PIC Advice For A Newbe

[HankMcSpank]

I can't really assist you with your PIC selection (though you've not really any specific h/w needs...eg PWM, USARTS etc ....so I'd imagine most of the PIC 18 range would suffice), but just wanted to chime in as another recent PIC novice/convert.

I'm using my PIC to control just one stepper motor - this stepper is used as a way of traversing enamelled wire onto a coil winding motor. Basically, the main DC motor has an encoder disk. The PIC counts the stripes from this disk & every x stripes (to work out how far it has travelled) it then sends out a pulse to the stepper.

I actually went the simple/lazy way & used a dedicated IC to hadle to stepper interfacing - a UCN5804.

You project sounds really interesting - good luck!

[Mad Professor]

Thanks for your reply.

I did not want a boring front on my control box, yes it is a little over the top.

I was looking at the F16 / F18 range of the PIC's.

As you already said I don't need PWM, ADC, Ect.

I will be buying the PIC's from RS.

I am not going to buy any pic or parts to build the driver boards unto such time that I know I can build the board and program the PIC to do what I want / need, as I could safe the money to buy a prebuilt driver, but it's not liky to find a driver board with all the led and fan control I am looking for.

The picaxe's that I have been using upto now are programed in something that is very close to Basic.

With the picaxe chips you don't need to buy the software or magic programmer.

I have been looking around the internet and I see there are meny languages for the pic, Basic, C, C++, Pascal, Ect.

As the picaxe was based around the Basic language, so a quick google found "MELabs PICBASIC Compiler" but this is a paid software,
PICBASIC Compiler - meLabs £68.94
and
PICBASIC Pro Compiler - melabs £195.44.

That seems like alot of money to splash out for possibly a one time use.