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Alterative to Basic for microcontroller

I'm an Electronics student in college and I'm currently working on a project. I was given a circuit diagram for my project, from which I had to design a printed circuit board to be sent off and manufactured. I got my printed circuit board back and populated it with components. On my circuit board, I have a chip holder for a Basic STAMP microcontroller. To those unfamiliar with it, the Basic STAMP is a microcontroller which has an onboard Basic interpretter. What you do is hook the Basic STAMP up to a PC via a COM port and send programs to it to be executed on the circuit board. Anyway, when it came to programming the chip, I was frustrated with using Basic; the reason I was frustrated is that I am already experienced with C and C++, and so had no interest in learning another language from scratch, and also because Basic is the cripple of programming languages.

I want to write a program in C to be executed on my circuit board. My initial thoughts were that I had two choices:

1) Somehow overide the Basic interpreter on the chip and supply it with my own machine code to be executed (for this I would need a C compiler that will produce machine code to be run on the Basic stamp).

2) Find a chip which has the same pin layout as the Basic STAMP and use that instead.

Choice 2 would be my preference but I haven't found any such chip so far. Would anyone here know of any such chip? As for Choice 1, I haven't a clue how I would go about doing that so could anyone please offer some advice?

I enquired around my college as to how I should go about this, and one lecturer told me that there's a Java STAMP chip which is pin-compatiable with the Basic STAMP. I thought this was great as the common features of C and Java are almost identical... until I realised that Java doesn't have pointers, ugh!

So any ideas on how I can write a program in C to be executed on my circuit board which is set up to handle a Basic STAMP chip?

And just as an aside, why would anyone stick an interpreter on a microcontroller when they can just compile the program on a PC and send the machine code to the microcontroller. . . ?

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Simon Walsh
Reply to
Simon Walsh
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Just write a C compiler / interpreter in BASIC, and Bob's your uncle.

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Reply to
Malcolm McLean

STAMPs started life back when OTP (one time programmable) uC were the norm, and so you could not actually do what you state.

STAMPs were a quite clever way to get 'soft' in to the software.

With todays Flash uC, with on-chip debug blocks, there is certainly less need for a STAMP type approach.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Basic Stamp one was released in 1992.

I think it was 1995 when mEL released their first basic compiler that was stamp compatible.

Today, you can use virtually any PIC chip with Basic, C, or many other choices.

see:

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for a range of software that is available for PICs

Don...

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Don McKenzie
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Reply to
Don McKenzie

I use a MicroChip pic and IDE. Put it on a dughter board with some header pins that will plug intoo the Stamp socket. It woudl'nt be hard to do.

Reply to
sdeyoreo

I am fairly sure the CPU is a Microchip PIC16. You can get a limited free compiler from Hi-tech. You will of course need to learn the details of the Chip. Either way it is not a PC it will not Run C++. The resources are very limited compared to a PC size CPU.

Reply to
Neil

Now, now, now! It is the implementation of that particular dialect of BASIC, not the language itself. You just got caught by the Basic Stamp thingy. Most of the other combinations of Basic _compiler_ and microcontroller are usable. But sure, I think you want to be using C or assembler if you really want to make it easy on yourself.

Reply to
Gary Peek

Pick a micro with a free c compiler.

Pic from microchip.com pic18f,pic24f and pic30f

microchip provide free student versions of their compilers for 18f,24f and

30f. The pic16f only has the free limited version c compiler from hitec. Pics were used in the earlier basic stamp models - I think(may be wrong) that the latest ones are using scenix pic compatable micros (run a lot faster up to 75MHz but no hardware peripherals).

avr from atmel

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winavr or avrgcc(linux or mac) are ports of gcc for avr
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digikey have a special on avr stk500 + jtage ice2 for US$150 or stk500 + avr dragon for US$49

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?site=us&lang=en&vendor=313&keywords=AVRDEVKIT&dkcid=1971

There is a basic compiler for avr's from mcselec.com bascom avr lite version is a free demo

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Smiley electronics make a good beginners book/kit on c for avr's using the avr butterfly board

get the free starter pdf

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Another good website for avrs is

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Both pics and avr's are fairly simple to learn and use.

16f has 35 assembler instructions, 18f approx 115 , avr's approx 115

Olimex make cheap pic and avr boards, sparkfun.com sells them pic boards

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avr boards

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Also futurlec.com have some cheap boards but can take a while to ship your order and their boards are not that well documented for beginners.

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There is also the msp430 chips from TI

They also have a gcc port available.

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sparkfun.com also sell some boards

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Alex

Reply to
Alex Gibson

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