PIC multimedia Dev

[Mosaic]

Hi All:
I am considering a dev. system to do TFT touchscreen and simple touchscreen game & educational development.
I am interested in this:
https://www.mikroe.com/mikromedia/workstation-pic/
and this:
https://www.mikroe.com/mikromedia/pic32/

I guess I would need to mikro C compiler as well as possibly the visual TFT system.
https://www.mikroe.com/mikroc/pic32/
https://www.mikroe.com/visualtft/


I'd appreciate any advice on this approach. If any other multimedia dev. systems are comparable for the PIC32 series?

thx
Ancel

 

[Ian Rogers]

I like the look and feel of Mikro Elektronika..

I use XC8 and I'm moving up to the PIC32.... XC32 and XC32++ are very expensive....

The MikroC for 32 is only £177.... I don't think any other compiler does as much for the money...

If you are serious I would recommend the TFT kit.... It comes with all of the above..

The only other dev kit is from Microchip.... The libraries get quite messy in my opinion.. Once you have all the application libraries it can be quite difficult to modify and expand them to suit your needs..

I purchased the PIC32 lcc dev board... It works fine out of the box... If you make any changes to the demo code, all hell breaks loose... The programming of the demo is quite high level... Not a choice for someone wanting to learn...

I have found that all the demos in the application libraries are difficult to follow..

 

[hexreader]

That is really nice kit to use. I have the PIC18, PIC33 and STM32 versions of Multimedia boards, as well as the Workstation 7 board.

And yes, you need all of the items you mention to make the experience enjoyable (well you could manage without Workstation 7 , but that is the cheap bit)

Trouble is, the display is small and not the clearest. Games would have to be simple, as the display is slow to update and Visual TFT, whilst great, is very limited in what it can do.

I must admit, my multimedia kit sits in the box and rarely sees the light of day.

For educational use and fun, mikroElectroika products are fantastic and a pleasure to own and use.

The down side is that the hardware is expensive (but worth every penny for me) and the compilers are TOO easy to use - making a programmer lazy. Libraries are closed source, making professional use of libraries impractical.

Mikromedia "plus" boards at twice the hardware price look better, but I have not tried one.

I do not know of any other PIC32 development systems that are well suited to games, but then I haven't really looked.

My suspicion is that Games are best suited to smart phones, tablets, game consoles and desktop computers. I don't think PIC32 would be the first choice for game development, even simple games, though I imagine that it must have been done many times.

I wish you well with your search, but I sense disappointment ahead with the game development idea.

For education - what about a "kit" (bundle) of easyPIC Fusion board? with PIC32mx795 PIC32 compiler and visual TFT? Not portable in any way, but a nice learning set-up. I recently bought exactly that, but still prefer 8 bit PIC18 programming. But then I am not you!

Sorry for not coming up with any clear answer to your search, but I thought my ramblings and random thoughts might help in some obscure way.

I love mikroE kit, but that does not mean that you will, especially since you may be expecting more from the kit that you list than it will deliver.

Then again, it is hard for me to see how any PIC programmer could DISlike mikroE products if you can afford them.

I am just an "experienced hobbyist" by the way. Not a professional.

Check the video here for a taste of what is possible with PIC33 MMB
http://www.libstock.com/projects/view/154/mini-sub-game-demo
... but beware... Andrew is a very accomplished programmer. I doubt that writing similar programs is in any way easy

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

FTDI announces EVE which might be worthwhile looking at. There was a recent article in Nuts and Volts as well.

https://www.ftdichip.com/

 

[Mosaic]

Looks good...but are there any prices?

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Sure: **broken link removed**