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Good place to learn

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IMHO:

If I were you, I'd invest 50$-60$ in a smaller starter kit (pickit2?) and then see if the 250$ (+ txs?, + shp?) is worth it. The pic is not very complicated (35 instructions?) and at some point you'll want to get your hands dirty and start building circuits, a pre-made project board will only take you so far.


Note that, if it makes any difference, I come from software background and I've had experience with the hc12 and a very nice dev. board.
 
Ouch, that's really expensive. I'm usually dealing with the AVR series of chips, so I don't know of any specific PIC evaluation tools, but as a point of reference, AVR eval tools start in the $30 range and there really ought to be something equivalent for PICs.

If you have a specific project in mind that can use all the display/buttons on that thing, it might be an ~okay~ idea, but like mactack said - at some point you'll have to wire something up.

Also, what level of electronics experience do you have/want? I'd sorta recommend spending a chunk of that money getting some other tools - multimeters, power supplies - an (very)entry level oscilloscope is in the $100-$200 range...
 
Here's a year old thread about this to check out...

**broken link removed**

I have both the EZ PIC3 and the BASIC.

I can swear by the board all day. It has really fast programming, a switch and LED for every pin, and every port has a 10 pin header for which you can plug in a number of inexpensive, pre-assembled boards (CAN, RTC, RS485, and more). Just about every basic feature that you have to kludge into a cheaper 'get acquainted' hobby board is on here:
- you can dedicate 16 (4x4 matrix) of the 32 switches to be a keypad, usually the first hobby project
- two pots for ADC work
- a one-wire temperature chip (optional)
- a second USB port to work with USB-ready PIC18s
- a serial port with MAX232 chip
- four 7-segment displays and drivers
- 2x16 LCD (no backlight)
- graphics display with backlight (optional)
- a PS2 port for keyboard or mouse work
- powers off USB port or AC wallwart (therein lies a story...)
- has 5 DIP sockets, 8 to 40 pin, so it will do 10Fs to 18Fs
and the list just goes on. All the add ons are at slave-labor prices.
A big pro is, this board will burn ANY .hex file to ANY of the supported PICs. So, write code in your favorite compiler, assemble down to HEX, and burn away. If you write code to match the circuitry already on the board (they supply good schematics) then you're ready to test on the spot, instantly.

THE CONS:
- it's not readilly reconfigurable. The onboard peripherals are dedicated to particular pins/ports. If you're designing for another board with a different layout, you'll find yourself constantly moving the processor back and forth between this and the board-in-development. Then again, if you haven't built ISCD into you're project, you're pretty much forced to go between a programmer and the devel board anyways.
If you're in initial design, and nothing is layed out yet, just design the board to follow the circuitry on the EZ3.
- Shipping seems to be forever. I have seen a few complaints about shipping times. It's coming from (Poland?) Eastern Europe, so expect a delay, what with customs and all.

The BASIC is something else again. There is plenty of griping about it. It has zip for formatting print out. Several examples don't work properly. Perusing their forum shows several threads where the solution to these problems is to copy and paste working code fom one of their other compilers (they do C and PASCAL also) into the errant code. Not real promising.
Then again, the authors are constantly writing new features, releasing major updates, and issuing bug fixes all the time. For free. And they stay on top of their forums discussions. It's a work in progress, but VERY promising.
I, however, don't write in it,even though I have it. First, I don't do much programming. Second, this is the three-words-where-one-word-would-do compiler. I find the source cumbersome and the formatting limited. I'm not really qualified to fully assess this, but as a beginner, I can say there are better, friendlier BASICs out there. They just don't support 18Fs, which makes them obsolescent, big time. There are BASICS that will do the latest PICs, but like the previous compilers mentioned, they are all damnabley expensive for a hobbyist. At $99 (when purchased with the board), this compiler still gives major bang for the buck.

So, while the board gets a solid thumbs up, the BASIC gets a 5/10.

BTW, while their English is a little stilted, it is still outstanding, and doesn't get in the way of a forum discussion, unlike several other forums that come to mind.

End Two Cents,
kenjj
 
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