Quote:
Originally posted by Dave Flowerday
Well, I suppose it depends on which forum you went to. I believe the quote from the Illinois forum was "There will be a new robot controller next year."
Personally, my guess is that it won't use PBASIC, simply because we're already using the fastest BASIC Stamp. C++ isn't very realistic for a low-cost embedded microcontroller. Too much overhead, and too much code space required. C might happen, but honestly I think that would be just too complicated for a good percentage of teams to deal with (teams that don't have software types as mentors, and don't have any students who already know it). I can only hope they don't use Java (I've never used a Java program that didn't feel slow and bloated, and I imagine a microcontroller based implementation wouldn't be much better).
I would expect so see something like the BasicX chip: for one thing, it's pin-compatible with the current controller, meaning IFI could probably drop it in to their current control system with no other hardware changes. It uses a dialect of BASIC, which is nice for inexperienced teams. It has 400 bytes of RAM and executes 65,000 instructions/second versus the BS2SX's 10,000.
Anyway, this is all speculation on my part. I believe we really will see a new user CPU next year, but like I said before, it's all up in the air until you hear the official announcement.
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a Basic X would be great. read
THIS.
One possibility i have been thinking about is having a socket where a BasicX24, BS2/BS2SX/BS2P24, OOPIC-C, Atom-24, etc.... could be inserted. These chips are pin for pin compatible and completely interchangable. What about a "real"(assembly programmed) microcontroller and a high level language compiler.
As for a language being too complicated for rookies... I think its complete BS. I RT%M and got aquanted with the control system in about an hour or so. Its not hard. If you know one language its not hard to learn another. I would love a change.