Looking to get started with microcontrollers for robotics, clocks, phone dialers, etc..? Here’s a good PIC microcontroller beginner’s guide – “Many people would like to get started with microcontrollers, but don’t know how to begin. That’s what this page is all about — how to get started. With a microcontroller you can do things that would be difficult to do with discrete logic. Besides its power, you can easily “change your mind” with a microcontroller — something you can’t do with discrete logic. The PIC isn’t for every project. It won’t replace a PC, or even a larger processor. But for many jobs it is just the right size, inexpensive, and doesn’t require much in the way of support hardware.” – Link.
14 thoughts on “PIC microcontrollers – a beginner’s guide”
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Nice post, but I didn’t see any reference to PicBasic or Picbasic Pro — http://www.melabs.com/ There are also some C compilers out there for the PIC, but for noobs like me without the patience to learn assembly, the picbasic compiler is essential.
Thanks for the link! It seems that most of my searches for PIC or AVR stuff come up fruitless (unless you count old outdated webpages as fruitful). Now…if I only had a project to make use of a chip…
Timely story…this just showed up in my mail yesterday:
http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/easypic3/
They have their own version of basic for $149 ($99 with purchase of their board). They also have C and pascal compilers.
They also have a good “Programming Basic for Microcontrollers” tutorial here:
http://www.mikroe.com/en/books/picbasicbook/00.htm
Russ
@Lagg:
for AVRs, try http://avrfreaks.net/ Very good site, can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff tho.
I just got the mikroe EasyPic4 its pretty sweet, circuit-ed in new york, usa is where i picked mine up
Does anyone know of good PIC resource for searching for functionality among available PICs? I’m having trouble tracking down the PIC I need and I don’t know of a convenient resource that explains PIC functionality in somewhat plain english. I’m specifically looking for a PIC for a 24 hour countdown timer that does not need a display. There are plenty of PICs that would work as a timer, but they are overkill on size and expense because they will also drive the display LEDs and have inputs for changing the time, setting an alarm, etc. I’m looking for the simplest, smallest, least expensive PIC (or a 555 timer schematic maybe?) that would count down from 24 hours, and sound an alarm at the 24th hour if a switch has not been activated within that 24hour time frame. If the switch has been activated, the PIC does not sound the alarm (piezo), and starts counting down from T-24 all over again. Basically, I need an electronic device that would remind me to do a chore by 9pm every day. If I do the chore at 5pm, and activate the switch at 5, the timer silently restarts its countdown at 9pm. Again, I don’t need to have extra circuitry or pins for a display or for timer adjustment or input, other than the 1 switch that determins if the alarm will or will not sound at the end of the 24 hour period. Please reply here and to tyleryoungblood at yahoo dot com (since I don’t have an easy way to monitor answers to this thread besides checking it each day, and I’m in a hurry to get this project started). Thanks in advance for any help!
I’d also be willing to pay a reasonable consulting fee to any engineer or PIC guru that would be able to help me put the project I mentioned in the previous post together. Reply to the email address listed above (and I’m sorry the address is cryptic, I’m trying to keep email spam bots from finding my address on the internet). Thanks!