PICKit 3, Are any Good?

Dave.

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It's hard to believe PICKit2 works so well but the PICKit3 has

BELIVE!!! ;-)

Slightly unlucky, but not unusually so for a PICkit 3 owner. There is ZERO chance of Microchip tempting me with any future PICkit 2 trade-in! It would seem that a Pickit 2 is essential for reprogramming failed PICkit 3 units.

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I have not used mine a lot, but it seems to work OK. The only problem I have found, is that it is horribly unreliable when connected to a USB hub. If Iplug it directly into the PC, it works as expected.

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On a sunny day (Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:36:07 +1100) it happened "David L. Jones" wrote in :

Just as a remark, I do not understand all that PIC-kit stuff.. People have called me die-hard, but OK, this is what I have been up to lately: All the 16F PICs I have so far, I programmed with the noppp programmer:

wrote my own software for that, and use the Linux gputils (gpasm).

Now I recently got some PIC 18F14K22 and that does not work in the noppp programmer. So I modified it a little bit, and wrote a completely new pic programmer software for PIC 18. It has what *I* always wanted, a nice command line interface, this will bulk erase, program, and verify a chip, and then remove all voltages from the socket: # date;jppp18 -i io.hex -e -p ;date Wed Feb 3 13:27:43 CET 2010 Loading hex file: Program 7028 bytes at address 0x000000 ID 0 bytes at address 0x200000 Config 14 bytes at address 0x300000 EEPROM 0 bytes at address 0xf00000 Erasing chip Writing program space. Writing config space. Verifying program space Verifying config space. Ready. Wed Feb 3 13:27:53 CET 2010

10 seconds guys:-)

So, anyways, Linux rocks, especially when you write your own soft. Of course 'jppp18' (it stands for Jan Panteltje's PIC programmer for 18 xxx PICs), with 'ppp' a hint to the noppp name, also has a menu function and a lot of other options....

So consider it a pre-announcement (GPL), I am still in the testing phase. But anyways, why bother with a PIC kit? :-) I just used the Microchip PIC18F1XK22/LF1XK22 Flash Memory Programming Specification document to write the soft. The modified hardware for the noppp consist of one extra NPN, one zener, 2 LEDs, some resistors.... The whole thing is still less then 5 $, not counting the D25 par port connector (those are more expensive hehe).

If anybody wants the code (written in C), ask for it here, but of course that is not finished and may not work for you :-) Eh, probably *will* not work for you, just to be on the safe side. LOL.

I ordered one to try out, plugged it into my XP notebook with vanilla MPLAB installation (I think the most recent version at the time). It annouced it was downloading new code to the Pickit 3, and promptly bricked it. Would not be recognized by any computer after that. Sent it back to Digikey (after much hemming and hawing on the latter's part). It never even got to the point of being plugged into a target system!

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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I am a long-time user and advocate for Microchip parts and development tools, and I was quite surprised that this PICkit3 is apparently so bad. I still have a PICkit1 that works fine for most purposes, but of course I also have an ICD2 that does most of the heavy lifting.

My friend got a PICkit2 about a year ago to use for programming a PIC16HV616 in a product I designed for him, and it worked somewhat erratically and then quit altogether. But the board I was testing does have some rather high voltage on it and I may have exposed one of the programming pins to it. I was going to troubleshoot it and fix it if possible, but since then the project has been sort of on hold, and I was able to do all I needed with my ICD2.

The video blog by David Jones was very critical, but rightfully so on most of his points. And I was impressed that Steve Sanghi, CEO of Microchip, called him and discussed the situation honestly. I enjoyed Microchip's "rebuttal" video. I believe they will fix the problems noted and eventually the PICkit3 should be better than the PICkit2. Or maybe they will just move on to a PICkit4.

Paul

The early pickit2s required a changed resistor or two, as I recall. I know that out of the three units I have here, I had to open up at least one of them to change/modify the unit. One of them, for sure, was newer and had the fix in it, already. I bought mine late enough in the cycle that the fix was "already known" so I never did use unmodified units in a product. And never encountered any problems, once modified. I bought the units from two different suppliers, as I recall, and one of the suppliers was still shipping the older units. Not wise, but there it was. Luckily, I knew enough to carefully examine them upon receipt to make sure what was what.

