Stephen D. Barnes

BSEE Electrical Engineering

Factory Automation and Controls - Whole Building Automation - Commercial HVAC Automation

PIC Beginner / Novice!

Current PIC experience:

• Constructed programmer based on Bojan Dobaj design and used in conjuction with IC-Prog by Bonny Gijzen
• Learned MPLab IDE and MPASM
• Succesfully programmed several devices in the 16F series to include the following functions;
  • Basic digital I/O
  • RS232 comms between PIC and PC
  • SPI comms between PIC's
  • Table read/write
  • Dallas 1-wire comms

The next phase of my PIC research will be:

• Stop lurking on the PICList and become a more active member
• Familiarize myself with 18F and dsPIC architectures
• Learn to write relocateable code (looking into Olin Lathrop's development environment)
• Learn embedded RTOS principles and practices
• Utilize the above in practical applications

3 February 2005

I have a need for a more professional programmer than what I have constructed. A production programmer is not required for my purposes (research and hobby) so I have ordered a Microchip Technologies ICD2 based on all of the info I have gathered. There are many opinions and preferences concerning programmers......I have read most of them, and the ICD2 fits my needs for the forseeable future.

Currently learning to use Eagle editor for my PCB's and will be designing with ICSP in mind.

4 February 2005

I have been looking in all the wrong places for Eagle libraries for PIC's! The last time I was at Cadsoft's website, the variety of PIC libraries available was rather small. Posted to the PICList looking for libraries and Jinx kindly replied with a link to the Cadsoft site. I went there and much has been added since my last visit...thanks to Jinx, and those who contributed their efforts in library creation, I now have libraries I can use to get started on my projects with Eagle!

17 Februrary 2005

ICD 2 arrived a few days ago. I am building a universal programming adapter for it with a 40 pin ZIF so I can start experimenting with programming and debugging with the ICD 2. Will post results here in a couple of days!

8 March 2005

That couple of days turned into almost three weeks due to workload! Built the universal programming module and it works great! Now I should make up a development board so I can really start some serious application work. I am setting up to do circuit board production on an extremely small scale and should be running positive resist exposure and development tests in a week or two.

Back to the subject of PIC's, I am working out on paper the functional requirements for a hobby robot supervisory controller so I will have most features defined before I begin the coding process. I will be using the PIC18F4320 for this purpose. More on the details next time I update this page.