Decline of PicBasic ?

[mpgmike]

There is a few sites with a limited function free version. I bought the professional version of Visual Studio 2015. Of course, the newest is 2017. I also bought about a half dozen books to try to learn how to use it. I have worked with industrial PLCs & HMIs in the past which helped me grasp VB quicker than I otherwise could have. At this point I'm barely functional with VB, but I'm getting some cool things done with it.

[Ioannis]

VB6 used to produce easily a stand alone installer to distribute to others.

After that the new studio I tried was too complicated and never managed to make a stand alone installer.

Also I found it much different (as a language) and had not enough time to learn it. Was not proficient with VB6 either but seemed easier to make small projects.

VB6 does not work on new systems anyway. A solution for now I found is to ask a friend and do some apps on LabView but I really have to do the VB way some day.

Ioannis

[pedja089]

For CDC(usb serial port) you have example from DT. And you don't need any PC software, except drivers. And you have another serial port when your device is plugged in.
If you want HID comm, then you need host application.
Only pain with USB is high cost of VID(only 5000$ per year).
But you can try to get free PID and VID fro microchip on request.

[mpgmike]

Only pain with USB is high cost of VID(only 5000$ per year).

It's $4000 per year to become a member of USB-IF. There are only about 500 members. The $5000 is a one-time fee to purchase the Vendor ID (VID). With it the purchaser receives 65535 Product IDs to use any way he/she wants.

For playing, though, you could enter just about any number you want for VID & PID. Just don't sell a product doing that. DT used numbers in his examples. Not sure if he paid the fees or borrowed those numbers. And yes, Microchip has a program where you can request one of their VID/PIDs when you are using their components in your product.

[pedja089]

If I remember correctly DT use test PID/VID from microchip.

[towlerg]

For playing, though, you could enter just about any number you want for VID & PID. Just don't sell a product doing that.

I wonder what the sanction would be against selling a product with an unused VID, it's not like a DNS entry that the internet police can delete? I quess nothing at all.

[Ioannis]

The obvious thing is that the arbitrary selected VID/PID may be already known to Windows/MacOS etc and the system load the wrong drivers. These drivers will not work with your PIC of course.

The second are Legal consequences I suppose, as you are using something that is protected and must be paid so you can use it.

I have not cared so far as I have limited production and cannot justify the expenses of 4-5K $USD. I prefer, as long as I can, to use serial or ethernet solutions but to read the long legal documents, you may apply and read them.

Ioannis

[Art]

Oh man, you can cross me off the list sorry Scampy, I have long moved away!
PBP can’t support newer devices simply because PBP compiles to 8 bit RISC assembler, and would have to be entirely rewritten to support dsPic or Pic32.
I still visit in some effort to stay fresh because I maintain PBP is still my choice if a task does call for an 8 bit controller, but I don’t find that exciting at all.
PBP has (had) far more going for it in terms of transparency, and it’s use as a stepping stone than the Arduino environment will ever have.

It’s never been the job of a language or compiler to support any particular hardware unless that language or compiler came part and parcel with a particular computer.
Any serial display is far less complicated to interface with than an HD44780 character display. There are only libraries already existing for the Arduino ecosystem that
make things easier. PBP certainly does support any display that Arduino can though.

The best thing you could do for yourself is to move as far as possible away from the PBP manual, which is full of bad practice in it’s own examples,
and also as far away as possible from it’s canned library routines (commands).
Did you know that to write to a character LCD only requires the control of a port and two pins without any use of LCDOUT?
At least assuming it’s permanently wired to write as they typically are.

LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE:
enable = 1; // set enable pin
RS = 0; // set data or instruction (0 = instruction)
port = bytevalue
delay
enable = 0 //
RETURN

LCDSENDDATABYTE:
enable = 1; // set enable pin
RS = 1; // set data or instruction (1 = data)
port = bytevalue
delay
enable = 0 //
RETURN

That’s it! It only takes two more small routines to entirely abstract away the LCD hardware to the same extent that LCDOUT does.
There’s never a time in any real program that the string “Hello World” will be available at your fingertips.
Data always arrives byte by byte from somewhere, and that is how PBP canned commands and manual examples are a hinderance.

byte = $FE : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE // clear display
byte = $01 : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE
byte = $FE : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE // return home
byte = $02 : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE

Get some ASCII data from serial:

FOR i = 0 TO 20
SERIN byte : GOSUB LCDSENDDATABYTE
NEXT i

All untested and quite impractical pseudo code of course (though will mostly be right), and some delays are needed,
and in four bit mode, bytes are set nibbles a a time,
but enough to catch the drift, and closer to a normal cyclic program flow than manual examples.
The PBP manual doesn’t really give any good example of how a program would really work. only proper syntax.