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hitsware2

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Posted: 06:56pm 29 Jan 2021

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http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/book/export/html/44.html

my site

lew247

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Posted: 07:43pm 29 Jan 2021

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matherp said The question doesn't mean anything. Simple language conversion is easy, but what is the source platform, what is the target, what peripherals are involved? Any use of special in-built functions like display or ethernet? These are the things that could make it either easy or next to impossible

Sorry I just wanted to know if anyone was able to convert and then discuss with them the specifics
I'm at the moment considering getting my MM weather program for the Pi converted to C++ or Python, I think C++ would be preferable if possible because it would be faster.
Running on a Pi using the latest Pi image and ideally on a Pi 4 so I know you won't be interested.
I'm considering paying someone in India to convert it but if anyone more local or knowledgable with MM was willing to have a go I would prefer that obviously.
As long as it wasn't a total fortune.

There's no way I could learn either of those languages, I have enough issues with MM

Oh forgot
Information received via internet, Data locally from a PMS5005 sensor on Com1, simple serial data so it's easy, Sending some of the data via a HC12 module on Com2 and displaying the data on a vga/hdmi monitor ay 16:9 ratio
I'm using 1600 X 900 at the moment but it also looks great upscaled on my 75inch 4K display

Edit2:
Pi because I have both a Pi3 and 4 and I know the Pi can parse the data in python as someone else is doing it but completely different to what i want
I'd prefer to use a Micromite but there isn't any powerful enough to do it and unless anyone knows any other micro that can do the same with vga pr hdmi output thats easy to program
Edited 2021-01-30 05:52 by lew247

IanT
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Joined: 29/11/2016
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Posted: 09:29pm 29 Jan 2021

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I don't think I'm quite "as old as dirt" but I did once repair PDP 9 & 15 (18 bit) DEC computers for a living - which involved writing small assembler diagnostic programs and single stepping them through the machine whilst watching the results on a scope. Repairs were made at component (transistor/74XX) level - fault-finding being much better than doing a cross-word puzzle and you even got paid for doing it. A somewhat redundant skill when 'board-swop' repair became the norm.

I nearly had a (recycled) working PDP-8 in my garage many years ago - I just needed to find the fault(s) in that badly burnt-out register board (I never did) so I finally built a Z80 based Nascom II instead.

Basic in 8K was OK but I have to confess that Fig-Forth was the language that made the most sense to me. Forth is the Marmite of programming languages - either hated or loved by "professional" programmers, of which community I have never been a member.

However, Micromite Basic is the nearest thing I've found that gets anywhere near the ease of Forth in its simplicity (and ease of de-bugging) for embedded use.

However, this Forum has been inundated with retro-computer fans since the CMM2 arrived and whilst I can only look at Mauro's work with some awe, it's not where my interests lie. Raspberry announce a new PICO board and these folk are immediately trying to port CMM2 graphics to it (?) - when all I see is a potentially great embedded controller with 'PIOs' that distantly remind me of my Z80 (and its PIO/SIO) days...

Well I've had Mecrisp-Stellaris running on my STM32s (Blue Pills) for some time now and it might be time for me to start to look at the Black Pill version.

But neither Basic nor Forth will help my Grandson progress (if he wants to get into "coding" for a living) - so maybe Python is the future for younger souls. Pity, because there are much friendlier worlds to play in....

lizby
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Posted: 10:08pm 29 Jan 2021

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lew247 said I'd prefer to use a Micromite but there isn't any powerful enough to do it

What is it that you want to do that you are unable to do on the pi-zw with the appropriate combination of stretch and mmbasic?

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

thwill

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Posted: 10:35pm 29 Jan 2021

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lizby said

lew247 said I'd prefer to use a Micromite but there isn't any powerful enough to do it

What is it that you want to do that you are unable to do on the pi-zw with the appropriate combination of stretch and mmbasic?

I know sweet FA about mixed software/hardware projects, but doesn't the CMM2 provide enough grunt for this, especially since you can drop into "C" for anything really performance critical. Is it a price/size thing? Again from my position of complete ignorance I wouldn't have thought off-shoring such a project to India is going to bring you any happiness.

Best wishes,

Tom

Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

lizby
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Posted: 11:50pm 29 Jan 2021

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thwill said doesn't the CMM2 provide enough grunt for this

The two things that I know of that Lew uses which aren't available out of the box with the standard CMM2 are network connection and JSON$.

Since he has already figured out how to use an ESP8266 with Annex to break a wget of external data (which has been fed by his sensors) into chunks small enough for the pi-cromite to work with, I don't see a problem with doing similar with a CMM2. (I think this could also be done without external hardware by shelling out on the pi and performing the wget and any necessary conditioning there.)

