CodeBug 'show n tell' - Spinny blocks

Former Member

29 Sep 2015

Spinny Blocks

A CodeBug had made itself at home in my mail this morning; so I took the little guy in and decided to look after him!

Above is the CodeBug simulator showing a short sprite animation, you can see the animation running on a live CodeBug in the video below. All was done in the 'blocky' graphical code blocks editor which is intuitive to use and has the option of switching into a traditional text style editor.

I haven't tried the text editor yet, hopefully switching between the 2 will preserve true changes (graphical style editors have a habit of erasing or overwriting things entered manually).

I'm going to try using the iic and spi port soon but don't think those features have been enabled as yet, there is a download to allow it to act as a slave device but not in conjunction with the programs we can create, hopefully the firmware interpreter will mature overtime to allow things like this and also maybe inline asm or c for adding a bit of efficiency!

The mcu is a pic18f2550 and there are pogo pads for reprogramming the pic which opens up the option of using microchips C18 c compiler and programming your own firmware to it with an appropriate pickit programmer of some sort if the interpreter becomes too restrictive, however Im going to work as much with the installed interpreter, even considering trying to get a copy of the hex file so I can put it onto one of the 2550's in my dev box.

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spannerspencer over 9 years ago

Wow, fast work Lucie! It only just went in the post

Along similar lines to your idea for IR communication between CodeBugs, I was wondering if there was any way to make some simplified QR Code-type images, using its LED display, which could then be read by a smartphone app. Maybe they could even cycle through a few such codes, to increase the amount of info it's transmitting.

It's one way communication, admittedly, and I don't know quite what it'd be useful for, but it's something to think about.
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mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to spannerspencer

spannerspencer
I like the 'almost QR code' thing.
I think it has some potential.

Now if we could only encourage some app developer ...say ntewinkel to advise on some options, we might be able to have something.....

Mark
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mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to balearicdynamics

balearicdynamics

I have a certain experience in barcode and Qr code reading

Perfect.

Maybe that the source of a Qr code library can be modified to accept a led coding

I think replicating the QR code might be difficult ... but it might be possible to provide something in an app that will read a coded message.

ie it starts with the three corner LED's on.
Then flashes all LEDs, then provides a series of LEDs on.
The punch tapes were 5 bit, so maybe that might be an option ...show 5x 5 bits then wait and another 5x 5 bits ..
ie

borrowed from here http://www.lauftext.de/cybernetic-computer/punched-information.htm

Mark

BTW this is well worth a visit. I'm glad I did while in England
https://www.picotech.com/library/application-note/colossus-the-worlds-first-computer
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balearicdynamics over 9 years ago in reply to mcb1

Mark,

what you say is true. In effect I was thinking just to the Barcode/Qr Code. Using the old punch card reader technique, that some of us knows very well it is more than possible. This LED matrix of the CodeBug remember me just the "modern" (around 1982) punch reader heads where the demodé sliding contacts was replaced by photo diodes...

Enrico
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spannerspencer over 9 years ago in reply to mcb1

Maybe it could work in an even more simplified manner, by flashing the whole LED matrix semaphore/Morse code style? It'd work at much greater distances then, as the LEDs are plenty bright!
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ntewinkel over 9 years ago in reply to mcb1

I like your punch tape idea. 5x5 isn't enough to encode much so the qr code idea likely wouldn't go very far, but flashing sets of information could work to pass messages along, maybe for sharing sensor information.

Or we could use the full display to encode characters in a super secret way. For example, 'A' could be represented by lighting the LEDs along the left side, right side, and top, with a horizontal line across the middle. B could be the same, adding all LEDs at the bottom, C could be just top, left, and bottom ...
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mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to ntewinkel

Or we could use the full display to encode characters in a super secret way

That just might catch on ... maybe you could work on it.
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mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to ntewinkel

Or we could use the full display to encode characters in a super secret way

That just might catch on ... maybe you could work on it.
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