PICs

Hi, I want to learn about pic programming but don't know where to start. I am thinking of getting a pic programming DIY kit (one with USB). If anyone can give any advice tips or suggestions on how to get started, any good websites, recommended books, or any oother useful information to help me get started, it would be very helpful. Thanks

-Warren

Reply to
Warren Thai
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I guess it depends on where you are currently at with regard to your programming skills and your electronics skills.

If you are at the beginning for both, then I would recommend the picaxe.com range.

Then have a look at sparkfun.com if you want something deeper and go from there.

Reply to
Phil in Melbourne

Hello Warren

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has a good overview of PIC programming including examples in assembler. I got frustrated with assembler and switched to Pic Basic Pro, which suits my needs. It's not cheap though. I built a programmer from a Silicon Chip kit (serial) but there are numerous USB programmers available that'll do the same job.

I never really spent much time 'learning' pic programming as I did all my fundamental learning while programming my C64 as a teenager (in BASIC and assembler), but if you haven't programmed before I can understand how you'll have a lot of work to do. In many ways using the old 8-bit micro was much simpler, because you could type 10 print "Hello world" 20 goto 10 run And be an instant programming guru

PICAXE chips have a BASIC language programmed into them already, and there is support software and web sites, but the chips are more expensive than blank PICs. I haven't tried them so I can't offer an opinion.

Get a breadboard to test out your programs and a pile of other components if you don't already have them - oh and a logic probe, and a DMM and a lab power supply and a CRO and a function generator , (no, forget the CRO and function generator).

Comment, comment, comment All the programming books say this. Comment like crazy and when you come back to the program in a week's time you'll have half a chance of figuring out what your coede is meant to do.

Depend>Hi,

____________________________________________________ "I like to be organised. A place for everything. And everything all over the place."

Reply to
Tim Polmear

I would say don't bother with assembler or BASIC, instead download the excellent C compiler from:

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From what I can remember, a demo program to emulate a UART (serial port) in software on a PIC16F84A, and to print "Hello World" to the emulated serial port used up about 180 words of program memory which is not bad I reckon. You can actually fit a surprisingly large amount of code into one of those chips in spite of the very small memory. That compiler can compile the C code into more compact assembler code than I can do by hand.

I'm not sure how well it works with windows XP, etc. but I have an old DOS computer that I use for PIC programming partly because since it's such an old machine, I wouldn't mind too much if I accidentally damaged the printer port with my home-made parallel port programmer, not that I have so far, but I wouldn't want to risk it with my laptop. You can find plenty of designs for those parallel port programmers on the web.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Jones

If you know C its best to jump right in. For very cheap you can probably get an atmel dev kit. They are extremely powerful and can be fully C programmed now days. If you dont know how to code picaxe is awesome. You can wire it striaght to the PC and use its own programming language. Just make sure to get the biggest chip you can because it wont take long until your programs are much bigger than the little chips you handle.

I had some picaxe 8 pin chips hoping to do some traffic light type signaling and some 7 seg driving via a shift register and this just isnt sufficient code space to do it.

Reply to
Dac

Have a look at:

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this should help you out.

Don...

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Don McKenzie
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Don McKenzie

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