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Newbie needs help!

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Hen23

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Not sure if I put this in the right topic, but I need some help. About 3 years
ago my father bought me the PicFun2 kit from Elabtronics. I wasn't to interested back then in it but have since become interested in electronics. I had soldered the board together as the manual implied but never got the thing to work and so gave up on learning about pic micros. I was searching though my closet today and found my old PicFun2 board and decided that after 3 years I was going to give it a try again. But there is a problem, I no longer have the manual or the CD that came with the kit. I would be willing to buy the software I need to program the PicFun2 board, but I have no idea what it called or where to get it? I really have no clue what I am doing here but am willing to learn. I have been programming on C++ for about 5 years now. But that is strictly software based and I have never had to interface with actual hardware. So does anyone know what software I need to program the PicFun2 and where to get it? The Pic's model is PIC16F84A. Thanks!
 
I have a quick look on the Web and found the following image. **broken link removed**

It looks like the programming setup is a serial design like JDM. The eLabtronics website also mentioned that all its develpment boards are JDM serial programming compatible. You can try using many free "programming softwares" which support JDM serial port programming.

Your best option is to find or get the original manual CD, which contains examples and hardware information like schematics etc. The company that sold the Kit has changed its name to eLabtronics so you might contact them for more information. But a quick look on their site reveals that they mught have already dropped the product and replaced it with a 16F628 board.

For general PIC programming, you can refer to the STICKY of this forum for many free development tools available.
 

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Thanks

eblc1388:

Thanks for the quick response. I found this programmer ICPROG 1.05D that programs to JDM programmers. I just got back from Barnes & Nobles and picked up two books: PIC Microcontroller Project Book by John IoVine and Programming and Customizing PicMicro Microcontrollers by Myke Predko. Guess it is time for some reading. So far I can write a sample HEX file to the PIC and read that same code back, so at least I know it is communicating properly and that I am able to write and read from the PIC controller. Now just got to make a program to light the LED's or something. I will keep you posted. Thanks again for igniting a 3 year old hobby of mine. :) Cheers!
 
Re: Thanks

Hen23 said:
So far I can write a sample HEX file to the PIC and read that same code back, so at least I know it is communicating properly and that I am able to write and read from the PIC controller.
This is already a very big step forward. Many are stuck trying to do just that.

Let the fun begin. May I suggest you go and visit this webpage. It helped me greatly when I started using PIC.

Starting with PICmicro controllers
 
Well only bad news :( I seem to have no problem reading and writing to the PIC but I can't get the LED program to work. I set up a simple circuit to run a small LED program . It consists of a 7805 Voltage Reg. which supplies about 5V+ to VDD, a 4Mhz Crystal and two 22 pf caps for an external clock, 2 LED's ran thru 470 ohms resistors and a 4.7K resistor between +5V and MCLR. But no matter what I tell it to do it always outputs .5V+ at RB0-RB7 and never changes. Is the PIC toasted? If so any recommendation on where to get another? Thanks for any info.
 
Hen23 said:
Well only bad news :( I seem to have no problem reading and writing to the PIC but I can't get the LED program to work.
Well, that's the fun part. :D

Hen23 said:
I set up a simple circuit to run a small LED program . It consists of a 7805 Voltage Reg. which supplies about 5V+ to VDD, a 4Mhz Crystal and two 22 pf caps for an external clock, 2 LED's ran thru 470 ohms resistors and a 4.7K resistor between +5V and MCLR.
So far so good.

Hen23 said:
But no matter what I tell it to do it always outputs .5V+ at RB0-RB7 and never changes. Is the PIC toasted? If so any recommendation on where to get another? Thanks for any info.

Several pointers:

1. if you have no trouble reading/writing to the PIC, chances are the PIC is fine
2 have you correctly setup the configuration word to use external crystal oscillator
3. have you changed to BANK1 when you try to setup the TRISB register
4. have you switched back to BANK0 when you change PORTB
5. is there a time delay routine between turning ON and OFF of LEDs so that a human can see the change(else its too fast changing at a few microseconds)
6. does you program loops at the end

Else you can use the forum [ c o d e ] attribute to post the whole program here.

Good luck.
 
Is this how your circuit is arranged. If it is then you need to post your code.

Mike.
 
Last edited:
Got it working!!! :) Had one problem. I had the config word set for RC(Resistor/Capacitor). After changing that I tried it and the LED's lit right up and it worked great. I then wrote some simple code to flash back and forth from one to the other with a 1000 ms delay between them. After that I hooked up 4 more Led's, turned off the light and created and small light show! :wink: Thanks again for all your help! I am going to bury my head back in the books and move on to the next step now that I got my Hello World working! This is sweet! I'll keep you posted :D
 
Making Progress

Ok, I have successfully outputted a short MIDI song to a piezo speaker I stole off an old dial-up modem of mine(I have DSL now:)) I have dabbled with Peek and using switchs to controlled the rate of my LED lights and can read and write to the EEPROM. The language seems a lot like old-school BASIC, which I am familar with! Ok then, on to the next chapter! 8)
 
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