Re: PIC Programming - a where to start...

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wayne wrote:
> and - is there any recommended places to start with these things and
> what are your experiences with them? (I've done the google thing but
> there are SO many I was after a personal recommendation really)

I can recommend http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=37192
as a
nice cheap programmer for some of the smaller PICs.  It's got some LEDs
and push switches, too, so you can get the hang of basic programming
without techniques having to worry about hardware.

The PICList <http://www.piclist.com/> is a good
source of ideas and
knowledge, if a bit overwhelming in volume.

I won't say much about software, I prefer programming in assembly
language (FWIW, gpasm is a reasonable Linux port of the Microchip
assembler), but that can be quite a steep learning curve, and I believe
there are good BASIC-ish alternatives for a newbie who's interested in
results.

What I will say, is that I find having an actual project helps build up
that critical mass of experience.  Once you've got your software and
programmer sussed, and can make an LED flash "hello world" in
morse (or
whatever), it's easy to lose interest through lack of a clear objective.

One thing I have found useful, especially when working on smaller PICs
in the absence of serial comms or an oscilloscope, is the use of a piezo
transducer as a debugging tool.  It's simple to make them play
different tones by toggling an output pin at different rates, and
subroutines to play different sequences of beeps can be called from
within your program to indicate what's going on with more precision than
a couple of LEDs might give.

My other top tip: don't be tempted to use an RC oscillator for anything
timing critical (I learned this on my first PIC project, which involved
decoding IR remote control signals)  You'll come back to it two days
later and it will have mysteriously stopped working.

Oh, and the 16F84 is overrated.  Its popularity is largely due to it
being cheap and simple to program early on.  Other, more feature laden
PICs are available, often more cheaply!


Kim.