MicroControllers

[Baldrick]

I am atm just starting to delve into the world of Pic micrcontrollers. I have recently purchased a small developer kit to help teach myself a little about them & am atm waiting on a book delivery to help me get up to speed with the programming of these things using both C & assembly languages.
Just wondering if any of you people out there have been involved in these sorts of projects who may be able to help me in future months as I hopefully get more involved in these things, particullarly as I start using the ethernet enabled controllers?

The Dev kit I purchased to learn with is this: http://www.modtronix.com.au/product_inf ... eb48eae876

[Joakim Christiansen]

Seems very interesting!

But what is there really to do with these things (other than pure geeking fun)? Can one for example make something useful, control engines and stuff, maybe make a toy robot?

[Baldrick]

Can one for example make something useful, control engines and stuff, maybe make a toy robot?

Lol Joakim, In my case I am looking at using them to do some quite serious building automation & custom security applications using timezone controls, input switching controls from alarm system & other external equipment, etc which will allow overrides to be done via say tcp/ip network, along with ability to store audit trailing of equipment when running in standalone (offline) mode. ( In my case, having them run seamlessly when no pc is connected is the main attraction)

[Rook Zimbabwe]

I have plkayed with the BASIC stamp kit:

http://www.parallax.com/tabid/295/Default.aspx

It was easy and the PINPAD I wrote worked fine. Allegedly still does too!

R

[idle]

Seems very interesting!

But what is there really to do with these things (other than pure geeking fun)? Can one for example make something useful, control engines and stuff, maybe make a toy robot?

check this out for the Geek factor, self replicating 3D printer

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapOneDarwin

[Rook Zimbabwe]

I had been watching that for a while... I think they need a better controller for deposition...

FAB AT HOME too!

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... 24759.html

http://www.objet.com/alaris.aspx?cid=al ... xgodYWENkA

http://www.modelin3d.com/

[idle]

I don't think they'll become common place around the home anytime soon through.

[dhouston]

Using C and Assembler is the hard way to go. You might want to consider looking at the various Basic compilers for microcontrollers.

For PICs...

• PicBasicPro
  Proton
  mikroElektronika mikroBasic

For Atmel...

• BASCOM AVR
  mikroElektronika mikroBasic for AVR

Or, if you're the impatient type (like me)...

• http://www.zbasic.net/

[Baldrick]

Using C and Assembler is the hard way to go. You might want to consider looking at the various Basic compilers for microcontrollers.

@dhouston, Yeps, I do understand this to be the hard way to go, but the projects I am looking at doing do have a potential commercial sale side to them, so I figured I am probably best off to go the hard road in the 1st place & hopefully maybe, just maybe it might pay dividends for me in the long haul...

btw, When it comes to C, I do have a very small & limited knowledge of it which is why I am hoping a couple of books dedicated to C for PIC micro's might just bring me up to speed in a reasonable timeframe.

[dhouston]

You might look at http://www.mikroe.com/en/compilers/mikroc/pic/. They have a lot of linkable libraries to handle most of the common tasks.

[Baldrick]

Thanks dhouston, that link looks like it might be very useful for me as I slowly learn this stuff.