starting with pic

[bigheadted]

i am interested in learnig how to program the 16f84 pic can anyone suugest a good kit for beginners, i have bought pickit 1 but this doesnt program 16f84s which is the chip that most of the tutorials deal with thanx

 

[itsmoked]

Hello bigheadted.

Get your hands on an ICD2 "In Circuit Debugger" It is the key to "developing all PIC products". It also "just" programs them, an obvious requirement of developing code for a PIC micro.

Please take a look at these two currently active threads.
thread240-148698

And halfway down this thread.
thread240-149221

If you have more questions ...ask.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- <

http://www.flaminsystems.com>

 

[Noway2]

Your local Borders or Barnes and Nobles will probably have books on PIC projects geared towards the beginner.

 

[richs]

Hiya-

I went with the following link:

http://www.winpicprog.co.uk/pic_tutorial.htm

This tutorial uses the 16F628, which is itself a tad bit dated. It has a pretty good write up why it's interesting
to go up from the 16f84s. I used this starting out a couple of years ago with pics.

The 16f84 is quite old now and there have been many improvements as far as enhancements.

There is also, I believe in the same set of web pages a tutorial in the code changes to go from the 16f84 to the 16f628 (which will also work for the 16f62X, 16f62XAs and
the 16f648As, which are some of the followon pics to the
16f84s).

A couple of asides:
1. I suggest using one of those push in prototyping boards
rather than going with the strip proto boards that Nigel
uses. It's just a bit more convenient I found.

2. Shop around for a "Tait" type "serial" programmer. Tait
was/is the MIT professor who did the original "serial"
programming design for the pics. I built my own first,
then built my own with my own PCB design, then I found
a kit at MPJA for I think $14.95 including all parts except
a power supply and a 25 pin extension cable. Shoot, the
"make vs. buy" got real clear to me. I have used pp06
available from sourceforge.net for the programming of
the PICs. WORDS OF WARNING. I've had trouble with this
software programming the "A" parts. And I've been to lazy
to debug what was going on.

3. I myself have gone to an ICD 2 as the previous poster
has mentioned. HOWEVER, it's about $150.00 investment.
For contracting using the PIC, it's a no brainer. The
ability to peek and poke around with the embedded code
along with the ability to set a breakpoint, makes it
very cost effective for me. But, your "make vs. buy"
might be different. I have heard, although not verified,
that there are lower cost clones of the ICD2 hardware.

4. There are a couple of very active lists on pic development:
The are both called piclist. One is from yahoo groups and
the other from MIT. Both are good.

I usually don't post on the MIT group and get the feed
from gemain:

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.microcontrollers.pic

BTW, I'm in no way related to any of the other sites, businesses, organizations or groups mentioned above.

Hope that this helps.

Cheers,

Rich S.