PIC Programming Book Recommendation - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: Teknotronix
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 03:03:17 am
content: I'm after a good PIC programming book that focuses more on the use of MPLAB if possible. Any opinions?I'm not a total beginner but it was 10 years ago that I wrote my last PIC program and that was all in assembler.

author: kek
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 04:35:26 am
content: I got back into pic programming over a year ago (after playing around in assembler about 10 years ago too!).The general recommendation that I found getting back into programming the PIC was to use C. (Not wanting to start a C vs asm thing)I found "Programming 16-bit Microcontrollers in C Learning to Fly the PIC24"http://flyingpic24.com/to be a great resource. I've spent most of my time on the chapter "dark screen" where he uses multiple interrupts to generate a composite video waveform. He describes using an "Explorer 16 demonstration board" but I wanted to dive right in so I used what I had on hand - a PIC24F64GA002 (something I got free from a design contest parts request). I also found another great resource in trying to get my setup to work - the data sheet on the exact part I was using (spent some time on "peripheral pin select" - which isn't mentioned in the book because the huge pin count chip he was using didn't use this feature).MPLAB is covered at the start of his book.Ken

author: Teknotronix
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 04:45:05 am
content: Thanks Ken. I will check out that book.Yeah I don't want to go down the ASM path again as I need to get the project done pretty quick. I am using a PIC18 so if the book focuses on that It would be advantageous.I will be buying a PicKit 3 for programming/debugging duties. Does anyone know if the PDF's that come with it have good tutorials?

author: pb
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 06:04:35 am
content: Quote from: kek on December 05, 2010, 04:35:26 amI love the PIC32 version of this book as well.

author: Murphy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 04:39:11 pm
content: Microchip's official documentation is decent. The PIC datasheet tells you everything you need to know about the hardware and the manual for the compiler tells you how to make C work.

author: TopherTheME
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2010, 05:15:16 pm
content: Quote from: pb on December 05, 2010, 06:04:35 amSame here. A must have if you're getting started in PIC32s.

author: Teknotronix
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2010, 02:09:18 am
content: Thanks everyone for the feedback. I will dig into the docs that come with the compiler and the data sheets and go from there.

author: Chris_R
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2010, 07:50:47 pm
content: I'm going to third (or fourth, I've lost count) the flying the PIC24 book. I use it quite a bit even when I'm not using PICs because of its easy to understand explanations. I recently used it to interface an SD card with an LPC microcontroller.If you can borrow the book, or get it incredibly cheap I would recommend the book PIC in Practice. It does teach how to program the PIC in assembler which I think is rather pointless these days, but I think it's worth a quick read just because it explains the basic concepts of PICs and you can skip over the code. After you've got the idea (which should only be a few hours because it's a short book) then go straight to a better book that teaches PICs with C. But as I said, don't pay for this book.