Buying board for teaching PICs

If they really want to learn ARM, you should avoid the most brain-dead PIC variants - look at the newer ones with 16 bit opcodes. You could also consider cores closer to ARM, in register use, such as the Atmel AVR, or the Zilog Z8 family. Zilog have some very cheap intro systems, including compiler, and the AVR has new devices with on chip debug.

-jg

I find Atmel AVRs easier for beginners. There is a good free compiler (gcc), there are plenty of free programmers (avrdude, Ponyprog and others), and the instruction set is easier. The simulator in AvrStudio is nice for trying something out without hardware.

For PICs there are no real good alternatives to the official tools ICD2 and the C18 C compiler (which is a bit expensive). The good thing is that the ICD2 is also good for debugging while the AVR ISP interface can only program flash, eeprom, and fuses. For debugging JTAG or Debugwire is required.

is a good starting point. Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Frank-Christian Krügel

For 16 io + lcd(depends how your going to drive it) going to need at least a 28 pin device , better to go for a 40 pin chip and stick with dip as students can then easily get replacements.

For pics - 18f pics , there is a free microchip student version of their

18f c compiler.

Some of the microchip boards are quite nice (but not dip)

seems to be a 18f8720 even though they call it a 16f877 board ?

sells some very cheap boards from US$30

For pics and cplds (at uni) we make our own boards with 16f877 or 18f in plcc + xilinx xc9572xl in plcc with 12f675 as programmable oscillator use winpicprog

to program (there is a beta version with some 18f support)

usb based programmers work very well. I use one of the K150's for a lot of my things. their support forum

has some pic and avr boards with ethernet and wireless ethernet

18f tutorial (save as html then open the saved file)

Also take a look at avrs

Video Generation with Atmel AVR microcontrollers

has some nice boards

sells some very cheap boards from US$30 (pic , avr , 8051)

The AVR butterfly boards may suit.

These guys make a mounting board for the butterfly.

Port of the avr butterfly code to avrgcc / winavr

The philips arm 7 chips are quite easily to use (except are smd)

sell the olimex boards (arm , avr and pic boards) arm boards They also have a good range of sensors and other chips

gnuarm tools

tutorial for setting up and using armgcc with eclipse ide

lpc2000 yahoo group

Book for use with keil arm compiler

can get a free limited version of the compiler

arm wiki

I would beg to differ on the statement that there are no good alternatives to the 'official' ICD2 and C18 C compiler.

make a good ICD2 clone, as do a number of other companies. Olimex's ICD2-Tiny (RS232 interface only) is $49.95.

If you are programming in C then I am not convinced that the 18 series is necessarily an advantage. I use the 16F877 in an educational university environment. I can't really see much advantage in moving to the 18 series.

The particular relevance here is that

provide PICC Lite, a very capable C compiler that will handle moderate sized programs producing up to 2K of machine code for the 16F8xx series. This have proven more than capable (by a large margin) for all the laboratory exercises and extended assignments that I have ever used.

Olimex also make some target boards, including one with an LCD display which might meet your requirements. I actually use an in-house designed board with 4 digit LED display (I find multiplexing offers a more interesting set of excercises than a simpler to drive LCD display), temperature sensor, LDR, pot, 6 LEDs and 6 push button switches.

For historical reasons I actually use the older ICD1 (i.e. we started doing this about 5 years ago, before the ICD2 was produced). However, if I were to start again I would now use the ICD2.

So, my recommended undergraduate development package. ICD2 clone Target board with 16F877 MPLAB V7 PICC Lite

Andrew

[snip links]

Thanks for those. I'll have to find the time to work through them...

Theo