Picaxe chips picaxe axe015m2 the picaxe 18m2 is a microcontroller system that uses low cost flash memory based microcontrollers with a unique pre programmed picaxe bootstrap code this gives a device that may be reprogrammed typically 100 000 times without the need for an expensive and complicated programmer picaxe is programmed using a simple basic language or via the logicator flowcharting software windows mac and linux are all supported by the free basic software which can be download