Great Cow BASIC Version 0.98.07 is released.

The Great Cow BASIC development team have released another version of the software to enhance the Great Cow BASIC toolchain capabilities.

 

This release is called V0.98.07.   This release includes major changes in the support of PIC/AVR and LGT microcontrollers.

Great Cow BASIC IDE v0.98.07 click here to download GCB_Installer v0.98.07

• You want the complete package; you want a complete installation of the IDE and GCGB.

• This is the latest build with the Great Cow Basic compiler, the IDE and Great Cow Basic.
  This is a complete package. Contains demonstrations and seven microprocessor programmers
  (including the command line tools and GUI tools for the Microchip Pickit 2 & 3) for Microchip and AVR microprocessors.

 

This release includes the complete build shown above, a minimal build, a core build, a GCGB build, MacOS, BSD Linux and a standard Linux build.

 

For the full list details of the changes see https://onedrive.live.com/edit.aspx?resid=2F87FFE77F3DBEC7!67634&authkey=!ADmkT3exl5l4Pkc

 

Compiler

• PIC, AVR and LGT microcontrollers supported with automated RAM clear down for AVR/LGT
• PIC-AS compiler support for PICs
• 31kHz automatic oscillator support
• Improved support for block comments and line continuation
• Native support for MPLAB-IDE config files
• New support for setting variable bits with a variable as pointer to a specific bit
• 32bit and 64bit Wintel support
• Improved FOR-NEXT loop handler
• New support for Table including CSV, multi-line and quotes
• Improved ASM documentation including source location of sub routines, functions and macros
• Improved reporting in HTML report file
• Improved configuration file usage including updated PREFERENCES EDITOR
• 100s of fixes

Device Files

• Logic Green Technology (LGT) lgt8fx328p device added 
• PICs added - 18F*Q10, 18F*Q43, 18F*Q41, 18F*Q40 and16F152xx, 
• AVRs added -ATtiny20, ATtiny4, ATtiny40, ATtiny5, ATtiny9
• AVRRCs added - ATtiny4, ATtiny5, ATtiny9, ATtiny10, ATtiny102 and ATtiny104
• Refreshed all PIC18F devices to support memory optimisation

LCD

• Improved LCD performance ( up to 35% faster)
• K107 support added
• 1601 support added

GLCD

• ST7735 driver added and specific driver for ADAFRUIT display
• e-Paper driver added
• UC1601 driver added
• SSD1306 Twin display driver added
• ST7789 driver added
• Improved nt7108c driver to support port.bit bus assignment.

PPSTOOL

• Included PPSTool ICON in Winodws installation

Lowlevel

• I2C - improved handlers, improved frequency calculator and support for all new chips added
• PWM  - improved handlers and support for all new chips added
• SPI - improved handler to include new support for PIC Fast Mode and support for all new chips added

Timers

• Quality improvements  for TIMER 1, 3 and 5  in handling LFINTOSC

Programmers

•  Added AVRrc Support to AVRDUDE

Tool Chain

• IDE - Improved performance when compiling
• IDE - Support for Block comments
• IDE - Improved oscillator usage reporting

PICInfo

• New utility to show parameters of PIC
• Access Microchip webpages
• Direct access to PPStool

HELP

• Help updated to include quality improvements and new capabilities shown above.

Converters

• New BMP converted to handle large BMPs  and data compression

Sensors

• Quality improvements  for DS18B20 including response resolution
• New max848xdigitalpot library

Enjoy

Great Cow BASIC Version 0.98.05 is released.

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow BASIC toolset capabilities.

This release is called V0.98.05. This release introduces many new capabilities as follows, read the release note as there are 100 changes in this release.

For the full list of the 100 changes see the release_list.txt file in the GreatCowBASIC folder.

Great Cow BASIC IDE v0.98.05 click here to download GCB_Installer v0.98.05

• You want the complete package; you want a complete installation of the IDE and GCGB.

• This is the latest build with the Great Cow Basic compiler, the IDE and Great Cow Basic.
  This is a complete package. Contains demonstrations and seven microprocessor programmers
  (including the command line tools and GUI tools for the Microchip Pickit 2 & 3) for Microchip and AVR microprocessors.

This release will include the complete build shown above, a minimal build, a core build, a GCGB build, MacOS, BSD Linux and a standard Linux build.

Compiler

• Further performance enhancements - the compiler is faster.
• Fixed maths, variables naming, calculation can set bits, revision of the default config to improve useability, critical fixes for K42 and K8 MCUs, wait 1 m now waits 1 m, improve DIMension of variables, fix for incorrect usage of temp variables, banksel optimisation and optimisation of ENDIFs .
• Quality improvements in the generated ASM – by the removal of unnecessary commentary.

