[time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project?

Bob Camp lists at rtty.us
Sun May 26 07:50:54 EDT 2013


Hi

One of the original starting points was a free tool chain. Paying major money for a compiler is moving a bit far from that. You would have to do a *lot* of home projects to justify that cost.

Bob
 
On May 25, 2013, at 10:17 PM, Clint Turner <turner at ussc.com> wrote:

> Having used PICs since 1990, I've designed them into projects rather than getting a board like a Parallax or Arduino (either of which are far more expensive than the chip and the few components required to make it work) and then shoehorning someone else's board into my project.
> 
> Since the late 90's, I've used the PICC compiler (by CCS) which - once you know it - can produce reasonably tight code that is can also be fast:  I've done a number of audio DSP projects on 16F platforms - mostly in "C" - and had plenty of horsepower.  A bit expensive, but I updated only every 4-7 years and with as many projects that I've done (I have used rails of the things with personal/amateur/work projects as well as some commercial prototypes) the time/power is worth the cost.
> 
> The PICs that I use the most are the 12F683 - an 8-pin device with 10 bits of A/D and a 10 bit PWM:  With a 20 MHz xtal, I've done audio DSP with this.  As it turns out, a great many projects require <=6 pins (the PIC using an internal R/C clock - 1 of the pins is input-only) and this will do the trick.
> 
> The other one that I use is the 16F88 - It has the A/D, PWM as well as I2C/SCL and USARTs and internal clocks - an 18 pin device, 16 of which can be used for I/O (1 of those only does "I").  With more RAM/Program memory, one can do more DSP than with the '683...
> 
> For more horsepower I'll often use the 18F2620/18F4620's - 28/40 pin devices (respectively) and these have more I/O and peripherals. There's are close cousins of this that also has hardware-based USB (I don't recall the number of an example, however...)
> 
> I've yet to do anything with the 24F and dsPICs, but maybe, the next time I update the compiler...
> 
> 73,
> 
> Clint
> KA7OEI
> 
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