ByPic Tutorial & Rookie

I would find a complete tutorial PDF file, better suited to my style of effort than the current piecemeal setup.

Also, I am under the impression that the interpreter program, "rookie" is not resident in the PIC MPU, as shipped, but is to be downloaded from the Web site.

Tutorial:
All of the ByPic material is on line and it is created on line and so there is no pdf format. If any volunteer would like to create a pdf version - or even a better tutorial, I will publish it.

Rookie:
This is a set of functions that are loaded into ByPic. The functions are written in ByPic and serve the following purposes

[*] It makes it easier to use ByPic for common uses such as port I/O, ADC etc. It does this by guessing that the ByPic will be used in a certain way. This reduces flexibility, for example the timer functions only use the 32 bit mode, but it increases the ease of use. For the vast majority of uses then rookie will be a great time saver. Without rookie the PIC data sheet is required to get the register addresses and discover how the PIC hardware works, this is mostly eliminated when using rookie.
[*] The function names used in rookie are the same for MX1 and MX3 devices wherever it is possible. This makes the code written using rookie compatible with both types of PIC.
[*] As rookie is written in ByPic then you can look at the code and see how it works. If some function is not quite right for your purposes then it can be modified. This can also act as a learning tool or reminder to see how ByPic interacts with the underlying PIC hardware.

Why not just have rookie as part of ByPic?
The main reason is that rookie is not required to achieve any functionality. For an application where space is tight then only bits of rookie may be needed. Also the functions in rookie are written for usability rather than efficiency, for example the IO port functions can be much smaller and faster when using the PIC registers directly. This is the main point of ByPic, it is a fast (for an interpreted type system) and allows direct manipulation of the registers thus allowing best use of the underlying hardware. The core is made as small as possible so that the user software can be placed on top to make the device into something else. In the case of rookie, this turns the hardware into an easy to use system.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2013 10:09AM by jimeer.