Millis

• Millis library introduced

PPSTool

• New XML files added

Device Files

• New devices added
• Refreshed all devices to support new capabilities: Stacks, UserIDs

IDE

• Instruction set improvements to the IDE lexer

ADC

• Library updated to support  all potential ADC ports

Help

• Updated for new capabilities and improvements

GLCD

• Updated libraries – OLED fonts, Touch added, addition of HWI2C, improved SPI support and lots more.

SPI

• Improved support for mode by use of user constant.
• Major revision of the K42 MCUs

DS18X20

• Quality improvements in the generated ASM – by the removal of unnecessary commentary.

 

The previous set of hints and tips are still very good.

See https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/579125/thread/7fae77a3/

Enjoy

Great Cow BASIC Version 0.98.04 is released.

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow BASIC compiler capabilities.

Great Cow BASIC has three main aims - to remove the need for repetitive assembly commands, to produce efficient code, and to make it easy to take code written for one chip type and run it on another. It hides many of the more confusing parts of microcontroller programming, making it suitable for beginners and those who do not like or wish to learn assembly language.


This release includes - please, please read the the Release List.txt file. So, many other new features and fixes.


IDE 
-Instruction set improvements to the IDE lexer

ADC
- to protect ADFM on 10f devices in READAD method
- Library updated to support 16f1834x ADC channels using CHS5 bit

Linux
- Revised installation scripts to support lowercase files and improved installation
- Updated files to lowercase. No functional change

PPStool
- Resolved issue which was setting RX pins as outputs not inputs (PIC18FxxK42 and similar)
- Fixed bug which was setting i2c pins for 18F*k42

GLCD
- Added NT7108C GLCD driver
- GLCD_SDD1289.h updated to remove deprecated method
- Updated ST7735 GLCD driver.  New OLED font support and general update to latest GLCD standard and revised to use TFT colors.

- Updated GLCDCLS to be a lot faster and updated GLCDRotate to support bits.[849]
- Updated GLCD.h to remove silly script error

USART
- Correct errant setting of SYNC on K42/83

PWM
- Added PWM adding PWM8
- Library updated to support ENablebits

PSMC
- Added PSMCDesigner toolset

Device Files
- Updated 16f178x for ReadAD10BitForceVariant

Programmers DFU
- Inclusion of DFU USB programmer toolset in the Windows installer.

GCGB       
- Refactoring GCGB

 

 

Great Cow BASIC v0.98.03 is released.

Simply select the link below to download the latest release of Great Cow BASIC.

You want the complete package; you want a complete installation of the IDE and GCGB.

This is the latest build with the Great Cow BASIC compiler, the IDE and Great Cow BASIC.

This is a complete package.

Contains demonstrations and seven microprocessor programmers.

(including the command line tools and GUI tools for the Microchip Pickit 2 & 3) for Microchip and AVR microprocessors.)

This release includes the complete build shown above, a minimal build, a core build, a GCGB build, MacOS, BSD Linux and a standard Linux build. Enjoy

 

 

sourceforge.net/GCB_Installer-98.exe   or  look here for all available Files at the Download Page

 

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The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow BASIC toolset capabilities.   

This release is called V0.98.03.  This release introduces many new capabilities as follows, read the release note as there are nearly 50 changes in this release.

Compiler
- Further performance enhancements - the compiler is faster.
- Improved oscillator support
- Fixes and changes to improved stability

Device Files
- New devices added
- Refreshed all devices to support new capabilities: HEFSAF, ADC and Memory

Help
- Updated for new capabilitues and improvements

GLCD
- Nextion support
- ILI9326 support

PWM
- New flexible approach to CCP/PWM

LCD
- New 3 three wire solution

USB 
- New USB capabilities introduced

RTCC
- Improved Microchip RTCC support

Memory
- HEF and SAF support

Operating Systems support added
- Mac OS
- FreeBSD

Programmers
- Added CuriousLoader
- Improved User Experience

Libraries
- New PCA9685
- Updated MCP 23017

CLC Designer
- Enhanced to support more devices

PPSTool
- Hugelly enhanced to support 18FxxK42 I2C
- Color coding for port used
- Latest device XML v1.75

Hints and Tips
The previous set of hints and tips are still very good. See https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/579125/thread/7fae77a3/

Enjoy

Please note

You cannot, and should not, selectively use files from the v0.98.03 release with any other version of Great Cow BASIC before v0.98.03

So, please keep the release consistent in terms of the build.