Microchip does work hard to remedy issues, my experience of

20+ years now. I've never before been given reason to question that commitment. For the professional tool owners, they support them forever and do well by them. For low cost, entry level tools, the path has a slightly different focus and "support forever" isn't in the business plan as I understand it. But I thought they still worked almost as hard there.

So far, I have NOT purchased a pickit3. I just dropped over to the forums, which is the first place I'd tend to go.

Microchip includes various HEX files for their programmers in the MPLAB distributions. It's possible that earlier and later MPLAB distributions have buggy HEX code in them and that only one distribution (or two) have a workable one. It's one reason I _always_ save full distributions of MPLAB, nearly forever. In this case, I note that some people on the forum indicate _some_ success with this HEX file:

If I read the post correctly, the author says the file there in the ZIP should be PK3RS_010832.hex.

The forum discussion is here:

Another poster talks about having to pull the USB plug in the middle of MPLAB's attempt to connect, and then reconnecting the USB and having it take okay. Worries about wearing out the USB connector, too. I noted that pickit3 uses the Windows HID driver, too.

This forum is a little disheartening, by the way:

But still a newish thread. However, someone commented about not yet getting a response to a support ticket. That's a problem in my mind.

Also noted elsewhere that pickit2 (not pickit3) has disclosed the software source code.

I don't see pickit3 code there, sadly.

Since some of the solutions seem to suggest that an external USB hub helps at times, that plugging and unplugging the USB helps at times, and that certain software HEX files helps at times, and that a 3.3V processor was used... it may be a combination of errors here, hardware _and_ software.

Very odd. It's a relatively new tool, but I'm feeling lucky now that I didn't depend upon one for a project. So far, the pickit2 seems to be working out fine when I use it. Blemish for Microchip, it seems at this point. Time will tell, I suppose.

Jon

No kidding. That's what you get with those DIY programmers.

To program the chip, yes, but not to hack the software and write your own programmer software.

Because it's cheap, it just works, is certified by the manufacturer, and works with MPLAB. And it can do in-circuit debugging. And it can power your circuit under test.

So your time is worth nothing then? That's fine, but others usually don't want to dick around like that.

There is nothing worse than a development tool that gives trouble IMO. Just as you have demonstrated these DIY programmer often don't work.

There you go, who wants that potential hassle to save $40 and not get the other benefits of the PICkit?

IMO DIY PIC programmers are just not worth it when the PICkit is under $50

Dave.

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On a sunny day (Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:33:56 +1100) it happened "David L. Jones" wrote in :

You are an asshole, the noppp is for PIC 16, and only the 16F84 IIRC. All other stuff was written for it by others.

Well, to see all the problems with PICkit 3 and all the time you spend on it, do a web search, I think I have saved a lot of time and money, PLUS I know better then those window mouse clickers what I do when I program the chip, PLUS it does it in a more effcient way than that stupid USB thingy, PLUS it has all the features *I* want it to have.

It is *not* cheap, the manufacturer made a crap product with pickit 3, it does *not* always work, as others here have testified.

Only a complete idiot needs in circuit debugging. Means you cannot program.

So can mine.

Well, how much time do you think I spend on the soft versus how much time people have to wait to order a Pic-shit3, then send it back, endless frustrating crap programming in mplab, finding it does not work, HA! I was faster.

You are an idiot.

It is more expensive here.

No way you are an idiot.

And, as an aside, all the programming that goes into this, that is how Linux came about, little by little. The world will die of stupidiy if people keep clicking on MS windows GUIs.

Yeah, I saw your review, that's why I also bought the PICKit2, it works great! But, I don't think MicroChip really fired Dick Head, he seems to still be managing this project. You know it's sad when they can't even get their own microcontrollers to work right, maybe they should have used an Arduino. Upon replacing the board on my PICKit3 I did notice an Atmel chip.

RogerN