PIC Advice For A Newbe

[HankMcSpank]

It looks like the site's spam filter isn't working that well!

Thanks for eveyones input so far.

I have just had a quick google looking for the UCN8504B driver chips, could not find any UK suppliers, I did find a guy one eBay selling them, but wants £7.65 Each plus £3.75 for postage, so a min of £26.70 for 3 IC's.

I'll hazard a guess you meant UCN5804B ...they are available in the UK. Here's where I bought mine from


http://www.cricklewoodelectronics.co...0&cat=0&page=1 (it's a great little chip)

It's only saved you a couple of quid, but at least they're UK based (& a good company at that)

[irving2008]

It looks like the site's spam filter isn't working that well!



I'll hazard a guess you meant UCN5804B ...they are available in the UK. Here's where I bought mine from


http://www.cricklewoodelectronics.co...0&cat=0&page=1 (it's a great little chip)

It's only saved you a couple of quid, but at least they're UK based (& a good company at that)

fixed the spam...

Ah, another devotee of Cricklewood Electronics...

[tumutbound]

I started to play around with PICs a little while back and found the following suppliers good value for money.

Tech Toys - development/test kits
Kee Electronics - mainly PIC programmers
Futurlec - lots of development/test kits for PIC's and Atmel stuff. Cheap electronic components too.

I'd avoid using BASIC and stick to C or assembler. There are a lot of free C libraries available from Microchip plus of course the free MPLAB stuff.

[Kwackers]

Worth looking at Mikroelectonika too http://www.mikroe.com/

I used to spend half my time breadboarding stuff and fiddling with wiring, now I just flick the switches on the development board to get hardware I'm interested in 'wired' up.
USB to PC for programming, debugging, ICD. A decent collection of on-board IO (leds, switches, 7 segment, GLCD, LCD, RS232, USB, PS2 etc) along with all ports brought out to headers and a collection of cheap IO boards that will connect to the headers (or make your own) all the way up to GPS, LAN, CAN etc etc.

They also have a range of compilers in various languages which all provide nice little libraries to use the peripherals making one's life very easy.
(If your projects are small then you can use the compilers in 'lite' mode for free). Want your stepper controller to have it's own web page on your network? (And who wouldn't ) it's no problem...

Once your device is working as you expect simply copy the circuit for the peripherals you use into the final design (circuit diagrams are provided for all their peripherals).

I have of course no connection with the company, but having used PICs for a long time and in a lot of ways I've simply found their products to be top notch and saved me much time and effort.