bxdev 0.5 - BasicX Development Libraries

BasicX is a programming language for a series of microcontrollers designed and built by NetMedia, Inc. These microcontrollers, the BX01, the BX24, and BX35, are little more than a modified AVR with a bootloader. However, the presence of the bootloader means that we can only program them using the BasicX language.

This language is feature-complete with VB 6, and can only be compiled by an IDE nearly ten-years old.

These tools are written to change that.

There are three scripts, bxbuild, bxdebug, and bxproj, and a suite of shared libraries they all depend upon. bxproj will create new BasicX projects, bxbuild will compile them and download them to target devices, and bxdebug will read debugging messages being transmitted over RS232 serial communication.

For more information about BasicX, see http://www.basicx.com/

Note that to use these tools, you'll need the BasicX compiler installed. This can be found here (http://www.basicx.com/downloads/bx-setup-210-complete.zip) for Windows. Unix users will need to use Wine to make this work.

Installation:

NOTE: If using any sort of Unix, you will need Wine (http://www.winehq.org/). These tools are just a wrapper for the existing BasicX compiler, which is sadly Windows-only.

Download and install BasicX: http://www.basicx.com/downloads/bx-setup-210-complete.zip

Now, either download the project from PyPI or clone it with git:

$ git clone https://github.com/TC01/bxdev/

Then cd into the project, build, and install it with setup.py:

$ cd bxdev
$ python setup.py build
$ python setup.py install

Note that because we're now on PyPI you should be able to just run:

$ pip install bxdev

Usage:

Begin by creating a new project with bxproj. The -s flag will create a subfolder for the project in your current working directory.

$ bxproj.py -s [ProjectName]

This will quickly setup a project for you, and allow you to start coding by editing [ProjectName].bas.

When you want to compile code, use bxbuild with the -d flag to download the code to the microcontroller:

$ cd [ProjectName]
$ bxbuild.py -d [ProjectName].bxp

The compiler window will appear on the screen for a few seconds during which the code compiles. Any errors will appear on the terminal window.

Then, should you wish to read debugging messages (Debug.Print) from the device, run bxdebug with the --port flag to specify what serial port the device is connected.

$ bxdebug.py --port PortNumber

Unplugging the device from the serial port will stop bxdebug.py.

Legality:

This program is made by Ben Rosser and distributed under the MIT license (refer to LICENSE.txt for the full documentation).

It is not made or endorsed by NetMedia, Inc., and uses no code from them. The only thing it uses is the command line options for the BasicX compiler, which are well-documented in the compiler's docs.