Barry Gershenfeld wrote:
> It is my fate to become involved with the PIC32 line.

I've played around with PIC32 a little bit. I got a USB starter kit when
Microchip used the Circuit Cellar sample network to sort-of "beta test"
the kits (we were required to provide feedback on our experiences). I tried
some of the sample code, which worked, and then did a little project of my
own.

It quickly became apparent that you are expected to program these chips
ONLY in C, not assembly. Microchip provides no documentation on the
instruction set -- they refer you instead to the generic MIPS
documentation. And there's no documentation at all from any source that I
could find on the assembler syntax. I was in a bit of a hurry and didn't
want to try to work out the MIPS-specific stuff from the generic GNU
documentation.

Nonetheless, I was able to complete my project in C, and I'm looking
forward to doing more with this family some time down the road.

I actually created my own I/O breakout board that the starter kits can plug
into; it makes it really easy to take advantage of the massive amount of
GPIO on these chips. Among other things, I hope to use it to build some ATE
fixtures for a set of boards I've built for one of my clients. You can see
a picture of it here: http://www.dtweed.com/images/20090209-016m.jpg

The 2mm grid of holes is actually quite convenient for tacking down 0805
SMT passives and SOT-23 transistors. That's a row of 40 green SMT LEDs
across the bottom, with a laser-printed label taped beneath them. This
particular setup is used to measure the shutter latency and exposure time
on digital cameras. There's a little FET next to the screw terminal strip
on the right that triggers the camera, and then you can learn things about
the exposure by which LEDs are lit in the resulting image.

-- Dave Tweed
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