Newbie from UK

PIC chips can be programmed with a variety of serial port connected programmers. Take a look at the WARP-13A and the Olimex programmers. I just bought a USB port Olimex programmer - no external power supply - sweet.

My favorite PIC chips are the 16F628, 16F873, 16F876 and of course the

16F877. Of course the ones you buy will depend on your needs.

I'm not aware of any "big-name" C# compilers for the PIC. I use the CCS C compiler.

BRW

I haven't used Maplins for years, have they improved? :o)

Have a look at

They have a little - they still occasionally do crazy stuff like stocking multipin plugs but no sockets to match them (13 pin DIN for Atari ST video port case in point), but other things have improved. One great thing is they've started carrying all kinds of turntable styli again, which had dropped out of the catalogue altogether a year or so ago.

You might also want to look into alternative microcontrollers to PICs, such as the Atmel AVR 8-bit risc series

- I think you can download a *free* C compiler for them from Atmel (though you might still have to pay for the IDE if you want one), whereas you have to pay for most of the Microchip compatible ones (the free ones tend to be crippled in funny ways, most typically only supporting a handful of very old devices such as the popular but obsolete and expensive 16C84 - modern, higher spec devices are actually cheaper, but unsupported by the free compilers). There's also a lot of support for hobbyists at

I don't think Maplin carry Atmel devices, but you can get them from uk.farnell.com. If, like myself, you hate mail order and live anywhere near Leeds, Farnell have a trade counter there where you can pick things up immediately (well, apart from the time it takes them to fetch stuff from the enormous warehouse next door anyway) for cash.

Maplin have a PIC programmer/prototype board and software from Velleman at

20 quid - comes with a 16F627 (I think), but no power supply or PC cable, though it does have on-board regulators, so a simple 15V wall-wart would do the trick. You should be easily be able to get/make these for your remaining 25 quid.

Maplin product code is N36AC - I suspect for the price, your limited to assembler only, but programs and prototypes 8, 14, 18 1nd .3" 28 pin packages.

HTH PeterS

I did, of course, mean "you're". D'oh!

If you order a 16F877 from here:

it comes with a bootloader built in, so once you wire up the serial port you're set. Yes, you give up 2K for this, but I think it's well worth it.

Is there any such thing as a big-name C# compiler? I thought there was only a single vendor. With these tiny chips I'd stay away from C++ altogether.

Both Atmel and Microchip offer free IDEs. Atmel's is rather nice. I can't say much about Microchip's seeing as theirs was 16bit for the longest time, and the 32bit version crashes on install for me. The port of GCC, an open source C compiler, for the AVR platform has been more than adequate for me.

However, there is a Java compiler for PICs:

His uVM chips have made my life easier. The use of the compiler is free.

-- D. Jay Newman

while my project is quite different from yours, it has some similarities in that i'm writing my code in c#. I'm using an oopic-r board, which can't be programmed in c# but the vb-alike code is very easy to write if you can write c#. I'm sure compilers for other pics aren't too hard either.

I do hardware type stuff using the oopic, like checking if too much current is going to a servo and reducing the driving force if so. Any data i want to work with,i pass up a serial connection to the PC. I've created a dll in c# that handles talking to the oopic over serial. My 'proper' program using c# (could be any other language that can use .net /com) does its calculations and sends a stream of data back to the oopic.

The oopic was about £50.

I bought from here:

I've only used them once and they delivered on time etc.

they also sell basicx, i know nothing about them, the oopic is my first step outside a simulation environment and into real hardware.

also,

whereabouts in the uk are you? I'm in hampshire

HTH

Russ