Talk:PICAXE

PBASIC
I deleted the term "PBASIC" from the line ...


 * The language used to program PICAXE chips, PBASIC ...

PBASIC is the language used by Parallax and is a trademark applicable to them, not to Rev-Ed. The term PBASIC has mistakenly been used to describe the PICAXE Basic, but that's never been officially used by Rev-Ed to describe the PICAXE language. The term PBASIC doesn't appear at all in any of the three PICAXE Manuals.

hippy 14:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

PICAXE Reliability / Quality
I deleted this line ...


 * NB PICAXE's are sensitive to noise on mains supplies, so these MUST be very well smoothed.

PICAXE's are no more sensitive to noise on mains supply than any other processors in my experience. The whole phrase puts the PICAXE in a much more negative light than it deserves, and I believe is unfair comment.

hippy 14:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Execution Speed
I changed the following ...


 * typically 2000 commands per second


 * execution speed ... typically this will be ~500 microseconds

From measurements I made, the basic instruction timing was around 250uS at 4MHz, and that equates to 4000 commands per second. Rev-Ed claim 10,000 per second in their documentation.

hippy 14:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Measurements you make are original research and should not appear in a Wikipedia article. (The whole article has this feel.) -- David Woolley (talk) 12:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Their own datasheet says 1000 BASIC instructions per second:  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.171.29 (talk) 13:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Currency for price
I changed the price to pounds, as PICAXEs are made by a British company. It is irrelevant for the price to be in US dollars.


 * Please sign your posts using four ~ (~ ~ ~ ~) Thanks NightFalcon90909 01:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow.
This article is shit. --66.109.248.114 21:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If you can find areas that it needs to be improved in, please feel free to change it yourself. Or if you would like to leave constructive criticism, you can tell us what you would like done. NightFalcon90909 01:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The OP on this "Wow." topic is a man of few words, but his words are 100% correct and he needn't be derided for not doing the work to create a good article. He merely pointed out that this article needn't exist. It is total garbage, wholly unsourced, total advertising blurb, and of ridiculously excessive length for such an article. The PICAXE is barely a footnote in the history of the PIC, but the PICAXE article is just as long as the article for the PIC itself, which is 100,000,000,000 times as important. Delete this pig, start with a stub, and strike anything unsourced.--208.127.100.74 (talk) 10:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

USB Download Cable
I replaced the following statement to reflect the availability of the USB download cable:


 * A serial port must be available to download programs; modern USB-only PCs will need a USB-serial adaptor.

Serial port availability is no longer a concern for new PICAXE users (or existing ones)

Also - I feel the article could use more information on the history of the PICAXE, such as when the first model was released.

SmokeySteve 10:00, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Comparison with a "Native" PIC
The PICAXE firmware provides some neat features, but it has, nevertheless, significant disadvantages. The PIC micro is amazingly quick, but running interpreted code on a microcontroller is not efficient! Typically, the execution speed is 1000 times slower. There is also much less space for your own code, though this is partly compensated by having a large built-in library.

Can anyone explain why the PICAXE (and STAMP) take this approach, rather than simply having a compiler? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.171.29 (talk) 13:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The first comment here confuses low level execution speed with efficiency. Efficiency has many dimensions including speed, space, ease of use, skill level required, etc. For example, when building a prototype, something which can be built in an hour is more efficient than something which takes a day, even if it operates more quickly. The Picaxe architecture is well suited to prototyping because of its essential simplicity compared to the underling processor architecture. However, there is more to it than that. For a wide range of non-prototype applications, the only components which need to run quickly are the low level components that are present in the built-in libraries for things like serial communication. The Basic language does not need to execute very quickly because only small sections of it are needed to connect the appropriate built-in components together. I use Picaxes and raw PIC micro devices, but I never use a raw PIC micro device unless I need a low level facility that the Picaxe does not provide or there is some other computationally dense requirement. Never build something fast just for the sake of it. Once something is adequately fast, anything faster is a waist of effort and therefore less efficient.86.138.11.190 (talk) 19:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Poor Article
This seems to me to be a very poorly organised article. In particular it seems rather obsessed with how things are now even including "current" prizes! Picaxe chips have been around for a bit now and this article should attempt to give balance coverage of their history. "Now" in an encyclopaedia is not more important than "then".86.140.5.33 (talk) 13:49, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Note that this was written before the article was overhauled a while ago so there is no need to do it again in case someone doesn't realize that.92.6.106.159 (talk) 19:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)