It’s here! Half-Byte Tiny Basic 2 for Arduino and compatibles

It’s back! Better than ever. Yes, that’s right, Half-Byte Tiny Basic 2 for Arduino.  The first was so good, there just had to be a follow up.  And this version has even more fun stuff like new graphics functionality like ARC and CROSSHAIRS.  New math in SIN and COS.  Enhanced LIST statement and more.  Read on for more on the new goodies.

Tiny Basic weather?

Well, yes and no. Yes in that support for the DHT-11 temperature and humidity sensor has been included. No, it won’t generate satellite images or predict snow storms. But, if you have a project where you need to capture the temperature and/or humidity, this will work.  Temperature is returned in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.  TEMP( 0 ) will return the temperature in Celsius and TEMP( 1 ) will return it in Fahrenheit. HUMIDITY with any value parameter will return the relative humidity.

EXAMPLE:

100 CLS
110 PRINT “Temperature: “, TEMP( 0 ),”C”
120 PRINT “Relative Humidity: “,HUMIDITY( 0 ),”%”
130 DELAY 4000
140 GOTO 100

New Graphics Functions

POLY

Poly will draw an abnormal circle. It is abnormal because the sides will not be ‘normal’. They will be straight lines IF the radius is small. As the radius gets larger, the circle looks more normal, then it begins to ‘explode’. Poly gives nice random like patterns or explosions for games.

POLY start_x, start_y, radius, points, color
Where start_x and start_y are the screen position to draw the poly;
Radius is width of the circle;
Points is the size of the ‘sides’ of the circle;
Color is black or white
100 CLS: CENTER: PRINT “EXPLODING”
110 R=RND(20): P=RND(15)
120 POLY 40,20,R,P,1
130 DELAY 100
150 POLY 40,20,R,P,0
160 DELAY 100
170 GOTO 110

 

INVERT

One thing you can do to get a user’s attention is to flash the screen. Tiny Basic allows you to do this quickly, by using the INVERT statement. It takes no parameters and its syntax is simply:

INVERT
100 CLS
110 CURSOR 3,2
120 PRINT “TO CONTINUE WITH”
130 CURSOR 3,3
140 PRINT “PROCESSING, PRESS C”;
150 A=INKEY(0)
160 IF A=67 GOTO 210
170 INVERT
180 DELAY 500
190 GOTO 150
…
210 #CONTINUE…

Starting at line 150, we wait for a key to be pressed. If it is C, goto 210 else, we invert the screen, wait a half second and do it again. If there is no delay, the screen would be just obnoxious. Inserting a delay slows it down a bit.

 

CROSSHAIRS

Crosshairs draws a graphical ‘t’ on screen. The ‘t’ can be controlled to be tight and small or apart and big. This is useful for creating crosshairs on screen for shoot them up game, driving game or some other type of game. Or, use it for art.

 

ARC

ARC draws a partial circle, a PIE piece.
ARC has eight parameters:
Start x, start y, radius, angle, end radius, color, pie, fill
Start x and y are center point
Radius is just that
Angle is the angle of the arc
End radius is the end point
Color is 0 or 1 for black or white
Pie is 0 or 1
Fill is 0 or 1 and will fill the arc or leave it open

CENTER

CENTER will start PRINTing at the center point of a line

LIST

The LIST statement has been enhanced.  You can now list a single line, five lines or the entire program.

LIST by itself lists the whole program
LIST number- will list the program starting at number and go for five lines
LIST number. will list just that line.

MATH

COSine and SINe have been added.

a=COS( x )
b=SIN( y )
The functions were contributed by reader Jim F – Calgary Alberta Canada , thanks Jim!

OTHER STUFF

The overall interpreter is a bit speedier as there have been some optimizations and I was able to cut a lot of redundant code out. Because the functions added some RAM overhead, I lost about 30 bytes, so usable memory is around 970 or so bytes.  This is plenty for small games, control applications and for learning. It is also enough for great demos too.  If you use this on a Mega, then you will have a lot more memory. Just remember, you will need to change the pins used at the top of the code (for nunchuck, TV OUT, sound and the DHT-11 if you use that.)

To run Tiny Basic on your Arduino, download the package below. Put the Half-Byte Tiny Basic files in your Arduino directory. The TV OUT and DHT-11 libraries need to be imported into your IDE. Please follow the procedure for importing libraries. The Fonts need to go in the the TVOut font directory.  Next, open the Half-Byte Tiny Basic in your IDE and then compile and upload to your Arduino.

DOWNLOAD IT

You can download all files to install Tiny Basic 2 on your Arduino here. Tiny Basic 2  manual is here.