 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Micromite Challenge- Maximite Emulator
| Author | Message | ||||
jwettroth Regular Member  Joined: 02/08/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 79 |
What if you could connect a micromite to a PC running MMBASIC DOS and all the hardware oriented digital I/O's, analog inputs, counters, interrupts interacted with the real world and transparently reported all to MMBASIC. It would make a nice PC based interfacing platform with the friendliness of MMBASIC and the hardware and low level attributes of a MAXIMITE at the additional cost of a micromite. I think it might be doable with stock MMBASIC and a stock micromite but it might be nice to have a small change in MMBASIC and perhaps something in micromite to make it cleaner. It would be a nice development system if nothing else. Maybe even a use for these old, pc's laying around. No money, no plaques, just the lifelong admiration of your colleagues  John Wettroth |
||||
atmega8 Guru  Joined: 19/11/2013 Location: GermanyPosts: 724 |
.? |
||||
| WhiteWizzard Guru Joined: 05/04/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2944 |
Sorry; you've lost me in what it is you are trying to achieve 
How are you picturing the MaxiMite and/or MicroMite in all of this? Perhaps I have totally missed something but please clarify cos I love a challenge (but only after Beta testing is completed!!) |
||||
panky Guru Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1114 |
John, If I understand you correctly, as MMBASIC in DOS is all but useless as it has no I/O (no offence Geoff, I know there is no I/O in a DOS machine) what you would like is to have a uMite act as an I/O front end for MMBASIC in DOS? It would be slow I think and the functionality could be more effectivly achieved with MMEdit or MMIDE directly driving a uMite or Maximite (IMHO)
Doug. ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
||||
| WhiteWizzard Guru Joined: 05/04/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2944 |
If you run MM-DOS on a PC, is it not a 'closed' system i.e. MM-DOS doesn't interact with any other software on the PC. If that is the case (and you are proposing the ability to interface the PC with hardware) then why not simply run MM-Basic on a MaxiMite?? Please educate me if I am missing something - it is very early in the morning here and I am extremely tired so apologies if I have overlooked something . . . |
||||
| jwettroth Regular Member Joined: 02/08/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 79 |
Panky captured the idea. Run MM-DOS on a PC (probably a modified version). Have a micromite external connected over USB. Any I/O type commands in MM-DOS would happen through the micromite. If this were all stock hardware, it could be a bit low but with a bit of customization on both ends, it could be quite fast. As Panky said, MM-DOS is a bit crippled by not being able to interact with real hardware and I/O. This fixes the problem for the cost of a micromite- a few $. I use both the original Maximite and the new micromite especially a bit like a PC peripheral to tickle one wire, I2C and SPI hardware on a lab bench. MM-DOS is a nice language and would be better if it had I/O. Perhaps I have a unique application. Regards All, John John Wettroth |
||||
| WhiteWizzard Guru Joined: 05/04/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2944 |
Hi John, Is the MM-DOS you refer to the same as Geoff's MMBasic for DOS? If not then this is the part I was 'missing' and hence I understand why you would ask what you do ask. However, if the MM-DOS you refer to is the same as MMBasic for DOS, the this is a cut-down version of MMBasic that was originally written for the MaxiMite. But the MaxiMite version already has all the hardware control I believe you are saying would be nice for MM-DOS to have? So we go full circle and I come back to 'why not just use a MaxiMite? - it has full hardware control and is also a fully featured MM-Basic. Is there any reason in particular you want to use MM-DOS on a PC as opposed to MM-Basic on a MaxiMite? Im so sorry if I am overlooking 'the obvious'! Regards, WW |
||||
TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
The DOS version of MM Basic has no graphics capability. It is great for testing code snippets but not intended as a full PC programming language. It would be a lot easier to use a Windows version of Basic - there are plenty to choose from. The MicroMite (or Maximite) does the real-world interface and the Windows program does the pretty graphs, web interface etc. This is what I do and I know there are others doing similar. Before MM Basic DOS version appeared I had considered writing a Maximite emulator but I didn't think the work involved would be worth it. If I ever run out of things to do, I might reconsider. Jim VK7JH MMedit |
||||
| jwettroth Regular Member Joined: 02/08/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 79 |
