PIC Advice For A Newbe

[Mad Professor]

Good Day All.

As the title says I am looking for advice with regards to programming PIC's.

To date the only kind of PIC's I have worked with are called PicAxe.

Due to the design and build in software thease PIC chips are to slow for what I am after.

I am looking at building my own PIC based stepper motor driver board.

I am looking to use one PIC per axis total of 3 axis on my board.

Each axis will have the following inputs and outputs.

Inputs
Enable.
Step.
Dir.
Mode Select 1.
Mode Select 2.

Outputs
Coil A.
Coil B.
Coil C.
Coil D.
Fan.
Enable LED.
Step LED.
Dir LED.

So I am going to need a PIC chip with at least 5 inputs and 8/9 outputs.

I am only looking at driving the stepper motors as unipolar.

The mode select switches will be for Full, Wave, and Half Mode stepping, I don't want to go down the micro stepper route yet.

I will be using this driver board with the Mach3 software.

Here are the two related posted on the PicAxe forum.

[ame="http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11593"]3 Axis Stepper and Spindle Control Circuit Diagrams[/ame].
and
[ame="http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12324"]1-5us pulse capture[/ame].

I have made a little box to put the driver board into.


Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.