IDE with emulation!

[T.Jackson]

I say give it time it'll get better. There's obviously a very mixed bag of feelings towards simulators on this forum. While I realize that simulators have been around since late DOS days, but with the way in which we know of them today, It's still relatively new technology in my book. Attempting to emulate the exact behavior of 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of parts would be a very cumbersome chore. With digital electronics, it either works or it doesn’t. In the analog domain it’s an entirely different story…

Few years ago I took the opportunity of test driving a simulator called Crocodile Clips. Windows-based, included a modest library of parts, resistors, capacitors, CMOS 4000 series of logic IC’s, BJT’s, - (Bipolar Junctions Transistors) – LED’s, buzzers, pretty much all of the commonly used active & passive components.

I was quite impressed, and a little disappointed too. I strapped together a light chaser circuit in about 20 mins, using the built-in signal generator as the clock source. Then I tried to make a relaxation oscillator using a Schmitt triggered NAND gate with calculated R & C for a 10Hz clock. Didn’t work. The simulator didn’t have the ability to emulate the true characteristics of Schmitt trigger NAND gate with feedback. Interestingly though, it could actually emulate a typical RC time-constant.

Best regards,
Trent Jackson

[T.Jackson]

December of last year I wrote an emulator to simulate a real-World project that was published in the Silicon Chip magazine back in 1999. A 32 LED microcontroller-based Christmas tree. The tree uses bi-colour LEDs and has a seemingly endless array of patterns, which are stored in an onboard EEPROM.

So taken by this tree, I decided to write an emulator for it. It's not identical to the original and it's far from perfect. There is about 100K of unavoidable source code in it. An absolutely ridiculous amount of time was spent on this project in attempts to simulate the behavior of something that is ultimately quite simple in real life.

http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb...67268&lngWId=1

Best Regards,
Trent Jackson

[Luciano]

Hi Trent,

I have downloaded your Dynamic LED XMAS Tree. (VB6 source code).
From what I can see the object-oriented capabilities of Visual Basic 6.0
have not been used. The LEDs of your program are a perfect example where
the use of object-oriented programming could bring real benefits.

For more fun use:

Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition which can be downlaoded for free:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

or

Visual C# Express which is also free:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ex...p/default.aspx

Best regards,

Luciano

[T.Jackson]

Hi Luciano.

Far as I'm aware, VB doesn't cater for true OOP - Object Orientated Programming. There's no Polymorphism, inheritance, yada, yada, yada. It is object-based though. Not so long ago I used to confuse myself with the two. There's a lot of debate about what VB can and can't do.

Anyhow, like it or love it, but the main reason I coded the Tree how it is was to please a very fussy audience. I did it how everyone wanted it, so I won a competition for it. Anything that's posted on PSC has to be either API or DirectX-based to even get a moments consideration.

It can be a real tough game on PSC. Just when you think you're starting to get real good in VB someone comes along and posts something that's just absolutely way out of this World and you sit there scratching your head telling yourself "gee, I've still really got a long way to go".

By the way, thanks for all those links

Best Regards,
Trent Jackson

[Luciano]

Far as I'm aware, VB doesn't cater for true OOP - Object Orientated Programming. There's no Polymorphism, inheritance, yada, yada, yada. It is object-based though. Not so long ago I used to confuse myself with the two. There's a lot of debate about what VB can and can't do.

Hi Trent,

Did you ever try with VB6?

Programming with Objects (MSDN Library / VB6)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ithobjects.asp

Programming with Your Own Objects (MSDN Library / VB6)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ownobjects.asp

If not, then use C# or VB.Net. (Good investment for the future).

Object-oriented programming is almost ineluctable if you want to
develop your own simulation programs.

Best regards,

Luciano

[T.Jackson]

Hi Luciano,

Yes, over the years I have done a lot of object-based programming in VB.
I agree, Object-Orientated-Programming would be an essential ingredient to be used with any complex simulator such as Proteus.

No plans on anything like that for a while. I'm currently a full time student with nothing but a lot of discrete maths and technical jargon on my mind.

Best Regards,
Trent Jackson

[RYTECH]

I would love to see a "simulator" included in PBP / Microcode studio.

as a hobbyist my usual design strategy is:

a) concept diagram
b) breadboard
c) wirewrap version
d) homemade photoresist (the kind you expose to light with your design overtop) etched pcb