Advice on reasonable priced pic dev kit/board wanted

[simple-simon]

Hi all. LONG time unregistered occasional lurker that has finally registered . A while back I wanted to learn the pic micro, I had the funds but no time!! Unfortunately I caught Covid in the first wave and as a result my business went under. Or put another way, Now I have the time but little (=0) Money, being practical I could manage around £30-£40 a month on the hobby to start with.
Currently I have around £70 saved so this is the max I can spend on a dev board. BTW I did get a pikit4 for christmas but havnt used it yet, my main interests would be pic 18f and pic24

Many thanks and sorry for any infringments on forum rules but this is the first time for joining one.

Sorry for the edit but it occurred to me I hadnt give much info.
I have never learnt a programing language before except commodore vic 20 Basic a very long time ago! I hope to learn XC8 first.

 

[Visitor]

In the days before cheap circuit boards were available, I created a general-purpose circuit board for 28-pin 18F-series chips that I sold a good number of. Selling them not longer makes sense, because you can order 10 boards for $5 at a number of fab houses. The board has separate 6-pin connectors for ICSP, UART and I2C/SPI interfaces, and four 3-pin connectors for PWM, ADC and general purpose use.

Have a look at the attached PDF. If it's interesting, I'd be happy to send you the Gerber files so you can have the boards made yourself. Assembly is pretty simple, with all parts being through-hole except the USB connector, which is used for power only (there's also a terminal block for power).

 

[granddad]

Welcome , most PIC are well suited to making your own dev board. and you have Pickit4 , (some dev boards have built in prog / debug ) MC used to do small boards with a mcu and leds etc not sure if still available .

 

[Visitor]

Here's a picture of an assembled TAP-28 rev A board as I mentioned above.

 

[simple-simon]

In the days before cheap circuit boards were available, I created a general-purpose circuit board for 28-pin 18F-series chips that I sold a good number of. Selling them not longer makes sense, because you can order 10 boards for $5 at a number of fab houses. The board has separate 6-pin connectors for ICSP, UART and I2C/SPI interfaces, and four 3-pin connectors for PWM, ADC and general purpose use.

Have a look at the attached PDF. If it's interesting, I'd be happy to send you the Gerber files so you can have the boards made yourself. Assembly is pretty simple, with all parts being through-hole except the USB connector, which is used for power only (there's also a terminal block for power).

That is really kind of you, I would be grateful for the files. Obviously being skint I will need to work out the BIOM and cost etc......Ao This is a board I am going to use as a learning to build project. In the mean time I will hunt around for a plug and play to get me started .

Welcome , most PIC are well suited to making your own dev board. and you have Pickit4 , (some dev boards have built in prog / debug ) MC used to do small boards with a mcu and leds etc not sure if still available .

Hi, I might look on ebay and see what is about, I have a small amount of bits that have been kindly donated. I used to own the local corner shop until I became ill, so a few of my regulars went shed hunting for bits when they learnt of my new hobby , some extremely great people in this world.

I guess I could get going with the simulator in the IDE, stand by for a laugh at the noob , and clearly some real face palm questions.!!

BTW
Visitor
One of the main reasons I joined was because of your answers in a certain thread, please be aware your efforst are not wasted on the individual as I for one learnt a fair bit from that thread! I know its frustrating but to be honest the more Doh moments then the more info you put and the more I learn ,

 

[Visitor]

Thanks for the kind words.

My preferred PIC of the day is the 18F25K22 or the 18F26K22 for more memory. This PIC will operate on 3.3 volts or 5 volts, making it ideal for any dev modules you might want to use with it. As I recall, these are around $3 each.

The rest of the parts are pretty generic and not critical. I'd suggest ordering from Tayda Electronics in Thailand for the rest of the parts. Good quality parts at excellent prices, with quick shipping. I bet $20 would cover all the remaining parts to assemble all 10 boards.

Would you send me a private message with your email address so I can send the files.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

You can just stick a few minimal parts on a bit of stripboard - that's what I normally do for small test designs & prototypes.

You pretty much just need the socket for the IC, a voltage regulator (5V or 3.3V), a few capacitors and the pin header for the debug interface.
Then add LEDs and switches. or whatever other input and output parts you like.

I must have dozens of different ones kicking about, these are just some within reach..



Another option to consider for the future - the Microchip "universal" dev board, Explorer 16/32. These are expensive, getting on for £100 - but they allow you to use the higher pin count and more complex or surface-mount only MCUs without having to make PCBs to take them, and include a range of I/O devices as well as having all pins accessible via headers.

The additional plug-in CPU modules are typically about £15, I believe. Mine has a dual core PIC in it at present.



