http://www.microzed.com.au/ is the
importer in Australia of PICAXE.
They have been around a while. They are great for
simple tasks and Rev-Ed (the makers) have lots of information freely available
to control servos, motors, etc.
They are aimed squarely at the education market. As
such they are great to get things going with minimal fuss and equipment. I.e.
you don't need a JTAG or anything, just three wires to your serial port and the
free software from their site.
The big drawbacks is that they run an interpreted
basic language on a PIC usually using its internal oscillator. This means timing
is slow and inaccurate. I think they get about 4000 basic instructions per
second. You can add a Xtal if you want.
That said they are great for driving simple
Character LCDs, servos, RTCs and I've even had them hooked up with 433Mhz
wireless modules.
They are low cost and well suited to their target
market, just don't expect them to do anything they weren't designed for (speed
or great accuracy)
Nigel
----- Original Message -----From: Astria Nur IrfansyahSent: Monday, September 19, 2005 9:53 AMSubject: [AVR-Chat] (OT) PICAXEI noticed a strange new microcontroller called PICAXE in one of the
catalogues i got from Austronics 2005 last week.
After some googling, i found out that PICAXE is actually a PIC with a
bootstrap code from the manufacturer.
Does anyone have ever used PICAXE before? Selling micros with useful
bootstrap codes for easy development is an interesting idea though. I
wonder if there are AVR-AXEs or something like that.
-irfan-
ps: why is AVR much more expensive than PIC in australia? it's the
other way around in indonesia :(