Marcel wrote:
> You are in a position best suited to know what you need but your
> emphasis on fast brings up questions like what package are your pics
> going to be?  I have found that smd pics take longer to carefully
> insert and remove from the socket and replace back in the tube they
> came out of than the time it takes to program them - sometimes anyway.

Good point.  This is another reason in-circuit programming in the built unit
is a good idea.  You have to build some sort of test fixture to test final
units and possibly calibrate and serialize them anyway.  The incremental
cost and time of adding programming to this step is usually minimal.  This
is likely cheaper than the cost of getting PICs programmed up front or the
the cost of the special handling to program them yourself, keeping track of
the programmed PICs with separate firmware as separate parts, and the cost
of scrapping them when the firmware changes every two weeks ;-)

If volumes are high and you need more throughput, set up multiple copies of
the same test station.


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