Probably everyone knows this, but the Picaxe is a Pic chip with a Basic   
   interpreter on board - about $3 for the 8 bit 32 mhz version. It is the   
   easiest way to prototype for those who want a quick and dirty prototype.   
   The interpreter is slow, so you will end up with a 10 bit A to D conversion   
   that takes 300 microseconds. And an interpreter treats every oommand in   
   isolation, so every command has to set up all he registers and flags over   
   again. In other words, the price    
   for convenience is lack of speed. But if you don't mind the horse and buggy   
   speed, it's the easiest way to go. And the Picaxe has quite a few features -   
   ADC, DAC, PWM, digital counter, settable clock, I2C, etc.   
      
   Compare that with the pic24fj128gc010 chip for speed. This 16 bit chip does 10   
   MSPS 10 bit conversions per sec, or 100 ns. per conversion. The documentation   
   is over 200 pages long.    
      
   In most cases, better to prototype with a Picaxe and then go to assembler or C   
   for the final product.   
      
   My apologies to anyone for stating the obvious here. Another interesting are   
   is the dedicated, "user friendly" boards for optics measurement. Arduino,   
   Raspberry, and BeagleBone. I haven't seen much ADC capability on them.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)