PIC like Arduino

[giusepped]

Hi. It came in my mind a project. Build from scratch something like to Arduino, but by using PIC only. There is some project or someone else with the same idea? Or the idea itself is nonsense?
Regards

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

The Arduino is simply a particular development board using an AVR, there are many development boards using PIC's, and using AVR's as well of course.

I seem to recall there is a PIC development board specifically designed to be similar to an Arduino, but I can't remember what it was called now?.

 

[3v0]

Pinguino comes to mind. There may be other efforts.
HackingLab

 

[Wond3rboy]

Heres one as well, inspired by the Arduino with dimensions and all.

Amicus 18 - Amicus Welcome Page

 

[RMMM]

Heres one as well, inspired by the Arduino with dimensions and all.

Amicus 18 - Amicus Welcome Page

I hope the buy now page has been hacked and edited! Because £1000 for each shield is a little steep!

 

[3v0]

My guess is that it is a way to let us know these items are not for sale yet.

 

[Wond3rboy]

I hope the buy now page has been hacked and edited! Because £1000 for each shield is a little steep!

I bet it is, heres a link for buying it, says £29.99.

**broken link removed**

But than again, the chip they have used doesn't really get me excited. Would like to have other peoples comments too.


PS: If it costed £1000, i would need to sell myself off (lmao) to buy it.

 

[misterT]

Heres one as well, inspired by the Arduino with dimensions and all.

Amicus 18 - Amicus Welcome Page

I think it is really strange that it has a host USB-connector.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

My guess is that it is a way to let us know these items are not for sale yet.

That was my guess as well

Pity, as it looked quite a useful unit, but obviously it depends on the price of the extra modules.

 

[Ian Rogers]

The amicus18 is compatible with a number of arduino shields. But for all the love I have for PIC,,, why buy one if the arduino is a) cheaper, b) dominant and c) 200x more support.

If they stick on an sd card and other basic peripherals it would have been more useful. Sorry if I appear unsympathetic towards amicus18 but I have a FEZ Panda2 and that is a piece of gear no mistake.

Ian

 

[Wond3rboy]

I think it is really strange that it has a host USB-connector.

Oh yeah, besides, the problem with such boards is that it limits you to a specific chip/design. I would rather be exploring all the stuff thats available with PIC rather than sticking to something specific. The cost too is a matter as Ian pointed out. From what i have observed, the Arduino mania has destroyed many a good students in our university. They search for ICs for which there is example code available(i was surprised to see one guy paying 70$ as shipment fee to get a GPS chip for which code was available rather than making one up for the locally available chip!). Guess its easier to earn money nowadays(not true for me though lol!).

 

[RMMM]

That was my guess as well

Pity, as it looked quite a useful unit, but obviously it depends on the price of the extra modules.

I didn even think of that, but it seems a simple "Out of stock" or "Coming Soon" would not scare off as many customers as 1000 pounds.

If a customer was looking to make a purchase TODAY, they would likely head over to an Arduino sales site, never to return to Amicus..

just my take on it.

 

[3v0]

I think there is room for a open source PIC version of the arduino.

Make the hardware as compatible with arduino shields as possible.

Use a C based system as close to ardunio's as possible. In other words take the existing ardunio code and port it to the pic. Maybe with a few macros one could get the ardunio code to compile for the PIC.

Think of it as adding to the existing project rather then competing with it.

 

[Ian Rogers]

The Arduino uses objects built with C++ I'm sure it can be done.. but like I said WHY? If I develop with a PIC then it is chosen for its functionality.. If you NEED to make it arduino compatible........just get an arduino!

Ian

 

[3v0]

The arduino is an entry level great for exploration or teaching. But I prefer to teach Micorchip because they support education. I have a Microchip educational rep that provides me with micro controller and other materials. When I attempted to contact Atmel they did not return my email.

But one has to ask why arduino has been so wildly successful. The shields, the software, the hype?

My thinking is that the arduino simply makes it considerably easier to get from here to there. As an instructor I would love to have people start with a system like this and in time dump the training wheels. Honestly I do not much care for the boot loader approach as I would rather see people using debuggers. But in some cases the boot loader does make sense.

Perhaps we should learn from arduino's success and move ahead.

 

[Wond3rboy]

Hi, i second your point that we should take the positives out of the Arduinos popularity. Dumping the training wheels hasn't worked over here(our uni). About the open source bit, Amicus 18 does provide a schematic in its manual

https://www.electro-tech-online.com...micus1820Hardware20Manual20-20Revision201.pdf

the software's free as well.

