Well, it's a sad day at Nerd Towers, as we've had to wave goodbye to our favourite PIC compiler, Oshonsoft's PIC18 Simulator - for the next few projects at least.
It's a great compiler, the best simulator bar none, makes USB/HID coding a doddle, but - sadly - it's lack of support means we've started to outgrow it. The number of chips supported is starting to look a little thin, now we've discovered these great little PICs - 16F1825
The thing is, to use some of the newer Microchips, we're going to have to use a different compiler. MPLAB (even version X) is still a mess and difficult to use (not to mention sloooow) so we've been looking at alternatives. Jason from BuildBrighton suggested SourceBoost which, at £60 for a full licence, looks pretty good value.
Now here's the dilemma:
Stick with a BASIC-based compiler for USB/HID and switch between languages/compilers for other stuff, or slowly upgrade everything to a C-based compiler/language and leave Oshonsoft behind for good?
Switch to C, you won't regret it and it'll set you up for doing professional embedded work (if you want to go down that route).
ReplyDeleteHi Al,
DeleteI used to do a lot of professional embedded work, first in assembly then later with BASIC (I migrated to PICs from PLCs nearly 20 years ago). I actually quite like the way BASIC keeps you quite close to the hardware layer; I tend to work a lot from first principles and don't like relying on pre-built libraries and functions (I never got on with Arduino for this reason).
I'm not knocking Oshonsoft, and I've built a couple of commercial products with it (the compiler actually created smaller/tighter .hex files than Hi-Tech C complier a few years back). It's just that it's not really kept up with the Microsoft product range.
That said, I've compiled my first C-based app (for the audio wav player project) so let's see how easy/hard it is to debug with.....
The great compilers sd cards are so source boost which act on the full jasons and it entire with different cards chips and circuits based upgrades.
ReplyDeleteR4 3DS