If you are adapting the build for your own needs then there are lots of methods to keep the build consistent and enable you to customise – there postings in the forum on how to accomplish this.

 

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published support for the PCA9685.

 The PCA9685 is an I2C-bus controlled 16-channel LED controller optimized for servoes and Red/Green/Blue/Amber (RGBA) color backlighting applications.

Each output has its own 12-bit resolution (4096 steps) fixed frequency individual PWM controller that operates at a programmable frequency from a typical of 24 Hz to 1526 Hz with a duty cycle that is adjustable from 0 % to 100 % to allow the LED to be set to a specific brightness value.

 

  The board is available from many sources. A typical board looks like this.

 

  The library supports hardware I2C and software I2C.   Download the new library from here.

 

 

The public methods in the library are shown below - these public methods will ease the use of this complex board.

PCA9685_SetFreqency ( frequency_wordvalue ) a value from 24 to 1526
PCA9685_SetChannelDuty(  channel as byte , duty as word )  where duty is 0 to 100%
PCA9685_SetChannelOnOnly ( channel as byte , OnValue as word ) where Onvalue is 0 to 4095
PCA9685_SetChannelOffOnly ( channel as byte , OffValue as word ) where Offvalue is 0 to 4095
PCA9685_WriteChannel( channel as byte, OnValue as word, OffValue  as word ) ranges of 0 to 4095

 

 

Demonstrations

A full suite of demonstrations are in GitHub. The demos cover simple ON and OFF, simple usage, variable Duty (16bit and Percentage) and change frequency.   Download the demonstrations from GitHub here.

 

Enjoy the new library for Great Cow BASIC.

 

 

 

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances Great Cow BASIC capabilities.   

This release is called V0.98.02.  This release introduces many new capabilities as list below.  Please read the release note as there are nearly 100 changes and new features in this release.

 

 

 

Improved Programming

• New support for programming capabilities and a new GUI utility to control programmers over 29 programmers now supported.

New and updated PWM

• New PWM16 support. Library for the new Microchip 16bit PWM modules
• Updates to Harware PWM upadate to improve performance
• Updates to issue warning when clock speed is too low

Updated Compiler

• Lots of improvements including introduction of floating point

New and updated GLCD Support 

• New HX8347 library
• New SSD1331 library
• New Nextion library
• Improved PCD8544 memory handling
• Improved ILI9341 library
• New support for GLCDPrintString, GLCDPrintStringLN and GLCDLocateString

New Max7219  support

• New Max7219_LEDMATRIX_Driver library

Updated PPSTool

• Updated to latest XML files

New and updated DS18B20

• New library to support multiple ports

New Configurable Logic Cell

• Inclusion of Microchip's CLC Designer

 

Visit the Great COW BASIC project site to download the latest and greatest version.

 

Enjoy

 

 

The PIC16(L)F184xx 8-bit product family is entering production and Microchip has a promo offer on sample boards so, for an overview of the Devices supported along with a chance to get a free board, see here  http://www.microchip.com/promo/pic16f184xx-product-family.

Great Cow BASIC and PICKit 2Plus now support Microchips newest line of Enhanced Midrange Devices, even though they are not yet in the hands of the developers, and customers.

The promotion boards are not yet shipping but Microchip kindly supplied the Great Cow BASIC development team with samples of the parts, via the South African Agents, in PDIP form factor so that we could configure and validate Great Cow BASIC & PICKIT 2Plus support prior to wide scale release.

Today, after a few false starts and some marathon intercontinental debugging, we were successful with Blinking LEDs on the PIC16F18426 and the PIC16F18456 devices.  Proving that Great Cow BASIC can support both the High and Low ends of the Product family and all variants in between.

Complete testing of existing peripheral libraries will start now to ensure full integration of the new parts by the time they ship.  The parts included are:

• PIC16F18424
• PIC16F18425          
• PIC16F18426          
• PIC16F18444          
• PIC16F18445          
• PIC16F18446          
• PIC16F18455          
• PIC16F18456            

As Great Cow BASIC goes from strength to strength it is one of the most complete toolchains for PIC and AVR Microcontrollers,  often ahead of its commercial counterparts in terms of devices supported and this new family is no exception.

Enjoy   

 

This post was originally by Chris Roper of  South Africa.  A Great Cow BASIC developer and supporter.

 

 

The development of Great Cow BASIC is moving faster and faster.   We have more and more developers on board to grow the libraries, improve the libraries and provide quality improvements to the tool chain, demonstrations and the Help.

