Decline of PicBasic ?

[Art]

LCDOUT isn’t a particularly slow command, but a better example I thought of in English is if you only ever send one byte at a time with an LCD,
you inherently strip the dead delay that LCDOUT has to put between bytes, because you can be using that delay to process the next byte live.
So everything is faster for something simple, and that’s still PBP.

Hmm the Microchip company forum, I haven’t found bad reception there when I do use it, more that either none can answer the question,
or just haven’t been very helpful for a specific problem for one reason or another. Better help with C or assembler stuff I have found on other forums altogether.

[Scampy]

The one thing that struck me when I got into programming PICs with PBP was the warm friendly welcome I received on this forum, and regardless of what I was seeking assistance on always received the support in a kind and helpful way. Hentik, Darrel and Alaine have all been instrumental in getting my multi-channel reptile environment controller project up and running, and looking at the work involved was beyond my level of knowledge or experience. I'm currently doing a re-write for the Arduino platform and as mentioned it's been a steep learning curve, especially given the fact that most of the forums are no where near as friendly or supportive as it is here.

Whilst Art has mentioned that these high level languages hide what goes on under the hood, for me as a hobbyist I'm not that bothered. The TFT library the Arduino uses is no more complicated than PBP's LCDOUT command (tft.print ("hello") for example) and for me that's all I'm after. I have no idea how powerful the chip on the mega2560 is compared to an 18F PIC (other than the mega has 256K of memory !!), and if this is the limitation of PBP when it came to developing it to embrace new hardware such as SD cards, TFT screens, or wifi modules, in that its chip support is now limited to devices that even the hobbyist would now not consider as being the first choice because by modern standards they lack memory or functionality. I still have my old (and no longer supported) EasyPIC 5 development board, and where possible will continue to use PBP and PICs for any future projects, provided the hardware requirements are covered.

[mpgmike]

If I had a major gripe, it isn't with PBP, it's with the occasional mistake in the data sheets. For example, look at this first picture. It clearly states in the body of text regarding CCP that all 4 PICs represented in this data sheet come equipped with 2 CCP modules.



When I tried to compile, I got errors for everything related to CCP2. I opened the PBP document describing all functions pertaining to the PIC16F1765 only to find there was no CCP2. Frustrated I looked at the Memory Map for it. It should be in Bank5; see next picture



How bad was this mistake? Looking further I discovered that the PIC16F1768_9 does indeed have a CCP2. Look at Bank5 in the next picture



This is the second time I tried to use a Special Function listed in the body of text describing that SFR, which the text claims is there, only to find the error.

[Dave]

One thing I try to do is look for the actual data sheet and NOT the Preliminary sheet. I have found in the past MicroChip does NOT update the Preliminary sheets. It is in the footer...