather/universal-datalogger-and-analysis-tool I'm hopefully going to learn how the MOD format works, and write a tracker program to allow you to create music on the Maximite itself.
What I think could be really useful is if you can send sound commands to a place in RAM for the Maximite to play back in realtime instead of having to load from a file, and have a piano keyboard attached to be able to use it as a really awesome homebrew synth! Capacitance is futile - roll on 2012! |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
mookster: Yes, the PLAYMOD command is brilliant, especially the ability to use it for playing an individual sound as darthmite has shown. darthmite: How have you used it for this? I mean, how do you create the necessary MOD file with the sound (WAV) file in it? Is there some PC program you use for this? Nick |
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| darthmite Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
1 : Make or get the sound effect you need for your game or application. 2 : Reduce the kbps or the MM will not be able to play it.(Here at work i cant look at this but something like 130kbps max is good). 3 : use OpenMPT : OpenMPT for create a Mod , just load your sound in this soft and use it as a instrument in the track
4 : test the module in your ColourMM , when it's not good you can be sure that you have a too high kbps. Cheers. Darth. PS1 : All Amiga 500 user (Old people) are familiar with mod trackers ... he he he PS2 : Here are ton's of music modules : The Mod Archive Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
I have a fully functional Amiga 4000 system right next to my PC... and I love it! 
I wonder if I can use an Amiga MOD tracker to create these files? Otherwise I'll try download that program you mentioned. Have I mentioned that I can't wait for my Colour Maximite to arrive?
Nick |
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| darthmite Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
Yes , yes , you mentioned it ,but I'm not the one who wait , it's because of
this that i made it directly when i have get the schematic
Original amiga module can normally work directly , you have just to import them to your PC due to the different disk format that the Amiga use. Amiga 4000 was a 'big' one , then don't forget the kbps from the audio samples !! Cheers. Darth. Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
As Dartmite is doing a great job testing the color capabilities of the new version i am testing the gpio and serial ports. I must say it all works easy and without flaws. I would like to have more serial ports as that is the way i implement most of my projects. Using simpel rs232 to connect a bunch of things together, like gps, gprs, 1wire extenders, rom/ram etc. The color is great and not so great. Great because it can make displaying information so much better. Not so great because most of the hardware serial peripherals (spi/uart) are not available anymore. Because of that serial is bitbanged and tested until 19200 it peforms good. I don't have anything capable of higher speeds anyway, but for some it might be a limit. This all from my personal perspective of using the colourmm for embedded systems and hardware control. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| darthmite Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
I think is better to ask Geoff about hardware. Now the MM have the 100pins Pic32 and no more the 64Pins version. It have more hardware capability then I'm not sure about less Serial or other port. What is sure is if you use the 480 x 432 pixels in colours , you have less memory available
Darth. Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Maybe is time for bytecode compilation... MMBasic for Dos already exist so, I guess the first step in making the required "compiler" is done... Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2971 |
My, Wouldnt a compiled MMBasic be just the "ants pants"? Imagine what you could do with a basic that runs 100 times faster and has all of Geoffs nice little routines. Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
I don't know what memory restrictions there are to include a compiler. Geoff's struggling to get everything in as it is. My suggestion would be an external PC/MAC compiler that takes the MMBASIC source and generates Pic32 assembler (compiled) code. Geoff could add an extra command in MMBASIC to load the compiled object code and execute it. Maybe a command such as LOADC (Load-Compiled)? Nick |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2971 |
Hi Nick, I never expected that a compiler would EVER be run on the MM it would make sense to compile on a PC and then somehow load the compiled code into the MM.. It would probably be like flashing a new firmware and not loaded into an existing basic environment.. The LOADC command might be made to work on small snippets of compiled code but I dont think you could ever load any decent size code if the firmware was still present.. Maybe what would be great (for those that speak in C) is a LOADC command that means just that .... LOAD C code (ie. inline C code)) wont help numskulls like me but there are a lot of smart cookies out there that it could be useful to.. I would expect that each LOADC module would have to have a predefined code space that wouldnt overwrite the existing code space, Any way it would be nice but Geoff cant be expected to do everything himself... Maybe if some one who has the ability can implement it and then offer to Geoff for inclusion it would be more likey to appear in the future. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
I mean, like here: BASIC compiler - compiles to a fast and safe intermediate bytecode - transparent line-by-line compilation is invisible to the user http://cpustick.com/features.htm Not machine code. Reading from SD-Card the BASIC source line by line and storing in ram the bytecode for execution. It can be much faster and larger programs can be fit in the RAM... This kind of compilation can/must be included in firmware. Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1314 |
This was covered back in February for the DuinoMite. They had created a boot loader for it: http://cpustick.com/downloads.htm and a thread at: http://www.cpustick.com/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=43 Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
The only thing which keeps me away from StickOS Basic is the fact that the programs are stored in Flash memory, wearing the microcontroller. Rich Testardi designed his Basic on Freescale microcontrollers, with 100,000 erase/write cycles - fair enough to develop a Basic program in these conditions. In fact, it allowed you to run and modify your program many times before saving it in Flash - great. Well, I would like to have a Pic32 with such a high endurance as I can't afford to buy a ChipKIT Max32 (or worse, a Maximite/Duinomite) so often. Too bad it can't store the compiled program to SD-Card (or to say, weird?) !!! PIC32Lua now have an autostart mode from SD-Card, loading and running your application at every start and/or reset. It never touches your Flash. Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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