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I am currently undertaking software engineering program in one of the local universities at my country. And i am interesting in software and hardware. So i decided to learn it by myself. One of my seniors told me to start with PIC 16 or 18 first. Anyone of here has any links for the related website? And where can i get a device to program PIC other than ebay? thx in advance.

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4 Answers 4

For a real gentle introduction you can try the PICAXE from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICAXE all the components are available from http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/

If you want to dive in to real pic land then you can get hold of a dev board from http://www.mikroe.com/eng/home/index/ or something similar from elsewhere.

As for documentation and tutorials then google is your friend.

Oh, in case you get tempted, it seems the cool kids are using the Arduino (not pic) from http://www.arduino.cc/

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Yep, AVR is much nicer than PIC, especially for an embedded beginner. –  Andrew McGregor May 8 '10 at 9:54

The PICkit 3 is a relatively inexpensive programmer/in-circuit debugger that connects to your computer via USB:


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Combine that with the small device c compiler (SDCC) and piklab or something similar and you have a decent development environment on the cheap. –  Tevo D Nov 2 '11 at 15:56

Microchip provide several starter kits. So look at that and I suggest maybe start with a 8pin PIC or like your senior stated 16 or 18 pin. The difference isn't huge and its fairly easy to move between different PICs. Some will have ADCs, larger memory or even dual memory for programs so you can program it with two different programs and choose at runtime which program to run.

Microchip is the manufacturer for all PICs. PICs purchsed from Microchip need to be programmed in C. However, If you decide to go for PICAXE PICs, they need to be programmed in BASIC. PICAXE which is a product by Revolution Education adds a bootstrap program to Microchip PICs to make it easier to program and are aimed at hobbyists who don't really need any low level control (although possible).

Like others have said, there are other embedded devices you can play with, namely AVR, Arduino, ARM. AVR is very nice piece of kit. Look at the NGW100 starter kit. It has a powerful processor with lots of I/Os and even ports for LCDs, microphones, and cameras. The development for this is in C and AVR provides multiplatform dev tools. It even has Ethernet ports LAN & WAN which are fairly easy to use. The kit comes with its own IP stack so no complex programming needed to use network features.

Good luck!

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>>PICs purchsed from Microchip need to be programmed in C This is incorrect, assembly can be used as can Basic from what I read. –  martsbradley Jul 22 '11 at 14:41

Try UBW which is a PIC board developed at a university for development on Microchip PIC18 without need for a programmer. It plugs into USB. http://www.schmalzhaus.com/UBW/

I disagree with the comment related to AVR. Microchip is more successful in industry and has better tools than AVR. As far as "easy" goes, they are both equivalent in terms of difficulty, both provide Assembly and C, except that the GNU toolchain for AVR is more complex than Microchip (because it requires use of Unix, command line, etc; whereas Microchip uses a very solid and basic integrated development GUI which also provides full offline simulation). Typically beginners quickly learn that the Arduino dev boards are more of a handicap than a way to develop low cost microcontroller products.

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