My new EasyPIC6 dev-board arrived!

[stormBytes]

Let me thank you for taking the time to respond so elaborately. I'm certainly soaking this stuff up, but it seems as though there's something I'm just not getting. Maybe its' that I'm new to the electronics scene and haven't learned the proper way to see things yet? Who knows..

I've got this board in front of me. Its got lots sockets, buttons, LEDs, and a couple of other 'peripherals' with which I've yet to acquaint myself. I'm wondering, what is it that can be 'done' with this board that makes it all the rave? What am I missing?

The projects I've been planning, so far, are fairly stand alone, without any board-to-pc interfacing. You write your code, program your chip and the rest 'should' happen on its own. Like a toy car that takes inputs from sonar sensors (collision avoidance) and steers away from obstacles. Or an attachment for a digital camera (transceiver.

I'm wondering how do other people use this (or other) development boards? What kind of stuff to they do that make all these trinkets so practical? I've actually tried googling "EasyPIC project" but haven't gotten anything useful. The only thing I can come up with on my own is that this board has all these ports that allow you to plug it into a PC for the purpose of writing desktop applications that somehow interface with the hardware?

 

[vne147]

OK, I'll give you an example. Let say that you are writing a PIC based program that takes input from a numbered keypad and then makes a different output pin go hi depending on which number was pushed.

One thing you could do is write the code, program the PIC with your $20 ebay programmer, take the PIC and stick it in a breadboard, build up the circuit in the bread board with all the necessary push buttons, resistors, LEDs to show output pin state, caps, oscillator and power source. You could then apply power to your project and hope everything works. If not, either make sure the PIC is set up for ICSP (in-circuit serial programing) or take the PIC out and stick it back into the programmer. You'll have to go through this process MANY times while you're developing and debugging your code. Unless you somehow are able to write code that works right the first time. I usually am not.

If you have the development board, all the external components and peripheral hardware you need for the operation of the PIC and the testing are built in. Just stick your PIC in the board and you don't have to move anything or build up the circuit until the development is done and the program is working.

That's just one example. Maybe someone else can think of another.

 

[Mr RB]

...
I've got this board in front of me. Its got lots sockets, buttons, LEDs, and a couple of other 'peripherals' with which I've yet to acquaint myself. I'm wondering, what is it that can be 'done' with this board that makes it all the rave? What am I missing?

The projects I've been planning, so far, are fairly stand alone, without any board-to-pc interfacing. You write your code, program your chip and the rest 'should' happen on its own. Like a toy car that takes inputs from sonar sensors (collision avoidance) and steers away from obstacles. Or an attachment for a digital camera (transceiver.

I'm wondering how do other people use this (or other) development boards?
...

I think now you have asked the right questions! vne147 answered it pretty good above but I'll have a go too.

The best thing about a full-pin development board is that you don't have to do any hardware work to START developing an application. It doesn't matter what PIC pins your final project uses for buttons, you have a button on every pin. Likewise it doesn't matter what outputs your PIC will be driving, you have a nice bright LED on every PIC pin too. And there is an ADC pot with jumpers to connect it to any PORTA pins.

So if you wanted to build a temperature controller that turns on a heating element with temperature, you just use a LED as the "element" and the ADC pot to simulate the thermistor. Then when that is going you might want to add a LCD readout, so you just plug a 16x2 text LCD straight in, and cut and paste some LCD code into your project and bingo you have LCD working. Then let's say this is on a 40pin PIC 16F887, and now you decide you want to convert it to a 28pin PIC for the final app you just unplug the 40pin PIC and plug in the 28pin PIC and the LCD and everything still works fine, as the EasyPIC is designed that way. Want some buttons to adjust the temperature? They are already there, just press 'em. And if you want a RS232 serial data output to show stuff on the PC you just plug a cable straight in and cut and paste some more code.

So now you have developed an entire application, and even changed PICs or developed 2 separate PIC variations of the app, in minutes and never touched a breadboard or soldering iron. Finally you can just make a PCB or solder it up on veroboard etc.

Also because it is so easy to plug in an LCD and reprogram the PIC (assuming you have already written the code or someone else has!), I use my EasyPIC4 now mainly as test equipment to support my EasyPIC6. Things like signal generators, frequency meters, even digital storage scopes are just a couple of minutes away; plug in a PIC xtal and LCD then program;

Digital serial storage scope.

 

[stormBytes]

The onboard programmer is proprietary but you can and I have done ICSP with compatible PICs by connecting an external JDM programmer to the proper pins through the I/O headers. Also, the ICD connector allows you to use other external in-circuit de-buggers.

