Suggest me how start working with PICxx

Hello!

I need to learn how to use PICxx/32 for the summer. I'm a CS/Electronic student at uni, but I've only used spartan FPGAs and a Motorola chip (I can't remember its name, it was about 2 years ago)

I'm good with Modelsim/Xilinx using VHDL, but I have a job over the summer which might involve using PIC32s, which I've never used. I've told them this, so I guess they'd teach me, but I'd rather have some experience with them.

Being a student I don't have much money for hardware, though I'm happy to buy a start kit, or make my own - starter kits are £40ish (from what I have seen), apart from the microstick which is ~£17.

What would be a good place to start and what hardware do I need? Is MPLAB X able to simulate the chip and show wave outputs etc?

I've also not done very much in the way of actual electronics - my degree is more towards the digital side (though I have done Linear circuits and a few other things)

Any advice would be amazing

Thank you very much!
Mike =]

Re: Starting with PICxx?

Yes Fine
First download MPLAB X or lower version
and then download IDE Simulator for simulate
try to program with assembly language then improve with high level language
You can good start with this, then improve step by step

Re: Starting with PICxx?

the Microchip microstick only works with certain PIC24 and dsPIC processors (unless you have seen one for a PIC32). If a PIC24 would do use the microstick it is very good and cheap!

have a look at the PIC32 starter kits
STARTER KITS - microchipDIRECT

I would not bother with PIC32 assembly language use C and the Microchip APIs etc

Re: Starting with PICxx?

horace1 said:

the Microchip microstick only works with certain PIC24 and dsPIC processors (unless you have seen one for a PIC32). If a PIC24 would do use the microstick it is very good and cheap!

I would not bother with PIC32 assembly language use C and the Microchip APIs etc

Click to expand...

Yeah, I wasn't going to bother with assembly. I can use it alright (though I might need a fairly comprehensive cheat sheet now ), and I'm decent with C, I just need to get used to working with the APIs and the actual PICs themselves.
I saw that the sticks can only work with PIC24s and the DSP chip. I thought that would be fine as they would both have similar steps in terms of actually programming/using the chip (I guess the pins would be different). I might also be doing some DSP so playing around with the DSP chip would be good anyway.

I really didn't know the chips themselves were so cheap!

Horace, since you're from the UK as well, where do you get your components from? e.g. power supply, breadboard, LEDs, resistors, etc

Thanks for such a quick response

Re: Starting with PICxx?

the microstick is a good start and the PIC24/dsPIC C and APIs are similar to the PIC32. The microstick has an onboard programmer and has a header to plug into a breadboard for your own circuits. It is also simple to attach a USB to serial TTL cable such as the FTDI TTL-232R-3V3
USB TTL Serial

for one off components we usually buy from Farnel
MICROCHIP|DM330013|BOARD, DEVELOPMENT, MICROSTICK | Farnell United Kingdom