[time-nuts] A Simple PIC Divider

Hal Murray hmurray at suespammers.org
Mon Aug 7 01:09:56 UTC 2006


> Right, this is essentially what my (and any other) PIC divider does.
> Simple, isn't it?

> And those 8-pin PICs are too cute to pass up.

Yup.  I saw the light when I was trying to work out a 1/2 second delay with 
something like a 555.  I couldn't quite get what I wanted.  Simple in 
software.  Saves board space too.


DigiKey sells the PICKit 2 for $35.  I haven't used it.  It's USB powered.  
Looks like it may have a small board for programming so you can program chips 
if you include a socket on your board.  Another approach is to include a 
programming header on your board.

The older version (PICKIt 1?) had an 8/14 pin socket and could program a few 
of the low cost chips. They were the PIC16F630/676 and PCI12F629/675.  The 
630/676 have 14 pins.  The 629/675 have 8 pins.  One of each pair had a 10 
bit A/D.

I don't think any of those chips has a serial port.  You would have to do 
(heroic) bit-banging if you needed that.



The other series of low cost small CPUs I've worked with is the AVR parts 
from Atmel.  The ATSTK500 is $80 at Digikey.  It programs most (all?) of the 
AVR parts.  It uses a wall wart and serial cable.


Both vendors offer free Windows software.  With a bit of poking around you 
can find versions of GCC or assemblers that support the chips you are 
interested in.  I'm not sure about programming from non-Windows systems.



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