Okay so having been doing a LOT of reading lately (all things being infinitely relative of course) and starting to get the hand of this MPLab/ASM thing... I picked up an ICD2 and the eBay seller was nice enough to throw in a tiny little adapter board with a ZIFF socket. The ICD2 works just fine with the little ZIFF board, but when I try to plug it into the EXT PGM port on the EP6, with my 12F683 in DIP8, i get an error from MPLab:

ICDWarn0020: Invalid target device id (expected=0x23, read=0x0)

Not sure what this means, other then that the ICD2 isn't 'talking' to the PIC.

Any help would be lovely, seeing as you've got a similar setup.

I've decided to hang on to the EP6 given how folks on this board feel that its only a matter of 'growing into it'.


** Edit:

Almost forgot: I thought I'd mention that the socket selection jumpers are probably setup correctly since I've no problem using PicFlash/USB with the board/PIC as is. It's just the ICD2 that won't interact with the board/PIC

 

[vne147]

I don't have the EasyPIC6, I have the EasyPIC4. I have never tried to use the Microchip ICD with the EasyPIC board. So, sorry but I don't think I'll be much help. I did check out the datasheet for the 12F683 and in section 12.11 it talks about using a special adapter board when using an ICD. I'm not sure if this is something you considered or not. I saw your post on the MikroE forum. Hopefully someone there can help or maybe Mr RB knows.

One question though, do you have the JP7 jumper set for MCLR or I/O?

 

[stormBytes]

One question though, do you have the JP7 jumper set for MCLR or I/O?

Thanks for taking the time to research my issue. Yes I have posted to MicroE's forum and opened a support ticket. They directed me to the MikroC help file, specifically to the section on ICD2 MPLab. No word on any adapter board at all. Apparently I've done everything just as they outlined. I should also mention that the chip reads/writes just fine using PicFlash.

I've yet to get any response at all from the forum or any solution from support.

I'm not sure how I set up JP7, how should it be set?

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[vne147]

I'm not sure how I set up JP7, how should it be set?

I would think it should be set for MCLR but I'm not 100%. I would try both.

 

[stormBytes]

I responded to this in another thread -

I got it to work, jumpers as-is, but only for programming. For some odd reason ICD functionality isn't there.

Frustration.......

 

[Mr RB]

Hi stormbytes, I didn't see your earlier post beacuse I haven't been here much recently.

It's probably some issue with the little ZIF board you got. It might be an issue with LVP, you probably need to put a resistor on the ZIF board to hold the LVP pin at the right voltage so that normal HV programming works ok. I'm not sure about the ICD functionality communicating with the little ZIF board, again check all the pinouts etc.

In a pinch you can just wire a 8pin socket (plugged in to the EasyPIC 6 8pin socket) and connect that to your ZIF board, if you connect the 5 programming pins and the LVP pin you should get all the same functionality you would get if the PIC was plugged directly into the EasyPIC6.

 

[xpi0t0s]

Another way to get started with PICs is to follow something like Nigel's tutorials (Google for WinPicProg). As you'll see, before you can start programming you have to setup the hardware. And maybe at some point in the future when you're building your own hardware you have to debug the hardware too. But you need to establish first if it's a hardware or a software bug.

With the MikroE boards you don't have the messing about to do with the hardware. It is already setup and debugged; all you have to do is focus on the software. You can leap straight in and start programming with buttons, LEDs, keypads, displays and loads of other stuff already setup and waiting for you to start programming them. And if there's something you want to use that isn't on the board, the ports are all exposed with builtin pull-up/down/nowhere resistors - get one of MikroE's extensive range of prebuilt peripherals or make your own, or connect the board to your breadboard.

Plus you should really have a look at the MikroE compilers. I get what you say about lock-in. But why complicate it unnecessarily? You're now messing around with some silly error when you could be much further on with learning about PICs, and you could always look into MPLab later on. The free versions of the MikroE compilers are fully featured except for the maximum code they will generate, which is more than enough for some simple to moderately complex programs. They come with libraries to do all the low level stuff if you just want to get on and read/write the peripherals - which you don't have to use of course, but you could perhaps get your program working with the libraries, then cut out the libraries and do the low level stuff yourself.

So in effect it's a head-start and a good learning environment. Don't fear lock-in to the point of denying yourself access to some great free tools and books. And no, I don't work for MikroE, I'm just one of their satisfied customers.