PicBasicPro 3 vs Crownhill Proton vs Swordfish etc...

[Jayridium]

Hi - I've not been involved with microcontrollers for a few years, I used to like PBP3 used with microcode studio, the licenses were with a former employing company, where microcontrollers were part of a larger project I was working on. Now I'm freelancing and have something on the radar that requires I get back into microcontrollers, I'm not interested in learning another language, so any purchase has to be based on Basic, which narrows it down some what. However I'd like your opinions on the strengths / weaknesses of the mainstream basic compilers/development environments on the market. For me the two most likely to be purchased are Proton IDE, or PBP3 and microcode studio, worth mentioning is that one of my colleagues used PICaxe at highschool, and has his won licenses for some of their tools, so something similar to that syntax could be beneficial, but not necessarily a must have.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and insights with me.

[HackAndCrack]

I have not used Proton Development Suite and I can't answer about that but medicine for it by PICkit2 is available here in this forum.

Also, a keygen for PIC Basic Pro is available in this forum.

I use PBP sometimes. It is okay for me for some Basic PIC projects.

Also, setup file for MicroCode Studio Plus and Swordfish and medicines are available in this forum.

[Checksum8]

If you are going to purchase a compiler make sure they support newer micros. I think PBP still adds new devices. Proton I don't know. Swordfish was pic18's only and I believe has not been updated for years?

[towlerg]

Updates/bug fixes for PBP are pretty rare. On the other hand Proton is a labor of love and is updated on a very regular basis. The only plus for Swordfish was that it implemented procedures, this has now been added to Proton albeit as an additional (£25) purchase.

One of the real strengths of Proton is the number of nice plug ins eg FuseConfigurator, PDF Now (data sheet viewer/downloader). It also has a quite extensive list of Pic devices that may be used at no charge and unborged. (Swordfish has a limited free version)

One of the the things that ticked me off about PBP was that you can't specify the Pic Device in the source, so if you do anything that deals with hardware directly (which you will) be careful. There is lots of good stuff for PBP written by Daryl  Taylor who sadly is no longer with us.

The PBP and Proton forums have approx the same activity with Swordfish pretty much quiescent.

One downside that Proton and PBP share is that the IDE is provided by a third party.

Don't forget Mikroe Basic, on the surface looks to have lots of hardware support but is pretty buggy.

 

[metal]

mE profits from HW, not SW.. so the software for them is sth secondary. I used PBP in 2003, since then nothing has changed Proton is the way to go, swordfish is excellent, but has little user base, C rules for embedded dev after all.

[tumbleweed]

I've used all three and in my opinion your choices are Proton or Swordfish. If you don't mind being limited to the pic18 series then Swordfish is easily the best choice. While it's true the main compiler hasn't been updated in a while that's because it works. It supports pretty much all of the devices in that family, and is the only one that resembles a modern programming language.

Proton would be my second choice, or if you wanted support for the other 8-bit pic families.

I wouldn't recommend PBP3 to my worst enemy, although if you want something close to the PicAxe that's the one to choose.

[towlerg]

And don't forget that Proton has a 16 bit compiler Proton24 included in the price.

It is very easy to undervalue an active forum, particularly when you're on the learning curve.  

[bytraper]

I went through this same choice and I ultimately ended up paying for Proton (even though I could have used it for free!) because I'd spoken to a lot people that used all three and they had all ended up on Proton because it is constantly updated, has exceptional code compilation (compiles to shorter code then the other two) and ultimately supports more devices.

Cheers and good luck with your selection, but I guarantee you'll end up at proton!

[towlerg]

BTW The proceedures module is now included foc in the standard Proton install.

[Vineyards]

I worked with Proton Basic for many years in the past. It has a number of advantages compared to other BASIC compilers such as built in libraries and associated functions which are very easy to use. You can code pretty fast. However when you are working on a large scale project (one that uses almost all the memory and storage resources of the processor) you begin to run into difficulties due to poor or incomplete bank management. There may have been newer version since the time I stopped using it. In my experience however, each new version introduced more problems while trying to solve the previous ones. This might be partly because the project seems to be a one-man effort. My verdict is it is a great learning tool, ideal for simple, straightforward projects but not particularly suitable for larger and more sophisticated projects.

BASIC language is very easy to learn at the beginning. Proton BASIC in particular offers very nifty solutions that would take more coding time to implement. An example would be their implementation of CASE statement. It works like this     "CASE temperature 10 to 15"  in which case condition is satisfied if the value of the variable is between 10 and 15. You would normally write a longer piece of code for this elsewhere. That being said, BASIC is unfortunately not an ideal platform for larger projects because of its language specific restrictions. True you have many of the aspects already of C implented in Proton BASIC but if you need the better code management, re-usability and modularity of the C platform then you should consider C.