PICmicro summary [was: POST cards]

[Peter Stuge]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:08:04AM -0700, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> 
> > What is BASIC Stamp and what is PIC ?
> 
> very nice small devices that are a full CPU with I/Os, and in the
> case of basic stamp, a basic interpreter built in.

Specifically the PIC devices are the "PICmicro Microcontroller"
products from Microchip, not to be confused with the AMD PIC
mentioned in another thread. One of the newer PICmicro devices that I
like in the smallest-but-still-quite-useful range is the PIC16F688;
http://microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1335&dDocName=en010215

35 instructions, couple of thousand instructions program memory,
5 MIPS, 256 bytes RAM, 256 bytes EEPROM, up to 12 IO pins multiplexed
with serial TX/RX and interrupt pin, timers, internal tuned 8MHz
oscillator, low power modes, etc. etc.

They come in lots of shapes and sizes but the entire 16F family is
the same core architecture, if you know one you pretty much know
them all. They also have the 18F family, which is optimized for C
compilers. I tend to only do assembler on the 16F's.

Fun to toy with and easy to use. :) Program (burner can be built for
just a few $) it, connect a power source, and away it goes.


//Peter