PBP Glcd

[skimask]

It seems however, that at nearly twice the price, PBP does not include any GLCD code and a search of these and similar forums does not provide any practical examples that a beginner like me could use.

Does anyone know if there are any examples that would drive, say a 128x64 ks0108 Glcd from PBP - seems a bit of a short coming in a 'Pro' version if there isn't .

The debate between PBP vs other compilers comes and goes...
IMO - PBP is solid, does what you want, nothing more, nothing less.
As far as driving a GLCD, there are plenty of examples here that handle GLCDs of various types (off the top of my head, 122x32, 128x64, Nokia 3100 types, Nokia color LCD from Sparkfun, 2 of which I've personally done). Same thing goes with anything else that PBP doesn't directly support. It's easy enough to add support...
Practical examples that a beginner could use? My thoughts are...and these are ONLY my thoughts...maybe a beginner shouldn't be trying to drive a GLCD, maybe a beginner should be more concerned with flashing an LED first and working up to it. After all, you don't hop into a car at 13 years old and try to hit rush hour traffic in a sports car.

[T.Jackson]

Richard,

PBP is a fantastic language (your best choice of BASIC) If you need greater performance than the BASIC language can provide then C might be worth a look into as well. Believe me when I tell you that it's only marginally more involved than most dialects of BASIC. Built-in functions make things just as easy to do as in BASIC.

Trent Jackson

[mister_e]

As far as GLCD as concern, why Melabs don't include them in the built-in feature?

Well, there's a load of Different Graphic controller, there's no official standard one, but some more popular model. KS0108 is one of them. I agree , they should consider to include it.

There's quite a lot of pre-canned example for PBP, i think the best one to start is the one from Electronic Workbench website
http://www.compsys1.com/workbench/On...ontroller.html
and the code
http://www.compsys1.com/support/PBP_Files/glipic/

Swordfish is not a bad compiler, but only for 18Fs. There's few other compiler who have GLCD built-in feature as well. It's really up to you to decide... do you want to learn something, or you just want to do something...

[RICHARD.C]

Hi guys,

Many thanks for you helpful comments.

I am a beginner to Basic but do have some assembler experience, part of the reason at moving to Basic was the fact that USB and GLCD was a more accessible option that could be used in the future.

It just seemed a bit strange that the Pro version did not have such a feature; thought I might have missed something about it when reading up.

While Swordfish does have a good working GLCD sample - as rightly pointed out, it only supports the 18F range, which is my current device, but does raise the question of what happens if they do not extend the range in the years to come.

thanks again,

Richard

[Ioannis]

...what happens if they do not extend the range in the years to come...

And I am sure they won't extend the support to 16xxx series with GLCD support. These routines need a lot of program memory and speed.

Ioannis

[tenaja]

Proton (PDS) is a PBP-like basic compiler that has GLCD support. For reference, a very short program takes up about 750 program words, about 1/3 of which is the GLCD commands, half is the font file, an the remainder is the basic code that you actually type. Additional GLCD command use takes very little space. Just like all of the other commands, adding the first one is what consumes the most overhead; additional commands just load registers and call the existing subroutine.

In any case, this really is not very much memory, considering how many PIC's have so much more than 4KB of space, and they go on up to 64KB or more. The amount of overhead really is irrelevant, unless you are counting your pennies on the PIC--and that's unlikely if you are using basic to control a GLCD.

The real issue is that PBP is more designed to be a beginners tool, primarily for those stepping up from Stamps. Most of those beginners don't have what it takes to make a GLCD work, with or without the basic commands. If you must have built-in commands, look at PDS or SF for Basic. PDS has the advantage of being as simple as PBP, but more powerful. SF is no where near as simple, but it's more capable.

[mister_e]

The real issue is that PBP is more designed to be a beginners tool,

Well that's probably the most funny one I saw since awhile but anyways... let me dry the beer i've spilled everywhere here..

It's not what you have, but what you do with... Power is behind the keyboard not in the computer... But yeah, it looks better because it's simpler.. sob sob sob...