PIC programmers? More generic programmer? Port?

[Anders Nelson]

I was a field application engineer for Microchip from 2008-2011, making
POCs for big name customers in the bay area using 8, 16 and 32-bit PICs.

You will likely find that Microchip support is awful, even if their
products are pretty neat. There was an Arduino port for PICs called
"ChipKit" but I don't know if that's still being developed.

The PicKit 3 is decent, if pretty slow. The ICD3 and later versions are
good. MPLAB X is excellent IMO. I should still hold a design partner
discount so if you want to get some tools, contact me offline and I'll see
if I can save you some money.

That all said, I'm a huge fan of the STM32 ARM devices and the community is
nearly as good as Nordic, and what Atmel used to be before it was acquired
by Microchip.

--
Anders Nelson


On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 4:26 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> On 3/3/21 10:47 AM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:
> >  > Any gotchas with the PICKit-3 clones out there? I have the feeling
> >  > that sticking with PIC would be better than trying to port to
> >  > Arduino, and imagine that as things continue to age there will be
> >  > more applications for interfaces. Any better but still cheapish
> >  > alternatives for programming?
> >
> > IIRC the PK-3 doesn't get any new device support at this point.
> > Existing stuff continues to work.  Depending on the nature of the
> > devices you might want to use in the future, it might be worth
> > considering a PK-4.
>
> I've used a PK-2 on PIC32MX devices.  I used MPLAB for a time, but
> OpenOCD also supports it.   After all, it's JTAG, sort of.
>
> What chips specifically?  On the PIC12 through PIC18 devices, I used the
> JDM cheapie with PonyProg.   Of course, you need a real serial port--I
> don't know of a USB one will work.
>
> Personally, you might find it more interesting to go with some of the
> STM32 ARM Cortex MCUs.  Many are 5V tolerant and will probably be around
> for a long time.   There's even an Arduino suite or two for the low-end
> ones.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
>
>