As far as JSON$ goes, I think someone has already implemented it for the CMM2 (or maybe some other micromite), and in any case, the data could be parsed without JSON$ and that would be much simpler than having the whole thing re-written in C.

But I still wonder where the pi-cromite falls short, since he seems to have found a stable combination of raspbian stretch and mmbasic.

~
Edited 2021-01-30 09:51 by lizby

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

OregonJim

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Posted: 01:39am 30 Jan 2021

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IanT said I don't think I'm quite "as old as dirt" but I did once repair PDP 9 & 15 (18 bit) DEC computers for a living - which involved writing small assembler diagnostic programs and single stepping them through the machine whilst watching the results on a scope. Repairs were made at component (transistor/74XX) level - fault-finding being much better than doing a cross-word puzzle and you even got paid for doing it. A somewhat redundant skill when 'board-swop' repair became the norm.

Interesting. I did the same, but with PDP-8's and PDP-11's. Troubleshooting to the component level is a skill I still use, though it became a lost art somewhere in the mid 1980s.

Back on the topic of languages, nothing beats the combination of C and assembly if you're an embedded systems engineer. I've rarely used anything else for commercial projects.

Personal projects are another matter entirely. I've explored nearly all of the languages mentioned so far in this thread, as well as Pilot, Snobol, Comal, PL/1, PL/I, PL/M, MUMPS, APL, Ada, Haskell, Lisp, BCPL, Algol, FOCAL, Prolog, REXX, and probably a few more that I can't remember.

If I had to pick a "favorite" language, there isn't one. It's too dependent on the domain. However, Modula-2 comes awfully close... :)

W7JLL - C,ASM,CP/M,DOS,PDP-11,Z-80,6502,68HC11,65C816,80x86,8051,PIC,AVR,ARM,etc.

Nelno

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Joined: 22/01/2021
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Posted: 02:36am 30 Jan 2021

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thwill said

lizby said

lew247 said I'd prefer to use a Micromite but there isn't any powerful enough to do it

What is it that you want to do that you are unable to do on the pi-zw with the appropriate combination of stretch and mmbasic?

What is this "drop into "C"" thing you mention? I can write C code for the CMM2? If I could write compiled anything I'd be game (outside of getting the firmware code and hacking on that, which I'm not saying I won't do eventually). I'm aware I should be able to execute machine language subroutines, but I didn't think there was any option for a compiled language on CMM2. And since you put quotes around "C" I'm still not sure :)

lizby
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Posted: 03:13am 30 Jan 2021

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Nelno said What is this "drop into "C"" thing you mention

CMM2 CSUBs

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

lew247

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Posted: 07:23am 30 Jan 2021

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lizby said The two things that I know of that Lew uses which aren't available out of the box with the standard CMM2 are network connection and JSON$.

But I still wonder where the pi-cromite falls short, since he seems to have found a stable combination of raspbian stretch and mmbasic.~

Unfortunately the pi running the display crashes after a short while once I got the display looking how I wanted it.
I thought it was a faulty Pi at first because the Clock on the display keeps running but the Pi loses internet connection so it's unable to receive the UDP data

I also added a PMS5003 air quality sensor on Com1 and while it can read and parse that data with no problem, adding it to the weather display is just too much for Pi-Cromite.

I cannot use Com2 with Pi-Cromite which I need to be able to use to send some of the data via a HC-12 to a wall gauge

Hence me wanting to rewrite (pay someone to rewrite) the complete program to run natively on Pi OS.

I would willingly use a CMM2 but it even if I added a Wifi module to it, it's unable to collect or parse the data because it doesn't have the needed commands
Of it had, I'd have simply bought the Waveshare STM32H743IIT6 MCU core board and added the needed components to allow it to display the graphics via VGA then hdmi
Edited 2021-01-30 17:26 by lew247

matherp
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Posted: 07:59am 30 Jan 2021

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Quote it's unable to collect or parse the data because it doesn't have the needed commands

Are you just talking about json or something else?

lew247

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Posted: 08:44am 30 Jan 2021

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matherp said Are you just talking about json or something else?

Json and the commands to retrieve data from wifi and bluetooth mainly I was thinking esp32 because it has both wifi and bluetooth and it would be a futureproof feature to have the ability to read/parse/display to/from both wifi and bluetooth,
Especially if those tiny bluetooth temperature sensors are used, they are so cheap you could have them in many places.
I'm pretty sure it already has almost everything else the mm has.

matherp
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Posted: 08:52am 30 Jan 2021

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I assume you can do the networking stuff with an external esp?
Do you use GUI commands?
Please post a sample json string as received - one of the complex ones.
Edited 2021-01-30 18:52 by matherp

thwill

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Posted: 09:00am 30 Jan 2021

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matherp said I assume you can do the networking stuff with an external esp?
Do you use GUI commands?
Please post a sample json string as received - one of the complex ones.