WW- I originally called it MMBASIC for DOS and others called it MMDOS as I thought that this might be part of the confusion. Here is the rationale. I have a PC at my lab bench- it works fine but I/O is complicated. I have used things like the bitwhacker, various homebuilt and commercial USB peripherals, Arduino's, Propellers, Teensy's, etc, etc. All have their pluses and minues. What I'd really like is something like an old PC with serial and parallel port that I had easy access to in GWBasic or Turbo C, etc. The only problem with is that I don't want to maintain an old DOS box and a DOX emulator won't let me tickle hardware like old machines would. Example from today- Let's say that I want to play with a new chip- an RF synthesizer that has a few registers in it that need to be programmed over SPI. This really isn't a very important part of what I'm doing- I just need to get some data in to it. I could use a Maximite, write a bit of basic, could even have it prompt me for inputs and make a little user interface in basic- all good. In order to do this, I have to pull out my Maximite, a keyboard and change my monitor cable to the Maximite. The benefit of this setup is that I can use graphics in my basic program and make pretty histograms etc. Let's say that I instead use a micromite or a Maximie connected over serial (USB). I can do most of the same things but am limited to a text interface. The nice part is that I get this great language with all these nice little hardware hooks to talk to my hardware. It's a bit slow for taking real data but it's quick and easy. If I want to graph data or use it on the PC, I capture through my serial port and then put it into excel, etc. Ok- not bad. What I am now proposing is to have MMBasic for DOS running on the PC. It is connected to a micromite that serves as the hardware I/O. I can do all the nice Maximite things, I can do all the nice micromite things, but I'm in a PC file system and can move data around more easily. With a bit of effort I could even write a DLL that could take data directly from MMBASIC and put it into excel using several standard techniques. You can think about this several ways. These easiest might be to think of it as giving MMBASIC for DOS, true I/O functionality. I'm sorry that this is so sorry to understand- I have a feeling, I'm using the MM in a way that most others are not. John Wettroth |
||||
psergiu Regular Member Joined: 09/02/2013 Location: United StatesPosts: 83 |
As a CRAZY workaround, if you really need graphical output from a MaxiMite (or even MicroMite) over the serial console, you can use access the serial console from "xterm" on a Unix/Linux machine as xterm provides also Tektronix 4014 Graphical terminal emulation. Just start the xterm as follows: "xterm -t -tn tek4014" then use "screen" or "cu" to connect to the maximite/micromite serial port. Then you just echo TEK graphical escape codes. See: http://use.perl.org/use.perl.org/_scrottie/journal/39195.htm l http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#Tektr onix%204014%20Mode And another idea for TassyJim - in MMEdit, could the output from MaxiMite/MicroMite's serial port be piped trough a web browser window while the program is running ? This way you can have your BASIC program on the 'mite outputing HTML code which gets rendered by the browser window on the PC. PRINT "<html><head><title>MMBASIC Output</title></head>"
PRINT "<body><h2>MMBasic HTML Test</h2>" PRINT "<table border=1><tr><th>Value 1</th><th>Value 2</th></tr>" FOR i = 1 TO 10 PRINT "<tr><td>" i "</td><td>" RND*10 "</td></tr>" NEXT i PRINT "</table></body></html>" |
||||
| MarKoZaKKa Newbie  Joined: 14/02/2015 Location: ItalyPosts: 7 |
An addition to this old post. As i’m quite often away from home for my job, I would like to have a micromite simulator to develop my sw while in an hotel room, debug as much as possible, then once at home go hardware. I had it with an Italian device called PPTEA,(pptea.altervista.org in Italian only), the simulator allows me to follow the code line by line while it’s running, pause the execution at specific lines, set digital and analog values for inputs, send data to serial port, read for variables values while running... Unfortunately this device have not so much support anymore... |
||||
| Vito Newbie Joined: 11/10/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 17 |
Arduino has huge support and simulators you are looking for. https://windowsreport.com/arduino-simulators/ You can even program most of PIC32MX ucontrollers with Arduino IDE. https://chipkit.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page |
||||
MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
Have a look at small basic from Microsoft. Easy to learn and use. For hardware control you just send commands over the serial port which the micromite can execute directly or you could add some subroutines/functions to the micromite and call those via the serial port. You would then basically have no limit in possibilities and the speed can be very high also by using a high baudrate. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
||||
CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2170 |
set up a remote access to a home PC then just develop straight onto that. Most of my "remote" development is done in an editor and only tried on the real thing at some later point. |
||||
| MarKoZaKKa Newbie Joined: 14/02/2015 Location: ItalyPosts: 7 |
@vito, thank you, but I love BASIC... and have no time to struggle with arduino. @capitainboing, I tried this way, but at the end a simulator works far better. No need to setup a connection (here in Italy sometimes it’s hard to have a good connection), ready to go anytime, even if you have half an hour free from duties during the job. I understand there’s nothing ready at the moment. |
||||
Zonker Guru Joined: 18/08/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 767 |
With many of the PCB's found here, why not box up a small, USB powered "road mite"..??? It should still fit in the laptop bag...  |
||||
| CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2170 |
@Zonker - yep that is easily achievable... if you got room for a power bank, you can get a MM in the laptop bag |
||||
 Print this page |
 |
The Back Shed's forum code is written, and hosted, in Australia. | © JAQ Software 2025 |
