History of Flowcode

For general Flowcode discussion that does not belong in the other sections.
Steve-Matrix
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by Steve-Matrix »

mnfisher wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 6:51 pm
I'm slightly intrigued as to why the rs232 component was a 'Push to make or latching switch'
LOL. That's definitely a typo as it's the description of the switch array. The document may have been a pre-release version.

steve001
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by steve001 »

Thank you, its great to read about the early versions

Definitely some amusing typo's

Steve

kersing
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by kersing »

My collection of media.
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mnfisher
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by mnfisher »

I'm impressed that people still have these - downloads are rather more ephemeral.

I think I had a version (possibly 5) on a magazine cover disk. PCPro possibly - but doubt I could find it now...

Martin

steve001
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by steve001 »

i have some old programmer boards, but cannot find them at the moment :(

looking at chip fryers post
https://www.flowcode.co.uk/forums/viewt ... 6869#p6869

From Memory, I think i have the next version up of this board somewhere Steve might be able to shed some light on what it was.
I think it had the 2 white BT sockets (are they 431A) on the right ? and 2 x 9 pin Eblock connectors on it on the top edge?
I also have some Early EB006 programmer Boards

I will keep looking i don't think i chucked them away, they will be in the darkest depths of the man cave :lol:

Whist looking i found these, i know they not flowcode - but some old Matrix software

V3 - Can be used with a Pentium 90 with 16MB Ram, 30 Meg Disc Space win 98, ME, XP
V4 - states can be used with the new 16F877A

Steve
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Steve-Matrix
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by Steve-Matrix »

I remember Assembly for PICmicros well as I helped put the CD together. But more importantly it contained one of my first ever programming tasks - the virtual PICmicro:
Virtual PICmicro
Virtual PICmicro
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This simulated the internal workings of the 16F84A chip, including showing the fetch-execute cycle and how the data flowed through the various parts of the CPU.

I believe the course itself (and downloads of the simulator) are available at the link below, but it is very old now and I'm not sure how well it works:
https://www.matrixtsl.com/courses/ASM4PICs6/

That said, I just took that screenshot from my win10 PC and the vPIC seems to be working well.

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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by Steve-Matrix »

And now something more Flowcode related.

A few years ago I did an MBA (which for a techie like me was challenging but very rewarding), and for one of my module assignments I produced a roadmap of Flowcode. I dug this out over the weekend and edited it to take out anything commercially sensitive, so here's a very cut-down version showing how it developed over the first 17 years of its life:
Flowcode timeline
Flowcode timeline
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The blue numbers show when a particular version of Flowcode was released.

steve001
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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by steve001 »

The time line is interesting, didn't realise how much has happened

I did like the "Virtual Pic" and it showing what was happening with the stack etc and what happened with various instructions sets

Its been a long time since i looked at that software, think i need to re visit :D

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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by chipfryer27 »

Hi all

I have to say that this thread has been very, very interesting.

Whilst I still have copies of V3 and V4 I can't really remember them other than I found Flowcode and the Development Board (of the time) extremely helpful. I mainly used it to "play" with (despite Professional Licences for all my versions). Flowcode V5 really changed things for me. That was, thanks to learning on previous versions, the one I started to use. For me, V5 and the components that came with it really opened up the potential.

I am not a programmer. In early 80's I did do machine code for Z80, chips not Sir Clive's offspring (Tandy TRS-80 but that's another story. Still have my working TRS-80 Lev-II 16K......) but that was through necessity to make a machine interact. I was not too terrible with the numerous BASIC languages and I did find GW-BASIC very useful and easy to use. However since late 80's-ish I had little interest in working with "PC's" other than they were just another tool to use for the job in hand, and of course to play DOOM on :)

A feature of V5 I really loved was the Web Server component in which I could very easily create a page with zero knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes. I needed to measure numerous banks of sensors, I think around 160 per bank, and have a database collate and present the information. Using V5 I created arrays to populate with the sensor values and then displayed them as a "page". Documentation said you could only display four variables on the web page but, I add I can't remember exactly how, by using arrays I could display a 4 x 40 array. This page was displayed and my database program of choice, FileMaker, could read the page and store it in a field. It then parsed the field and created records accordingly. This worked a treat :)

I bought V6, but not straight away. When I did upgrade I found it very, very different to what went before. Although the available components, a huge feature of Flowcode was increasing, my biggest problem was that if using the web server I had to enter my own HTML (not so much so in V5). Remember I'm not a programmer so to use was a steep learning curve. Perhaps not to others but for me it was. I did create a few projects using V6 and I think it was the first version to offer an ESP8266 component.

I had issues using the ESP as examples wouldn't work. I did find it quite fun looking through the generated "C" and kind of figuring things out, to a very limited extent, but had no clue as to how to resolve. The problem was that Espresif changed their firmware and also the reply FC was expecting..... One of the VC's, Kersing, very kindly helped by modifying the component, which was way outwith my capabilities. Still not a programmer but "C" isn't so strange any more. Viewing "C" is a valuable faultfinding tool.

I upgraded to V7 despite knowing it would be months before I could connect to any hardware, and I really liked it. My confidence was increasing and things worked (with support from the forum of course). Using it I created a few LoRa projects and started to dabble with motors.

V8 came along and I'm now playing with Steppers and Servo's and I made a "mesh" LoRa despite only having one singular channel for all to communicate over. It was fun and I was learning. That to me is one of Flowcode's greatest strengths. Once you figure out how to use it, things become quite intuitive and if stuck the forum helps you to figure it out. I keep versions of V5 onwards on my PC, just in case I need to work on a previous project :)

The whole team at Matrix should be really proud of their entire range as without it, many would never even try to use microcontrollers let alone be as creative as they are.

Regards

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Re: History of Flowcode

Post by MJU20 »

I've been using Flowcode from V3. Bought a licence and a lot of hardware (Eblocks). Also I've bought a course programming in C (I think) from Matrix.
Been playing with FC since that day. :-)

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