Using Visual Basic to change EEPROM in an 18X Picaxe

Tonymech, i hope this article can give you an idea.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I²C

I did a bit of research on this issue beginning with finding an answer to an aspect of your question: "Can the Basic Paradigm be embedded in VB Paradigm?" and I could not find a conclusive information. I found however than there are interpreters that translate Basic Paradigm into the C-Paradigm before compilation therefore enabling interface with other C-paradigm programs.

May be you may want to consider building the interface in C/C++, programme the microcontroller in Basic Paradigm, translate that Basic program into the C and finally compile the combined program.

The programming of the microcontroller, needless to state, is discussed in the accompanying manuels and simply requires critical/analytical reading.

Just a suggestion

Tony you can get the picaxe chip to read a serial input say a variable 0-255 from the serial port and store it in its memory. So in principle you could program the pc in VB6 to read a request from the picaxe 18 for an input and then send the appropriate number for it to read. How many variables are you storing and what values are likely. If you had say 6 variables to read you could send them individually on request by responding to preset outputs from the chip. The sertxd command on the picaxe 18x is easy to use e.g.

b0=1

sertxd b0

will send 1 to the serial port.

A write# command looped in VB would then be used to write an output to the port corresponding to requested variable. The picaxe could read this with serin as you say. Just got to get the baud rate and connections right. The input pin could share the programming pin on the chip. Its not trivial but can be done depends on your knowledge of VB. I am talking VB6 can`t say about VB in Excel. You also need the Mscomm library tools which I don`t think are included in cut down versions of VB.

Thank you Pj3ns3n,

0-255 is adequate for all the variables and EEPROM can store 256 bytes, I only need about 20, it is easy to retrieve them using READMEM and plug them into b0, b1 etc. I will be using VB6, if you have done it before, do you have any code examples for either the 18X and/or VB6. I will be using a USB connection, but I believe that simulates the comm connection, I'll get it working with comm first. Do I need a different connection or will the programming cable do it.

Tony

I have never sent data to the serial port but have made VB6 programs to read the port. It should be similar but one thing to note the baud rate etc settings for the programming cable input and sertxd output are (4800,N,8,1) whereas the picaxe input/output pins for serin work at (2400,N,8,1). You may be better off making up a new cable and avoiding the picaxe programming cable for data transfer and do it all at 2400. I can let you have the code etc for a graphplotter I made for you to look at if you give me your e-mail address. It may take me a day or two to dig it out. I don`t think the USB interface will make any difference but have not tried it with USB to serial cable adaptor.

Thank you Pj3ns3n, for your help, my email is tony@backassist.com.au

This site is pretty good on the interfacing. Like it says use a switch to change from Program Editor programming to interfacing to make life simple.

http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/picaxeio.htm#Sertxd