Nuts and Volts - November 2008

GETTING STARTED WITHPICs THE LATEST IN PROGRAMMING MICROCONTROLLERS

■ BY CHUCK HELLEBUYCK

GETTING STARTED ON YOUR

HOLIDAY GIFT LIST

With the holidays looming, I wanted to pass along a holiday shopping list that you can pass on to your loved ones who don’t have a clue what to get for you.

I’m sure buying for the readers of this column isn’t easy for their family members, since even a hint for a PICkit™ 2 development board won’t make a lot of sense if the relative isn’t into electronics. So, here is my recommended list of products for the “Getting Started with PIC MCUs” crowd.

PICKIT™ 2 STARTER KIT

If you’ve been reading this column on a regular basis, you know that I think the PICkit 2 Starter Kit (see Figure 1) is the best starter package for the beginner. It gives you all the pieces you need to get started programming, including a PIC16F690 MCU. The package includes a CD that has a sample version of the HI-TECH PICC-Lite™ C compiler and a sample version of microEngineering Labs’ PICBASIC PRO compiler. You also get sample code for the Microchip MPASM™ assembler if you want to learn assembly code. For $49.95, this is a

■ FIGURE 1. PICkit™ 2 Starter Kit.

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great holiday gift. You can buy these from various sources, including Mouser ( www.mouser.com), Jameco ( www.jameco.com), and microchipDIRECT

( www.microchipdirect.com).

You may already have the PICkit 2 Starter Kit but want another one for your lab to use the UART or Logic Analyzer tools built into the PICkit 2 software. I have five PICkit 2 Starter Kits in my lab so I’m a little out of the ordinary, but having a second one is highly recommended. You can purchase just the programmer without the development board. The interesting thing is that the CD is identical to the starter kit CD, so you get all the free stuff without the extra cost. Add your own choice of development board and you can make a custom PICkit 2 Starter Kit.

PICKIT™ 2

DEVELOPMENT BOARDS

You have numerous development boards to choose from for the PICkit 2 Debugger/Programmer. You can get them in a 20-pin version with a PIC16F690 MCU that also supports the eight and 14-pin parts. You can get an 18-pin version with a PIC16F648 MCU and a 28-pin version with a PIC16F886 MCU onboard. These all come in packs of three with one board fully populated with the PIC MCU in a DIP socket,

and then two blank boards.

There is also a 40-pin board that is used in the PICkit 2 Debug Express package — a PIC16F887 in a surface-mount package part that is soldered to the board. You can get one fully populated version and two blank boards. If you don’t want to work with surface-mount parts, this may not be your best choice. However, you can create a PICkit 2 Debug Express by adding this to your PICkit 2 programmer.

Finally, there is a PIC18F87J10 development board that has an 80-pin part soldered to it. That is a lot of I/O for such a small board. If you need the I/O and increased memory, then this may be worth a look.