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

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

'have to say, I find the Hello World examples that seem always to be
used to get people started, with a new programming language, or
whatever, are really, really, really, really annoying ... the
mentality that thinks it's useful thing to offer totally defies
belief ... !

(much more useful, IMHO, would be an example program that does
actually useful things, with added annotations to explain how it does
it)

Chris


On 23 Aug 2007, at 01:00, Kim Wall wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
>
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