Referring to the Picaxe Tutorial in Section 1 (making sounds) the instruction
is to connect a piezo sounder directly to the Picaxe output pin and not the
buffered output connection if the board has a Darlington driver. I'm not really understanding
what they mean ("connecting directly to the Picaxe output pin as opposed to the
buffered output connection") and I'm hoping someone can explain. Thanks very much for
the help.
John
Probably the 28x board
They are probably referring to a darlington chip which appears on many Picaxe boards. The darlington chip is a microchip containing a bunch of transistors and other crap that can be triggered by small signals from the picaxe and then turn on/off a much larger load (more current). When doing your audio stuff, this chip is not needed nor would work if it were used. Instead, you should connect directly to the output pin of the picaxe.
What is your set-up? A 28x board? A breadboard?
directly to picaxe pin
Thank you for the responses.
I am using a 28X1 board, same board that is used for the “start here” robot.
I think I see the logic of bypassing the darlington… so my question is: When
the instructions are to “connect directly to the output pin on the picaxe” I’m assuming
one would connect directly to the picaxe microcontroller chip … how
do you do that… . where is the point of connection directly on the chip?
or do I pull out the darlington and proceed to connect to an output pin the board?
Thank you for the follow up.
John
Extra row of pins…
If you look closely between the picaxe chip and the darlington chip itself, you will find an extra row of holes. Sometimes they have a little piece of “tape” covering them. These are the “direct connection” to the picaxe outputs. You can solder wires directly to these holes or solder in a row of pins to then connect to. BTW, these are also what is used when hooking up say, a SRF05 sonar. There is a Frits post about the subject --I’ll see if I can find it.
Crap crap crapity crap.
I see the holes 
Thanks Chris. You know, I printed out those diagrams Frits had posted with the letters
noting the pins and connecting areas… and the direct pin outputs from the picaxe he shows
(magenta letter E) just never dawned on me. He refers to node 66 to show an example of using
those connections. Thanks for pointing this out to me. I love this CRAP!!!
Good Luck, Spring.
Remember, if you are ever confused by crap or crappy connections or the crap just doesn’t work, you could try a measure-thingie to help you figure out why the crap is not working.
Oh hey, here is a bunch (hundreds) of “ringtones” that the picaxe can play… You have to scroll down a bit and look for “Picaxe 08m tunes” --the links for the downloads are all right there. --Note: these will play on any picaxe.
Very Cool!
I had not seen that page on the picaxe site… or never paid attention to it.
I noticed they have a speech synthesizer and MP3 player add ons.
At some point I’ll have to play with those. After I learn what I’m doing :-)
thanks
Wait just a minute
Springload --is this John? Or is this another guy from the Cape?
Wait, just saw the signature
Hey John. --I was about to be amazed that there was 3 of “us” here…
just the two of us
check your email
