Dan Michaels wrote:
>
> Alina Mothusi wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi there I'm trying to build a weather station for my design project could
> >> you please help me out in terms of what kind of PIC microcontrollers should I
> >> use for the project. This is for my senior design project so your quick
> >> response will be appreciated.
> >>
>
> Hello Alina,
>
> Adam gave some good advice here. However, I think I would add one
> additional thought.
>
> If you are new to microcontrollers and especially to PICs, I would
> strongly recommend starting out with the 18-pin PIC16F84 chip.
> It is easy and quick to program and re-program, will introduce
> you to the basic PIC architecture and instruction set, and,
> most importantly, does not have all of the complex peripherals
> to worry about - SPI, I2C, A/D converters, PWM, etc.
>
> There seem to be a lot of people entering piclist, who say things
> like "I have never programmed a micrcontroller before, but I want
> to use the 16F877 to do [such and so] a project". I think it is a
> bad mistake to start off in PICs at this level.
>
> A beginner should not have to even be in the same playing field
> as multiple code pages and data banks, complex memory maps, and
> problems that crop up with programming peripheral subsystems
> [and which, incidentally, occupy a large percentage of piclist
> discussion bandwidth].
>
> It is much better to start with the simpler chips, learn the
> basics well, and then move to the more complex chips when the
> time is right. Graded progression. This, of course, is exactly
> the same strategy you have just been thru over four years of
> schooling. Algebra -> calculus -> diffeq -> complex numbers
> -> multi-dimensional field theory.
>
> hope this helps,
> - Dan Michaels


I absolutely agree Dan, the 877 looks very powerful and enticing to
a beginner, but would be a nightmare to someone who is not very
familiar with PICs, even the humble(!) 16F84 has a lot of options
that stumble the beginner, always seeing beginner problems re
watchdog timer left on, int handlers, osc settings, PCLATH, etc etc.

Even the RISC instructions (which I like) but not always instinctive
even to someone who may be familiar with assembler on say a motorola
style chip.

Best advice for a PIC beginner would be to start with a 16F84, code
each part of the big app one by one, test it on the 84, at least they
only have to wait 17 secs to program it, not 2 mins every time.
Even the simpler 84 will cause some complex issues.
Once they have most of the code pieces working they can transfer to
the larger chip and deal with the next problems, ie, code pages
and super-complex peripheral modules.

Roman

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