 

[cr0sh]

From what i have observed, the Arduino mania has destroyed many a good students in our university. They search for ICs for which there is example code available(i was surprised to see one guy paying 70$ as shipment fee to get a GPS chip for which code was available rather than making one up for the locally available chip!). Guess its easier to earn money nowadays(not true for me though lol!).

That seems like sheer laziness more than anything; you see people asking for code example all the time here for PIC-related projects as well...

 

[3v0]

Dumping the training wheels hasn't worked over here(our uni).

I understand that. I started one group of students with a flow code like product. They were unhappy to move to C. Thinking of it I do not know anyone here who has moved from flow code to C.

For some time I have been thinking of starting students with a subset of C with a few macros to reduce the visual complexity. I have never played with the arduino but expect that is what they have done.

 

[cr0sh]

I think there is room for a open source PIC version of the arduino.

Make the hardware as compatible with arduino shields as possible.

Use a C based system as close to ardunio's as possible. In other words take the existing ardunio code and port it to the pic. Maybe with a few macros one could get the ardunio code to compile for the PIC.

Think of it as adding to the existing project rather then competing with it.

The problem with an open-source PIC design is the compiler; the Arduino was designed using the ATMega8 (originally) because there was extensive support for the AVR lineup in the gcc arena, which is available for -all- major platforms (and tons of "minor" ones, too). That, coupled with basing the IDE off of the Processing IDE (which was also using the ATMega lineup itself for hardware interfacing) makes it that much more "friendly".

Something to remember is that the Arduino (and too an extent Processing, as well - but they are only somewhat related projects, they aren't dependent on one another) was originally it was designed to appeal and be understood (and more so used) by those who weren't into programming or electronics. It was meant to be simple and easy to pick up. To that end, it also had to work with whatever PC system was being used (Windows, Mac, Linux) - so it had to be cross-platform. Going with Java for the IDE and gcc (avrgcc) for the compiler made perfect sense.

There isn't such a compiler for the PIC that is open source and free; the PIC is only barely supported in gcc land - there's also been a few projects to support the PIC under Linux, at least, but only a small subset of the entire family, and it hasn't got much traction. Most people have stuck with AVRs and ARM for this reason, I think, when they want open-source hardware.

 

[cr0sh]

The arduino is an entry level great for exploration or teaching. But I prefer to teach Micorchip because they support education. I have a Microchip educational rep that provides me with micro controller and other materials. When I attempted to contact Atmel they did not return my email.

But one has to ask why arduino has been so wildly successful. The shields, the software, the hype?

My thinking is that the arduino simply makes it considerably easier to get from here to there. As an instructor I would love to have people start with a system like this and in time dump the training wheels. Honestly I do not much care for the boot loader approach as I would rather see people using debuggers. But in some cases the boot loader does make sense.

Perhaps we should learn from arduino's success and move ahead.

Atmel has nothing to do with the Arduino; they merely supply the AVR microcontroller (ie, ATMega8/168/328 etc) that others use. Did you try to contact anybody with the Arduino group? Those are the people you need to contact. Or - just build your own Arduinos; everything is completely open-source, you don't need to go to a singular company to do this kind of thing. You just need to get the parts, and build.

I am not sure what the complaint is about bootloaders; I understand the debugging issue you bring up, but you can't get that kind of thing in an open-source manner for the AVR anyhow, and you need a different kind of hardware setup (usually, when people have asked about this kind of thing at the Arduino forums, they are referred to use AVR Studio or such - but if they are asking about this, they are already fairly advanced; but still, it comes down to cost - a debugging environment isn't cheap for AVR, from my understanding - and certainly not open source).

The thing I like about the PIC is that it has a much greater level of support (which comes from its lower per-unit price, so everybody and their brother uses them, thus Microchip has a much greater demand than Atmel), which means more are produced, etc - Atmel struggles with having to batch up runs of the chips, and when they are run, they are bought out really quickly, and so you have this "wave-like" production shortage issue.

You can't recreate what the Arduino group has accomplished; the time to do that is long past (what would've been needed, likely, would have been some kind of push back in the early days - mid to late 1990s or so - to have Microchip provide support and knowledge to create open-source compilers and such, that could be run under Linux, on the Mac, and Windows). It was a synergistic thing that just "happened". It didn't happen for the PIC camp, for probably a ton of different reasons. You can't force this kind of thing; no one knows the secret formula - likely there isn't one, and everything is non-deterministic.