MPIDE for Duinomite products

[KeesZagers]

Nice to have an alternative environment for the Duinomite products. As far as I understood from the video it is quite easy to update the development environment with the Duinomite products. The problem however is that you need a programmer (e.g. PicKit 3) to install the bootloader. Is Olimex planning to deliver the hardware also with the MPIDE bootloader pre-installed?

[JohnS]

PICkit3 clones are quite cheap so may be the way to go.

John

[KeesZagers]

Cost is not the problem, I agree. It is more the philosophy of Olimex. What is the way to go with the Duinomite hardware for the future? It does not make sense to sell hardware with an environment which is used by just 10% of the users. In my opinion it would be nice to have a universal bootloader, which is able to support DMBasic, MPIDE and low-level MPLAB programs.

[LubOlimex]

Hello Kees,

We are considering it. It is more likely to release new MPIDE-ready boards, than to release DUINOMITE boards with MPIDE bootloader. We want to see if people actually like MPIDE before making a final decision.

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX

[KeesZagers]

Received a few new MEGA's a few days ago and as far as I could see they were delivered with just the bootloader. At least I got no BASIC prompt on my screen. Anyway I need to program them with my own specific image and that was no problem. I could start the bootloader and install the image. I was only wondering why the DMBASIC was not included anymore.

By the way I also bought the PicKit3, so I will start with MPIDE. This does not mean that I will not use the BASIC version anymore. So I hope Olimex will support both versions for the future.

[JohnS]

If you want the newer MMBasic it's on Geoff's site.  I think DMBasic is on Olimex site / github.  Someone posted various URLs on TBS (thebackshed) recently.

John

[KeesZagers]

Maybe I was not clear in my last reply. I don't need a newer version of MMBasic. The frozen version 2.7 of DMBasic is OK. As this was open source I could make some changes, correct a bug in the USB communication, add a lot of CAN commands and delete the gameduino commands (to create more room).
BTW I did some benchmarking in writing a lot of data using the PRINT command with USB connection and the old version 2.7 was much faster than the newer MMBasic. So more functionality does not mean better performance.

The problem I see when Olimex delivers the Duinomites only with MPIDE I have to change back to the old firmware by using the PicKit3 everytime. That is why I asked for two versions: one with the old bootloader and one with the new one.