Need your experiment to guide me

Thread Starter

ygi

Joined Jul 23, 2010
2
Hi,
I am new on the forum, and try to gather info in order to achieve my personal project. I have some knowledge in electronics, but i am in IT, I have developped in ASM, but today I develop mainly in C# (passing by Ansi C, C++).
I am doing a new personal project whith my cousin who knows a lot more than me in electronic, but don't know anything about developpment..

Our choice lead us to use a PIC to do the suff we want, and I will be developping the prgm for the PIC (In C it will be great)

Browsing the net, I have seen a lot of methods, tools, IDE and so on to program, emulate, debug...

You have to know that the program won't be really complex, but I am totally lost on what will be easy to use

I have downloaded MPLAB Ide, I can hardly use it :) what will you suggest ?

In order to write (flash) the application into the PIC, which one would you suggest ? I have seen one ine the velleman Kit (35 €), but not listed directly in the mplab...

ygi
 
Last edited:

Vaughanabe13

Joined May 4, 2009
102
Get a PICKit2 programmer directly from microchip. It's cheap and works for almost any Microchip uC:
http://www.microchipdirect.com/productsearch.aspx?Keywords=DV164121

The programmer uses "ICSP" which lets you program the micro in the circuit without having to take it off the target board. It only uses 5 pins. The first is for a programming voltage, which should be connected directly to the PIC's "MCLR" pin. The next two are power and ground. Then you have data and clock, which connect directly to the "PGD" and "PGC" pins of your PIC.

Get the free version of Microchip's C18 compiler and install it. Use a PIC18F microcontroller with this compiler and you will be able to compile C code and program the micro. It is best to start with a prebuilt demo board so you don't have to worry about all of the hardware considerations until you understand more about them. Read the datasheets for the C18 compiler, the PICKit2 programmer, MPLAB, and your specific PIC18F microcontroller. It's going to be a TON of reading and it will be pretty frustrating at first, but you can do it, and we can help if you have specific questions.
 

maxpower097

Joined Feb 20, 2009
816
Most cetainly a PK2 or PK3 as your first programmer. Then you need to figure out your chip. If you use a PIC12- PIC16 you will probably use ASM. If you use a PIC18-PIC32 probably C. Once you pick your chip if its an 8 bit chip I suggest you look at the BigPIC6 or similar dev kit. If you want a 16 or 32bit chip look at the Explorer 16. These development kits are invaluable because they have code ready to compile and work on the boards so you can see how it all fits together. At first look its quite overwhelming how you go from some lines of code and a single chip, to a working gadget.
 

Thread Starter

ygi

Joined Jul 23, 2010
2
Thank you for your precisous answers..

I have just ordered a Pickit3 on ebay...
I seems that mplab doesn't come with a Built-in C compiler... or am i wrong ?
I have seen CCS C and C18 Toolsuite from microchip, but they are not free...
which one would you suggest ?

ygi
 
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