Since the last release we have many changes - some major, some minor but all will add value to some users.

So, there is a need to provide a regular patch kit, in a consistent way, to share these new capabilities and improvements.

 

The community of developers is improving the quality of Great Cow BASIC.

Publishing the Help source here.  Many of you have updated the source to the Help - thank you.

We share the Help on a daily basis.  This is built and published here

Publishing the Demonstration source code here.  Again, a number of the developers have added demonstrations and/or corrected the existing demonstrations.

 

Releases

The release of Great Cow BASIC is about every six months.  We collate changes into a coherent build, package up, test and test and then publish.  These releases are available for a growing range of use cases and operating systems.

 

Patch Kit

So, what could it be? A patch kit is a distribution that MUST be applied to an existing installation.  Simple put - it would be additive to an existing installation.  Unpack the patch kit distribution and then update with the new files.

The patch kit is going to contain the following mandated components

• Compiler
• Latest Help
• Latest demonstrations
• Updated hardware libraries
• Updated lowlevel libraries
• Updated PPSTool and supporting XML
• Updated IDE Lex
• Updated IDE Helpers
• PPSTool and the XML files
• Updated readme.txt!

The patch kit is NOT going to contain the following components:

• Batch files for programming
• Any tools - programmers etc

The patch kit would be consistent in terms of an operational toolchain.  This means using the compiler and the libraries as a consistent installation is most important - you cannot, and should not, take just the compiler and not the libraries.  Things could break! We do have time to figure what does not work with what.   The patch kit NEEDS to be consistent in terms of an operational toolchain.

The patch kit could have little issues (as I call them.... you may call the bugs!!!) but the purpose of the patch kit is to share the ongoing development so you can leverage the investment of the community.

 

Summary

Look out for the patch kits soon!

Please do not use PatchKits unless you have been asked to via the Forum.

 

 

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another new capability - Pulse Width Modulation for the 16-bit Microchip module.

You can now add 16-bit PWM to your PIC projects.   The high-precision 16-bit PWM available in various PIC16 devices such as the PIC16F157X product family, provides advanced features beyond those found on standard PWM modules or the CCP/PWM modules.

16-bit PWM allows you to easily enable PWM output.   The high-precision 16-bit PWM is ideal for power supplies, LED lighting, color mixing, and motor control applications. In addition, when not using the PWM outputs the module can be used to add up to four additional general purpose 16-bit timers.

Pete Everett has led the development of the new library - our thanks go to Pete.  The library supports:

• Support for 12 channels - all independently programmable
• Optmisation of generated code included
• Fixed Mode Frequency Mode and Duty with differing frequency and duty across all 12 channels with very few lines of user program and with a very small program size
• Backwards compatibility with other PWM and CCP/PWM features
• Variable Mode Frequency and Duty Mode with differing frequency and duty across all 12 channels with a simple to use Public method and with small program size being generated
• Includes demonstration code on GitHub.   See https://github.com/Anobium/Great-Cow-BASIC-Demonstration-Sources/tree/master/PWM%20Solutions/PIC%20PWM16%20Examples
• The library has the capability to support Phase and Offset.
• The IDE Helpers and Help will be updated as soon as practical

To enable this capability ensure you have v0.98.01 installed, and, obtain the libraries from the Sourceforge Forum and then add to you installation.   Install the three files from to your installation.  Of course, versions of the Great Cow BASIC distribution after v0.98.01 will have this capability installed.  

For more information on 16-bit PWM see http://www.microchip.com/design-centers/8-bit/peripherals/core-independent/16-bit-pulse-width-modulation-16-bitpwm

 

The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow BASIC compiler capabilities.   This release is called V0.98.01

This release supports the 18f2xK42 microcontrollers and the critical patches for the v0.98.00 as follows:

• Improved GLCD  support by updating the ILI9341 driver to support OLED Fonts.
• Improved CCP/PWM  for fixed mode CCP1/PWM thru CCP5/PWM.
• Fixes for corrected maths in StrInteger and labels,  HWI2C to resolve a potential lockup in 16f18855 class of chips.
• Improved IDE for handling IF-THEN-ELSE-IF in the editor.
• 18F2xK42 chip support with updates to the compiler for i2c, spi, adc, pwm and chipfiles.  See the K42 specific release note.
• Compiler fix to allow for interrupts on newer PIC18F chips with INTCON0 rather than INTCON register.
• Fixed I2C module support for I2C LCD and I2C Discovery and updated the LCD.H and HWI2C.H with for new demos.