Controlling OG-4 Decathron with PBP in an efficient way.

[tumbleweed]

One simple thing you can do is to combine commonly occurring sequences into a sub, for example

hl2:
    pause x
    high two
    low one
return

doing that (and making variables 'byte' instead of 'word') drops it down from 1K to 330

'****************************************************************
'*  Name    : UNTITLED.BAS                                      *
'*  Author  : [select VIEW...EDITOR OPTIONS]                    *
'*  Notice  : Copyright (c) 2014 [select VIEW...EDITOR OPTIONS] *
'*          : All Rights Reserved                               *
'*  Date    : 15.05.2014                                        *
'*  Version : 1.0                                               *
'*  Notes   :                                                   *
'*          :                                                   *
'****************************************************************
'device=PIC12F683

'Include "Modedefs.bas"
Define  OSC 8       ' Set Xtal Frequency

cik var byte       'loop variable
x   var byte        'delay variable
sub var byte        'intracounter variable

ZERO    var     GPIO.0
ONE     VAR     GPIO.4
TWO     VAR     GPIO.1
TRE     VAR     GPIO.2

ANSEL = %00000000    
CMCON0 = 7 
TRISIO = %00001000
OSCCON = %01110111


sub=9
x=30

'INIT tube and reset to 0
inika:
LOW ONE
LOW TWO
LOW TRE
HIGH ZERO
PAUSE x
LOW ZERO

tavi:         

'stage 1______________________________________________
sub=9
gosub sub9

high one  'proper finish?  one and two
gosub hl2
gosub hl0
pause 1000  'delay for display
low zero

'stage 2 ______________________________________________
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
pause 1000
low one

'stage 3____________________________________________
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
pause 1000
gosub hl3
low tre

'stage 4____________________________________________
sub=8
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
pause 1000
low tre

'stage 5____________________________________________
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
pause 1000
low one

'stage 6____________________________________________
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
pause 1000
high tre
low two


'stage 7____________________________________________
pause x
low tre
sub=7
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
high two
low one
gosub hl3
pause 1000
low tre

'stage 8____________________________________________
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
pause 1000
low one


'stage 9____________________________________________
'X=100
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
pause 1000
high tre
low two
pause x

'stage 10____________________________________________
low tre
sub=6
gosub sub9
gosub subzero
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
gosub hl1
gosub hl2
gosub hl3
pause 1000
low tre

goto tavi

hl0:
    pause x'delay for display
    high zero
    low two
return
    
hl1:
    pause x
    high one
    low tre
return

hl2:
    pause x
    high two
    low one
return

hl3:
    pause x
    high tre
    low two
return

sub9: 'subroutine for spinning
    for cik=1 to sub 'amount needed for full loop
        gosub hl1
        gosub hl2
        gosub hl3
    next
    low tre
return


subzero:
    high one  'proper finish?  one and two
    gosub hl2
    high zero
    low two
    pause x'delay for display
    high one
    low zero 'subzero here
return

I've bound to have goofed that up somewhere so it's up to you to fix whatever I screwed up, but you get the idea.

[CuriousOne]

Yeah I already started that, but had no idea, going from word to byte will save that much space
I'm still thinking, decathron is a ring counter/shift register, so maybe there is some other ways of controlling it....

[HenrikOlsson]

And stop using HIGH/LOW, those waste both time and space.

The animation can most likely be done with two FOR loops. An outer that steps thru the starting position from 1 to 29 and an inner that "sweeps the circle" one revolution starting/stopping at the dot pointed to by the outer loop.

If I'm not mistaken the effect you're after is similar to the the common "please wait the computer is busy" circle thingy you see on Windows systems?

/Henrik.

[CuriousOne]

You can't do it with two FOR loops, because you have to consider the reset pin and fact that number of dots is even, but number of control pins is odd. So it is always required to add an extra step out of loop, depending on even/odd current position.

The effect I'm making is as follows. Rotation starts from dot 1 and comes again to dot 1, stops there for a second, then quickly rotates one full loop, but stops at dot #1. Waits for a second, full spin and stop at dot #2 and so on, till it makes full turn.

[HenrikOlsson]

If you say so :-)
Do you have a datasheet describing the driving signals, I'm having some difficulties understanding how it works based on your description.

/Henrik.

[CuriousOne]

I have only Russian book about it. But principle of operation is nicely shown in animation here:

https://threeneurons.wordpress.com/dekatron-stuff/

[Ioannis]

And stop using HIGH/LOW, those waste both time and space....
/Henrik.

Well, I have some doubts about this. If it relates to output port registers I think it is necessary to use High/Low commands. Or at least this used to be the case with older versions of PBB.

Direct control of port registers like this portb.0=1 may cause problems when the program is long because of memory page issues. I may be wrong here. Anyone?

Ioannis

[richard]

If it relates to output port registers I think it is necessary to use High/Low commands.

the only problem with high/low is that they waste time and code space setting/clearing the tris register ,every time they are invoked.

Direct control of port registers like this portb.0=1 may cause problems when the program is long because of memory page issues.

the only issue with direct port writes once you have the tris reg set appropriately is the potential for rmw issues , especially at high clock speeds.
always use lat regs if possible and a shadow reg otherwise if rapid sequential port manipulation of individual pins will be employed

[mpgmike]

Most everything PIC made in the past decade features LATx Registers;
LATB.0 = 1
(Of course you could also insert a bit of ASM if FOSC cycles are important
@ BANKSEL LATB
@ BSF LATB,0

[CuriousOne]

For this particular case, speed is not an issue, since these tubes have couple of KHz max operating frequency, and in my case there are Pause 30 and Pause 1000 statements