[time-nuts] PICTIC II ready-made?

[Jim Lux]

On 4/26/12 10:46 PM, cfo wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:58:26 -0700, Jim Lux wrote:
>
>> On 4/26/12 1:24 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
>>>
>>> albertson.chris at gmail.com said:
>>>> 2) The IDE is written in Java and is portable.  It is truly identical
>>>> on all platforms.  Yes it uses gcc but the end user never has to deal
>>>> with gcc or even know what gcc is.  Same with saving your code, hit
>>>> just puts it "some place" and keeps track of it
>>>
>>> Do I have to use their particular style/GUI?  Or can I drive it from
>>> make, mixing in pieces I like?
>>>
>>> How is the documentation on the tool chain and libraries?  Are their
>>> good man pages?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The Arduino IDE is NOT make compatible, as far as I know..
>>
> The Arduino IDE is basically an advanced JAVA Editor , that hides avr-gcc
> for you.
>
> The IDE part is that it knows how/where to include/look for the CPP
> libraries.
>
>> It's not like a gcc toolchain where you have a separate compiler,
>> linker, binhex, etc and utilities..
>
> It uses a 100% standard avr-gcc toolchain as "backend" , and just creates
> the commandline call for using that.
> So avr-gcc , avr-as , avr-ar , avr-objcopy etc. are used "behind the
> curtains".

Fascinating..

Are avr-* also java?  Or are there just binary versions that run on all 
platforms?



>
> The other advantage is that there are so many premade/downloadable
> libraries out there , that you can make : ie. a PID controller wo.
> knowing much about PID. And you can add a Temp sensor&  a LCD wo. ever
> having opened a datasheet.
>
> The disadvantage is that due to the "hiding/hw-abstraction layer" , the
> generated standard librarycode tends to be slow.
> But in many cases ie. a DS1820B temp sensor can only make a measurement
> every 700 ms. So who cares if the 16Mhz "was able to" query it 1000 times/
> sec , in optimized C.
>
> But absolutely nothing prevents you to , combine your own "Optimized C /
> asm" code , with the arduino libraries. And get the best from both worlds.
>
Very useful to know..

I must say that the IDE hides it very well..
(which I guess means they did a good job...  Overall, I'm fairly pleased 
with the Arduino, although I would like a way to set breakpoints and 
look at variables for debugging... but hey, printf works)