I would suggest Easy Pic'n if you want to learn to program the PICs in
Assembler.  I found it to be very helpful.  One note though.  Since I had
never had any experience in programming in ASM (I am a computer science
major but mostly program in C/C++, VB, and Java), I had to literally read
the first half of the book three times before I fully grasped the concepts
and started to remember what each ASM statement meant and did.  I guess
what I'm saying is try not to get discouraged and you're not alone :)  If
you want to program PICs in C (Hi-Tech PICC Lite), "Programming Robot
Controllers" is a pretty good book.  When you do start to program PICs,
start off VERY simple.  I'm talking about flashing an LED simple.  When you
have that down and understand the concept of setting up the registers, Port
I/O, etc. try something a little more difficult like hooking up 8 LEDs to
say PORTB and make it loop from 0 to 255 and display the value on the LEDs
in Binary.  This will allow you to get the feel for looping and
branching.  After that, work on a little bit more complex program.  I like
to completely design one part of a program, say inputting a signal, then
test that and make sure it works...then add a little more code at a time,
testing each part that I add.  I found that the big bang method (code the
whole program, burn it onto the chip, build the circuit, close your eyes
and hit the power switch hoping it'll work) is the worst possible way.  99%
of the time (in my past projects) it doesn't work.  Start simple and work
up from there.  I've been playing with PICs off and on for the last couple
years and I'm finally starting to feel comfortable enough to actually
design and implement projects.  It's daunting at first but it definitely
gets better.  Oh, one more note.  The name of the Easy Pic'n book has
changed.  It's now Easy Microcontrol'n.  You can find their website here:
http://www.sq-1.com/ .  Good luck and hang in there.

Scott Pierce



At 10:47 PM 2/29/2004, you wrote:
>Scott,
>
>Ah yes, good ol' Forrest Mimms and his Engineer's Handbooks
>and the "Getting Started in Electronics" book.  I have a dog-eared
>copy of that book, and still use the resistor color band reference
>in the handbooks when I'm having a particularly forgetful day at the
>workbench.
>
>At the end of the day, the reasons I was so excited about my PIC motor
>controller were:
>
>1) Never had used a PIC before.  Mucho cool to program a device, I thought.
>2) Never had made a working PCB before.
>3) Always wanted to make my computer "do something", i.e. control something
>outside of the normal peripherals, and control them on-the-cheap.
>
>Then, I joined PICLIST.  Visions of ADC/DAC, IR remotes, home automation,
>wireless networking, making use of upper layers of known IR/wireless/other
>protocols to "do my own thing" in a circuit, serial/USB stuff, radio stuff,
>laser stuff, etc. etc. etc. all started bouncing around in my head. Not to
>mention even more robotics, their sensing systems, and other stuff that I'd
>never considered previously.  I also realized how elementary my knowledge of
>electronics is.  I knew it was elementary, but it still stunned me how much
>I don't know.  I don't even understand the concept of "pull-up resistors".
>Anyway, that's for me to research, and just to let you know more about where
>I'm coming from.
>
>Thanks for the book titles, I'll look into them.  Easy Pic'n sounds like a
>good place to start. :)
>
>Gustaf

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