PIC books, tutorials

[cbud]

I am a beginner PIC programmer. I am wanting to know some suggestions for books or tutorials for the beginner. Datasheets do not make good tutorials.

I did see the thread "Sticky: Newcomers, please read! (PIC regarded) Upd. 0xD Jay.slovak 17th April 2005 06:05 AM by Jay.slovak "

Since the thread is almost 3 years old, I was asking for any more recent books or tutorials that others have found to have helpful information. If this has already been discussed in another thread, I apologize.

Thank you for your time and information.

cbud

 

[3v0]

If you have not read the sticky read it.

Do you know how to program and if so in what language ?

If not what language would you like to learn ?

 

[cbud]

My programming experience is with C++ (2 terms at the community college, 10 years ago). I think I understand C enough that I would prefer to stick with it for programming the PIC.

I have started following links on the "sticky" and will continue to do so. But I was hoping that if there was a good book available, it would be helpful (I do not always have access to the net when I have time to read). Also, the book would probably take a couple weeks to arrive, in the meanwhile I will use the available information in the "sticky" or anything else you believe may be helpful.

Thank you.

cbud

 

[3v0]

My programming experience is with C++ (2 terms at the community college, 10 years ago). I think I understand C enough that I would prefer to stick with it for programming the PIC.

I have started following links on the "sticky" and will continue to do so. But I was hoping that if there was a good book available, it would be helpful (I do not always have access to the net when I have time to read). Also, the book would probably take a couple weeks to arrive, in the meanwhile I will use the available information in the "sticky" or anything else you believe may be helpful.

Thank you.

cbud

To work with C I suggest that you start with the 18F line. The compiler is free from microchip and that more the outweighs the slight additional cost of the chips. They also tend to have more memory which is good.

You will need a PIC programmer. For that I would recommend a PICkit2 from microchip or better yet Bill's Junebug kit. It is a PICkit2 clone that includes a simple 18F1320 target board with switches, LEDs etc. I have several of them that I use in my classroom, great for learning.

Good tutorials for this combo are a bit hard to find. I am working on a set but they are far from done. If you can read a data sheet it is not a big deal to take another set of tutorials and use them but write your code in C. Nigel's ASM tutorials would work nicely.

OR

You could start with PIC16F87X Tutorial by Example by P Anderson. He has some of the best C tutorials. Only the first 21 pages are free. I think the rest of the set is $50. Worth the money. The problem is that it uses the CCS compiler. It is a very good compiler but the free demo version only generates 2K of code and the 16F877A.
EDIT: The full command line version of the CCS PCM compiler is $150. The good news is that it integrates with MPLAB for full debugging.

 

[cbud]

Thank you for the info. I do already have the PICKit2 and have built a servo controller from an example I found on the net. It uses the PIC12F683, I was successful with it. I used the CC5X to covert my C code to hex and then the PICKit2 programmer and software.

I was just hoping for a book to speed up the learning process.