And does the device have to send JSON or is that configurable? It may be possible to "parse" a rawer format more efficiently.

Tom

Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

lew247

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Posted: 09:35am 30 Jan 2021

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matherp said I assume you can do the networking stuff with an external esp?
Do you use GUI commands?
Please post a sample json string as received - one of the complex ones.

No I don't use GUI commands because I have no need for touch at present, I just use the normal box and rbox
Yes it would be easy to add an external Esp8266 or esp32 if bluetooth commands were also in there.
This is the biggest json receive example

Edited 2021-01-30 19:36 by lew247

matherp
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Posted: 09:48am 30 Jan 2021

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Thanks for that - please could you also post some sample json function calls

lew247

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Posted: 10:02am 30 Jan 2021

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These are the 3 wget where json is collected

system "wget -q -O- "+q$+"http://swd.weatherflow.com/swd/rest/better_forecast?api_key=20c70eae-e62f-4d3b-b3a4-8586e90f3ac8&station_id=10170&lat=53.439&lon=-2.106"+q$,c() 'get forecast ready to parse - this data is large!

system "wget -q -O- "+q$+"https://swd.weatherflow.com/swd/rest/observations/?device_id=35102&api_key=20c70eae-e62f-4d3b-b3a4-8586e90f3ac8"+q$,a() ' get data from Air device

system "wget -q -O- "+q$+"https://swd.weatherflow.com/swd/rest/observations/?device_id=35103&api_key=20c70eae-e62f-4d3b-b3a4-8586e90f3ac8"+q$,b() 'get data from Sky device

If you meant how do I parse the data at present using just the pi? here are some examples

conditions$ = JSON$(c(),"current_conditions.conditions")
iconnow$ = JSON$(c(),"current_conditions.icon")
iconnow$ = JSON$(c(),"current_conditions.icon")
cond1$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[1].conditions") ' Conditions Day 1
icon1$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[1].icon") 'Icon Day 1
cond2$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[2].conditions") ' Conditions Day 2
icon2$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[2].icon") 'Icon Day 2
thigh2$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[2].air_temp_high") 'Temp High Day 2
cond4$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[4].conditions") ' Conditions Day 4
icon4$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.daily[4].icon") 'Icon Day 4
h2$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.hourly[0].conditions")
h3$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.hourly[0].icon")
h4$ = JSON$(c(),"forecast.hourly[0].precip_probability")

I can't parse the data from the Air or Sky devices at present I have to use the field$ command as below

Sub Air 'Parse data from Air Device
i=LINSTR(a(),q$+"obs"+q$+":[[")+8 'ie skip over "obs":[[
AirObs$=LGETSTR$(a(),i,255)
press1$ = FIELD$(AirObs$, 2) 'Station Pressure (MB)
tempnow$ = FIELD$(AirObs$, 3) 'Air Temperature (C)
tempnow1$ = tempnow$ + "`C"
battery1$ = FIELD$(AirObs$, 7) 'Battery (volts)
battery1$ = battery1$ + "V" ' AIR BATTERY
END SUB
'
Sub Sky 'Parse data from Sky Device
j=LINSTR(b(),q$+"obs"+q$+":[[")+8 'ie skip over "obs":[[
SkyObs$=LGETSTR$(b(),j,255)
wind$ = FIELD$(SkyObs$, 6) 'Wind Avg (m/s)
wind$ = STR$(speednow3,2,1 ) +" mph"
direction$ = FIELD$(SkyObs$, 8)'Wind Direction (degrees)
battery2$ = FIELD$(SkyObs$, 9) 'Battery (volts)
battery2$ = battery2$ + "V" ' Sky BATTERY
uvnow$ = FIELD$(SkyObs$, 3) 'UV index
END SUB

matherp
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Posted: 10:17am 30 Jan 2021

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Sorry but could you also post a small simple json string and some relevant json$ function calls

Thanks

lew247

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Posted: 10:45am 30 Jan 2021

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Easier to post the program, you can pick what you need because I'm not certain what you meant

notudp1.zip

matherp
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Posted: 11:23am 30 Jan 2021

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OK

I've got the json$ function working nicely on the CMM2 and can parse your large json string so you have no excuse now not to buy one

Seriously though, the limitations are that the CMM2 will never have an in-built networking capability so you always be reliant on an external ESP (NB the Deluxe version currently offered by Piotr has a header to mount an ESP-01 inside the box)

Also, it is important to note the maximum resolution of the CMM2 display is 1280x720. This is a hard limit imposed by the capability of the chip itself

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