im live in Sudan .. and i applied for PICAXE bundle and then for picaxeforum.com ...but until now nothing happened ..
still i wait for my applicant but until that time i need to practice for others ...
what the good alternative from PIC microchip for picaxe ic ? and for picaxe -28 project board ...that mentioned on the first lesson ( start here ) ...?
is there anyone have an information about a PO box mailing , ARAMEX or DHL prices for deliver the bundle to Sudan ...?
arduino tends to be far more avaliable, being open source anyone can manufacture one. Whereas pixaxes are manufactured exclusively in the UK. However the code will be different.
Lots of people on LMR feel the same way dagash. It’s just not that easy to order parts when you don’t live in the “Western World”.
I am afraid your problem has little to do with Picaxe itelf. Other micro controllers and project boards will probably have the same problems finding their way to Sudan.
Do I understand correctly that you ordered a Picaxe board from www.rev-ed.co.uk in the UK? Or did I misunderstand? You should ask the shop about the status of your order. Send them an e-mail. And learn what the difficulty is before you order something else from a different shop. Because the new shop will probably have the same difficulties.
As a last resort, consider building your own board and just order a few micro controller chips from abroad. They are cheap enough to place a few orders at the same time with different webshops or perhaps family members living abroad.
I also recommend Arduino, it’s much nicer to program, the code is more readable than the messy BASIC. PICAXE doesn’t even support floating point math, as far as I remember. I don’t have any experience with PICAXE, so I might be wrong.
PIC’s on the other hand, are a little more difficult to program and you must build your own board. There are also tons of IDE’s to program PIC’s, so you must choose. Most developers choose assembler language to program PIC’s, which is very difficult. However, if I’m not mistaken, you can also program PIC’s in C. There is a great program (Linux-only) - ktechlab, which you can use to graphically (like so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ktechlab_FlowCode.png) program PIC’s and simulate circuits with them.
There are tons of IDE’s to program AVR’s, too, but Arduino is a pre-build board using AVR, so it has only one official IDE.
There’s also BASIC stamp, which, as the name suggests, uses BASIC language (in my opinion, messy). However, instead of compiling it and putting it on the microcontroler, it puts it on an eeprom memory and then the microcontroller interprets it.
Parallax propeller is another board you might want to try, I haven’t got much things to say about it since I’m not familiar. I can only say that it’s pretty powerful.
you can also program pics in C, PIC18 (microchip’s equivilent to atmegas) has a special C language called (imaginatively) C18, it is free from microchip’s site with the limitation that the code compressor is disabled, and windows only. However you will have to invest in a PIC programmer.
ivshti and UltrMagnus thank you for your support and your informations …
rik hi , ,
i agree with you for the difficult way to get Picaxe … but i think some shops should support this products , so i reaaly find for these near my country ( KSA - India - Malaysia … etc ) , i have a lot of friends live on its .
basicly i decide to start with my own board to trainnig . now i’m looking for basic needs ( board - programmer - battary container - battary connecter - pic 16f84 - servo motors … etc )
Once you decided what you want to build, you should post specific questions as new forum posts. Don’t make us guess what you need to know. Just tell us.
You should try to get a “solderless breadboard” with jumper wires. That makes experimenting and learning a lot easier. They can be re-used often, for new experiments. I use them all the time.