New! PicKit 2 Programmer Tutorial

Paul King has created the first tutorial called “Using the PICkit2: As a Programmer” of his planned series of PICkit 2 tutorials. This one covers setting up the MPLAB software and PICkit 2 programmer to quickly compile and program the 44 Pin PICkit2 Demo Boards.

Subsequent tutorials will cover using the programmer hardware as a Debugger, Logic Analyzer, Logic Output Tool, and a UART Tool.

Be sure to read David Powell’s “Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C” as a precursor to Paul’s series.

Happy Hacking!

Using the PICkit 2 : As a Programmer

Around the space, we have been using the PICkit 2 Debug Express quite a bit lately. This has allowed us to get pretty cozy with the functions of this handy little programmer and I thought I would share some of these features with you.

I’m sure you’ve read the previous tutorial ‘Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C‘, if you haven’t, you should go familiarize yourself with it now. Continuing on from there, after we have a successful build of a led blinking we can use the PICkit 2 to program our chip via the ICSP header.

Upcoming Events

It’s come to my attention that everyone may not be aware of the upcoming events. So I thought I’d post about them. They are however posted on the calendar to the right for future reference! We hope to see you at the these events!

Greater Baltimore Hamboree and Computerfest

http://www.gbhc.org
Timonium, MD
Maryland State Fairgrounds
2200 York Road

March 27, 2010 – Day 1 (6am-4pm)

March 28, 2010 – Day 2 (6am-2pm)

Robot Fest / Mini Maker Faire

http://robotfest.com/
National Electronics Museum
1745 West Nursery Road
Linthicum, MD 21090

April 24 (10am-3pm)

NEW! PIC C Programming Tutorial Posted

We just posted a new tutorial called Programming PIC Microcontrollers with C. It’s designed to get you started programming using MPLAB and CCS C Compiler. The only hardware you need to get started is the PicKit2 or PicKit3 which comes with a demo board. The demo board contains 8 LEDs, 1 Potentiometer, and a Pushbutton all wired and ready to go.

Check it out Here!

Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C

Learning to program microcontrollers seems like an impossible task but with the help and support of a Hackerspace you’ll find that it’s actually simple to get started. The members of Harford Hackerspace set out to learn by starting at the basics and gradually taking on more difficult applications. The key to our quick success was group participation. Most of us had at least attempted PIC programming, but it took a group effort to get the whole picture.

In this tutorial we will teach you what we learned. You can then take this new knowledge to your local hackerspace and put it to good use. Let’s get started!