Picomite a BASIC Interpreter for the Raspberry Pi Pico

In this article we look at something slightly different for the Raspberry Pi Pico, a BASIC Interpreter called Picomite

This was developed by the same person who invented the MaxiMite which

Lets see what the website says about PicoMite

PicoMite is a Raspberry Pi Pico which runs the MMBasic interpreter.

MMBasic is a Microsoft BASIC compatible implementation of the BASIC language with floating point, integer and string variables, arrays, long variable names, a built in program editor and many other features.

Using MMBasic you can use communications protocols such as I²C or SPI to get data from a variety of sensors.

You can save data to an SD card, display information on colour LCD displays, measure voltages, detect digital inputs and drive output pins to turn on lights, relays, etc.

So as you can see from above – in theory you can do the same as you could using the Arduino IDE, C++ or MicroPython/Circuitpython – just a  different programming language to achieve this. no issue with that at all. Use what you find easiest to complete the projects/learning you want to do.

The BASIC Interpreter contains built-n support for the following

• SD Cards, LCD, OLED and e-Ink display panels
• Touch Sensitive LCD panels.
• RTCs using the popular PCF8563, DS1307, DS3231 or DS3232 chips
• Infrared Remote Control support
• Temperature and Humidity measurement using the common and low cost DS18B20 or DHT22/DH11 sensors.
• Distance measurement using the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor.
• Numeric 4×3 keypad or a 4×4 keypad layouts.
• WS2812 (Neopixel) LED support.

Lets say you wanted to use a DS18B20 sensor, a basic (no pun) example is the following where pin is the Pico pin you have the output of the sensor connected to. Pretty simple.

PRINT "Temperature: " TEMPR(pin)

Of course you also have support for all of the other Pi Pico features such as I2C, SPI, serial, ADC as well

Summary

As a Basic user way back in the day – Zx Spectrum, Commodore 64 and BBC to give you a hint on my age if nothing else, I’m interested in trying this out.

My plan is to use the Cytron Maker PI Pico board – it has an SD card holder, buzzer, LEDs, RGB led and buttons already fitted – ideal for some tests and all of the pins are broken out to headers

The supplied manual is certainly well written and is a very good introduction with code examples

Links

These are the key downloads for the very good manual, the all important firmware and an editor