Good place for beginners?

[stephenpic]

Hey,

I was wondering if any one could comment on how good a deal the product on the front page of ( **broken link removed** ) is? It 33.99 pounds and comes assembled so no soldering required, seems like a pretty good deal. Nigel i would appreicate your opinion on this. Thanks

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Hey,

I was wondering if any one could comment on how good a deal the product on the front page of ( **broken link removed** ) is? It 33.99 pounds and comes assembled so no soldering required, seems like a pretty good deal. Nigel i would appreicate your opinion on this. Thanks

MicroChip mailshot me an orderform for it in December, I filled the form in and faxed it back to one of the four companies listed on the order form (but to date I've heard nothing). The price on the form was £21.55+VAT, and presumably plus postage.

It looks a very useful piece of kit, and a very good price (at £21.55+V), you can download all the software and circuits for it from MicroChip - it's intended as an example of using the MicroChip USB PIC.

 

[stephenpic]

Why is he charging so much if they only charge 21?

Any ideas where I can get it at the 21+VAT ?

Thanks

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Why is he charging so much if they only charge 21?

Any ideas where I can get it at the 21+VAT ?

Thanks

The form said to 'fax to your MicroChip authorised distributor', and listed four:
Arrow
Farnell
Future
Unique Memec

I tried ringing, but none of them had heard of it, so I faxed it to Arrow to see what happens (which is nothing yet!, not even a reply).

Presumably he's buying from one of those four, at least his price includes VAT - which only makes it £8 odd more expensive, although he does change £1.99 postage on top.

 

[stephenpic]

I think ill give those companies a call tomorow and see if they have heard of it. Its only eight pounds but you also have the security of buying it from a well established trustable business probably with a nice bit of support too.



THanks nigel. BTW i know this is probably like real advanced stuff but how hard would it be to read the characters from a keyboard and show them on an LCD screen?

Thanks

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I think ill give those companies a call tomorow and see if they have heard of it. Its only eight pounds but you also have the security of buying it from a well established trustable business probably with a nice bit of support too.

If you get any sense, please let me know - and I'll try again :lol:

THanks nigel. BTW i know this is probably like real advanced stuff but how hard would it be to read the characters from a keyboard and show them on an LCD screen?

I have a tutorial on those very subjects - have a look at http://www.winpicprog.co.uk.

 

[stephenpic]

Excellent I have been reading, well browsing through your tutorials


Oh and by the way:

Yes
----- Original Message -----
From: <admin@onlinehoster.com>
To: "Julian Ilett" <julian@256.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 7:45 PM
Subject: Re: the PICkit1 FLASH Starter kit


> Did you buy the kits in the 21.99 + vat deal from:
> Arrow
> Farnell
> Future
> Unique Memec
>
> ?
>
> Thanks


Thats the 250.co.uk owner

 

[stephenpic]

Farnell - This is where they come from... although I cant seem to find them on their site thats where he says he bought them.

Update:Found them.... out of stock

 

[stephenpic]

Do PIC's have any memory in them which can be written to while they're in operation? So for instance if you had say a button hooked upto the PIC and someone pressed the button 6 times could that value be stored on the PIC? and then even store even if the PIC has no power?

Thanks

 

[stephenpic]

Just to let everyone know in the end i paid a total of 34 pounds for the item + postage from www.256.co.uk .

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Do PIC's have any memory in them which can be written to while they're in operation? So for instance if you had say a button hooked upto the PIC and someone pressed the button 6 times could that value be stored on the PIC? and then even store even if the PIC has no power?

Thanks

Many PIC's have an EEPROM area you can store permanent data in, the 16C84 (the original easily programmable PIC) had 64 bytes.

There's a fairly complex procedure to write to the EEPROM, presumably to stop memory corruption - which seems a good idea, many faults in modern TV's and VCR's are due to EEPROM corruption.

It's all explained in the datasheets.

 

[stephenpic]

I got my kit through this morning, im very impressed. Harder than I thought... looking for a good afordable book for ABSOLUTE 'newbie'