Re: Help the absolute beginner order his PIC's ,Programmer,b
There are vast resources of information on PIC microcontrollers available on the web. Many public and university libraries have books on PIC micros. Here is a short list of popular PIC books you may want to look for:
Easy PIC'n
Easy Microcontrol'n (this is the revision and successor to Easy PIC'n)
Programming and Customizing PICmicro Microcontrollers
PIC'n up the Pace
Microcontrol'n Apps (this is the revision and successor to PIC'n up the Pace)
You can search and look these titles up at amazon.com, your local libraries, or a good bookstore that sells technical books, including foreign ones.
As far as programming PIC chips, you need a few things:
PC.
Chip programmer, which is a hardware device that actually "burns" the code and data into the PIC chip.
Software for the hardware Chip programmer (usually comes bundled with the hardware programmer)
Software to write the actual program code in, such as assembler or compiler (for example: MPLAB is a free application from MICROCHIP that is used to write and debug PIC assembly code, and PICBasic compiler (not free !) is an application to write the program code in Basic.
Check out the MicroEngineering Labs website for their excellent products, including items mentioned above. They sell product bundles that include everything you need to start programming PIC's right away.
https://www.melabs.com/
If all this seems complicated, you may want to consider Basic Stamp products, some of which are based on PIC chips (Stamp 1, Stamp 2).
You can find out about these at
https://www.parallax.com/
I hope this helps...
Cheers,
Greg.