PIC LINKS Links to Arizona Microchip Websites GM1SXX
MIKROELEKRTONIKA
PIC BASIC Compiler
FOREST Electronic Developments
Forest's useful 40 pin development board
I've been messing around with PIC's for quite a long time now. Life is short and PIC's are very cheap so rather than mess around with assembler code, I usually program in BASIC, something I'm happy and familiar with.
PIC's are easy to use and can provide powerful solutions to tricky problems. They are ideal for use in mechatronic systems providing the 'intelligence' for such jobs as machine control.
Older PIC's used UV development parts (for prototyping) and OTP (One-Time-Programmable) parts for production devices. Modern 'FLASH' memory based PIC's are much more user friendly and can be reprogrammed in seconds with cheap hardware.
I've all but abandoned the C series of PIC's in favour of the newer 16F877A chip. It's cheaper, smarter, and easier to use.
I used to use 16C84's (now obsolete), 16C57's and 16C74's for more demanding applications. The new 16F877A costs about £4 in one-off quantities and I now use this chip as my standard device, whether or not I need all its features. The prices keep dropping and the performance keeps increasing in accordance with 'Moore's Law'. This is good news for the end users.
The PIC is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) and the instruction set is small and easy to use. There are a multitude of free tools available for the PIC and I won't go into them here. A web search (Google is your friend!) should unearth many free goodies.
I recently replaced my home made PIC programmer with a new one, from EBay. I bought the new one (a WINPIC800 compatible one) from Kenny Wong in Kowloon for the princely sum of £17. It arrived here in three days and is a superb piece of kit.
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SXX's PIC gear.
This shows some of my PIC gear. Forest Electronic Developments no longer make the PIC BASIC chips but I still use them here. They now have shifted their support to the C language.
As a stopgap measure, I've been using the evaluation copy of PROTON BASIC from PICBASIC. This evaluation version is fully functional but only supports 50 lines of code and a limited range of CPU's and clock speeds. What's putting me off buying the full product is not the £150 cost but instead their use of USB dongles. My experience at work with dongles (I'm an ICT Engineer) suggests that they are fragile, prone to failure and generally unreliable. I DON'T like the things and there is no place for dongles in modern systems. They cause me endless problems at work and I'd rather do without them at home. At work we use various CAD and CNC packages that employ dongles. We see frequent failures and problems and I have no wish to extend these problems to home use! I'd probably even go with a dongled system if it were the case that replacement parts were available at reasonable cost in the even of failure. Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case.
PROTON BASIC is not the only BASIC available, there are others, and I may end up going down that road instead.
UPDATE
I decided against using the PROTON BASIC because although it can do a few things that the Mikroelektronika one cant, (at a higher price), I LOATHE Dongles. They are nothing but trouble and easily damaged or lost. I therefore purchased the full version of the Mikroelektronica product instead and although I'm still learning, I can vouch for the fact that it's a very good and efficient compiler that produces tight neat code. SO far, I haven't come across any problems with it. It's an excellent product supported by a very good user forum.
MIKROELEKTRONIKA PIC BASIC Compiler
In the UK, Mikroelektronika gear can be bought from Breadboarding systems in Southampton and I've found them to be fast and efficient. Online ordering is available.
Breadboarding Systems73 Al.
GM1SXX