Picaxe WA

I had some spare time, so I thought I would look in at my old Picaxe kit. I hadn’t gone near it for about a year, so I was a bit rusty. I had also reformatted my hard drive on my laptop, so it was really go to whoa.

First off, I contacted the friendly and helpfull Stan Swan and he encourage me to go ahead.

Here is a record of what I learnt.

 As expected, it was brick wall after brick wall, but I got it working in the end. Sort of.

 To download my program into the chip, I found my 9 pin serial connector had disappeared to be replaced by a rather dodgy USB port.  So off to  Altronics to purchase a picaxe027 download cable. I had also purchased a serial to usb converter cable, but didn’t investigate this much.

With much enthousasm I mocked up a circuit on my shiny new breadboard. Download - nothing. Ah. Load the drivers. Off to the picaxe site and download the picaxe027 drivers. Download - nothing. About an hour of frigging around and I hit  on the idea of going into control pannel into system/hardware and looking in at the com ports. I found the picaxe addressed com port 9. In the panel, com port 9 was greyed out. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Eventually it came up clear so I selected it and - nothing.

Just tricking, I got a circuit board frm another project and it worked.

 Now back to the breadboard.

Well, about half a dozen of us met in Mandurah in a house we had hired for the weekend for ur first Picaxe weekend. Glenn Olsen took us through our paces anfd here are some of my impressions.

 A little light went on when I realised that Glen was following the outline as laid down in the website http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe in http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/docs/picaxe_manual1.pdf

I  am convinced Picaxe is a way forward for Computing in schools. It is a self contained unit of knowlege and as I type, there are kids in my class who are voluntarily pursuing Picaxe projects across the Web. They have volunteered to get a car they have built from parts of a CD-ROM so it can be programmed using a Picaxe chip. 

PICAXE micro controllers are a computers in a chip and with input, process , output, they are an ideal tool in the systems control, mechatronics, electronics, etc context. We thought it would be good to teach people, including teachers about them.

On the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of November, there will be an introductory workshop run by Glenn Olsen in Mandurah. We have hired a venue for the weekend and attendees are invited to stay over if they choose. Some of the topics covered in the workshop include:

Intro to the PICAXE

• Collection of reference materials
• Using an electronics simulator to build basic circuits

PICAXE programming

• Building a PICAXE circuit and incorporating a program.
• Lights, Sounds, Movement
• Inputs and more lights, sounds and movement
• Introduction to some more advanced applications for the PICAXE.

You want to know more about PICAXE?

A couple of per requisites for the workshop:

Bring your lap top to load a copy of the compiler ( but not one of those apple things the software isn’t compatible) for you to play with later. Minimal electronics knowledge required ( you have to know how to turn on your computer).Bring a towel and sun block as the beach is across the road and lunch time activities are up to you.

I have hired a house for the first weekend in November down in Halls Head for a Friday and Saturday night.

The adress is #1 Halls Head Parade (Corner of Peter St and Halls Head Parade Halls Head). I have also negotiated to have Comet Bay High School open for the week end and the T&E centre open for that time.

The agenda will be on electronics and programming Picaxe.

There is a small cost to cover accomodation and components, available on application to mark_at_numbatconspiracy_dot_com

If you are making small electronic projects with students, an old box that housed a VHS tape makes a great little container.

Sourcing these can be difficult. There is the innvitable cleanup at the library, but there is another. As video stores move from tapes to DVD, there is a whole lot of blank boxes left. These were for sending movies home while the original cover stayed in the shop. I asked our video guy for his old ones and he gave me over 100 ! Half were immediately claimed by the our Science teacher running electronics  for the Falcon Flyer project. (A racer made from salvaged CD drives).

There still must be thousands of these around, earmarked for the rubbish tip.

A little bit off the picaxe subject, but i was asked to track down an old application called karel the robot. The plan is to use Karel to introduce the way a robot interacts with it’s environment, and then use it to introduce the new little Lego cars.

There is also an opportunity to introduce control structures using scratch.

karel the robot lives               and karel syntax

http://home.att.net/~David.D.Barnett/karel-home.html

I have hired a house for the first weekend in November down in Halls Head for a Friday and Saturday night. I have also negotiated to have Comet Bay High School open for the week end and the T&E centre open for that time.

The agenda will be on electronics and programming Picaxe.

There is a small cost to cover accomodation and components, available on application to mark_at_numbatconspiracy_dot_com

This site is for the promotion of Picaxe chips in Western Australian Schools.

Teachers, parents, students and interested folk are invited to register, contribute and share.