I use mostly use DSPIC33 devices now; they are very similar and often pin compatible with the PIC24 series, but more built-in capabilities.
The other interesting one is the PIC12F1840, and eight pin 32MHz mcu..

 

[Wp100]

Quiet a few dev boards on the usual sites, but most from China which can take several weeks, our last delivery from there took 8 weeks !

This little uk stocked dev board might be a good starter for 15

Socket for a pickit onboard.

 

[simple-simon]

rjenkinsgb
The Dev board looks like a good idea and I have a lead on a cheap one .

Thx Visitor I will send you a message

 

[rjenkinsgb]

Great! Just be sure its the newer 16/32, not an explorer 16; those need an add-on to provide header sockets.

 

[Visitor]

Wow. Things have changed a lot since I ordered the TAP-28 Rev A boards just over 10 years ago. To get a per-board price of $1.33 each, I had to order 150 boards. These days, you can order 10 boards for $5 from JLCPCB, Elecrow and other fab houses. And have your choice of silk screen colors to boot. It took a while, but I managed to sell most of these boards.

 

[simple-simon]

Great! Just be sure its the newer 16/32, not an explorer 16; those need an add-on to provide header sockets.

This is where my DUMB bit comes in, can you show me a link of what you mean by header sockets for the above please, is still likely to be a great option for me.

Dont worry I will start slow before unleashing my master project! obviously this will fall into the category of general head scratching and people asking me why on earth would you even want to do that!! Simple answer is if I live long enough to actually start the final project, then its likely I will be too old to remember what it was .
For now I got to do and master the 'rights of passage' such as, blink a led , read a switch, do a led something when switch is pressed and so on including the must have "hello world" on LCD the RS232 .

No idead how, but like I said I been a lurker since last April and read alot of threads here

 

[simple-simon]

Wow. Things have changed a lot since I ordered the TAP-28 Rev A boards just over 10 years ago. To get a per-board price of $1.33 each, I had to order 150 boards. These days, you can order 10 boards for $5 from JLCPCB, Elecrow and other fab houses. And have your choice of silk screen colors to boot. It took a while, but I managed to sell most of these boards.

View attachment 129496

I had read threads on toner transfer boards and so on, this is something I will give a bash at some point, but if I need boards for now it really dosnt make sense to make them when you can them made so cheap!

 

[simple-simon]

Well have taken a punt on a old explorer 8bit board used on ebay, it was silly cheap <£6 and comes with a old ICD2 (museum piece surely ). Also a member here has kindly offered me a board at a good price that I have excepted. I wont name them but Thank you! and I have sent you a message

 

[simple-simon]

One project I would love to do at some point is-------------Find a old parallel port dot matrix printer, and get it to print out from a pic instead of say a terminal window reams of listing paper spewing out lol. well not exactly but I kind of like odd and original projects.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

One project I would love to do at some point is-------------Find a old parallel port dot matrix printer, and get it to print out from a pic instead of say a terminal window reams of listing paper spewing out lol. well not exactly but I kind of like odd and original projects.

The main issue is (was) lack of memory on small PIC's, but some of the later low cost ones have quite acceptable memory sizes, the PIC16F18857 is a pretty useful device.

Going back a VERY, VERY long time I used various dot matrix printers with 6502 micro-processors, often with less memory than the 16F18857.

Must admit, I don't even know if I've got an old dot matrix printer lying about anywhere?, if I have I'm sure that the ink will have long since dried up.

Incidentally, my first printer was the small Tandy one, which printed on 4 inch paper rolls using 4 small coloured ball point pens - very impressive little printer, and amazing to watch.

What 'ruined' printers was Windows - they made printers cheaper by moving much of the required processor and memory power to the PC, leaving the printer fairly 'dumb'.

 

[simple-simon]

I just thought it might be cool to try and do something with a old printer, looking at some of the old 24pin printers it seems basic graphics could be possible. I better get to at least the Led cube phase before I think printers lol

 

[Visitor]

I have a couple little (4" maybe) dot matrix printers. One has a parallel interface. The other would probably require a direct hardware interface. A someday project.

 

[simple-simon]

It would seem a not so bonkers idea, cheapo amiga 500 printers are around. But I also found a book online (free) called Amiga Printers inside out!! Seeing as a decent 18F should outrun a Amiga then i'm thinking game on

Noticed I could cheat and use a pic with a parrelel port on it.....just saying

 

[Visitor]

A Centronics parallel printer interface is 8 bits wide plus a bit or two for handshaking. Shouldn't be difficult to print text. Graphics will be more involved.

If the printer has an RS232 (serial) interface, it's easy. You just need to convert the UART levels of the PIC (0-5V) to RS232 levels using a MAX232 chip or a converter module.