The Hackaday BASIC interpreter is based on the uBASIC project by Adam Dunkels. This provided a tokenizer and the most rudimentary words needed for the language to operate. From there, Jaromir Sukuba greatly expanded the word set to take advantage of the best the badge hardware has to offer.

We are also testing out an advancement in the tokenizer written by @ziggurat29 which shows a speed-up of as much as 40x!

The reference for all of the words is listed below. You may also see examples of these words in use by viewing the example code project log.

Of Note:

• Code in the program buffer can be viewed one page at a time by typing more. You can overwrite lines just by typing the line number at the prompt along with your new commands. It is recommended that you number every 10 lines or more so that you can add commands in between them as you develop your code.
• The memclr word will clear the code currently in the program buffer.
• Always save before running in case you have to reset the badge. save 0 will save to the first of 16 slots, load 0 will load the saved code.
• Press the BRK key to break out of a running program
• Typing a line number without anything after it will delete that line from your program
• There are two print commands. print will not include a line feed, println will include a line feed

BASIC Word List:

Standard Words:

• print
• println
• if
• goto
• gosub
• return
• for
• next
• end
• let
• rem

Badge Custom Words

• led X,Y - control LED, X[0..2] RGB, Y[0..1] on/off
• tune A,B,C,D - plays tones A, B, C for duration D
• clrscr - clear screen
• setxy X,Y - set cursor at X,Y
• wait X - wait for X ms
• color X,Y - X=Foreground, Y=Background using EGA 16-color palette
• chr X - prints character with ASCII representation X
• termt X - sets VT100 terminal on or off (1-on, 0-off)
• termup - forces screen refresh, if VT100 terminal is off
• rnd X - function to return random number 0..X
• ein X - function to return value of expansion pin X
• eout X,Y - control expansion pin, X[0..3], Y[0..1] on/off  (pin 0 is labelled "G2", 1="G3", 2="B0",  3="B1")
• edr X,Y - sets expansion pin function X[0..3], Y[0..1] output/input
• uin X - function to return received byte from serial port, if X=0, function is non-blocking, if X=1, function is blocking
• uout X - outputs value X to serial port as single byte
• input "string" - prints string and returns user entered value
• peek X - returns value from memory location X
• poke X,Y - write value Y into memory, on location X
• cursor X - turns cursor on (X=1) or off (X=0)
• kin X - function to return byte from keyboard, if X=0, function is non-blocking, if X=1, function is blocking

BASIC CLI commands

• run - runs program
• save X - Save program buffer to flash. There are 16 slots: X[0..15]
• load X - Load program into buffer from flash. There are 16 slots: X[0..15]
• list - list whole program
• more - list program by pages
• memclr - clears all code from the program buffer
• free - prints amount of free program buffer
• sload - load new program into buffer from serial port
• ssave - output program buffer via serial port
• help - short help

Aliases

In order to save you some typing, we defined some aliases for functions

• print - pnt
• println - ptl

• clrscr - cls,clr
• input - inp
• setxy - sxy
• return - ret
• cursor - cur

Gotchas

There are a few gotchas that you may run into if really go wild with your BASIC program. Here's a few to keep in mind for those who care to read them:

• There is a line limit of about 70 characters (just shy of two lines on the badge's scree). If you type more characters than this, your command will be truncated.
• If you're using the GPIO pins and you press the power button while your program is running, you will need to reinitialize the IO pins after you turn the badge back on. You can work around this by making sure you re-initialize the direction and pin values frequently in your looping programs and not just at the beginning.