Re: PIC under Linux developpement Howto newbie

On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 12:31:29PM +0200, MvH wrote:
> Hello people on this list;
> 
> I am a linux user and I am starting to learn pics. I would like a 
> tutorial so I don't have to bother other people
> with simple/stupid questions. Like 'what programmer', 'what is a 
> programmer', and 'how to make a serial connection'

Excellent points.

> 
> Nobody in my close (learning) environment has told me to use assembler, 
> some on the net do, some don't, this is al  hard to make up my mind 
> about. If you would like to know what a newbie who's new to the subject 
> and wants to use linux in the whole process, needs and tries to achieve, 
> here are my suggestions:
> 
> A tutorial covering the fist steps, like what programmer, what 
> programming software, assembler basics, do's and don'ts, blink a led, 
> connect a max232, reading in serial output from the pic on a linux 
> machine ( minicom -l I found ) would be very helpful for beginners. I am 
> currently unraveling this information step by step.
> If this tutorial would be applicable to a wider range of pics, more 
> people could learn from this:
> 
> Sometimes you just 'get' a pic from someone, sometimes you're forced to 
> use one by a university that gives you software to use in school but not 
> at home. I mean, sometimes you don't even know what to get, only that 
> you have to finish it in 5 weeks time, and the electronics shops aren't 
> very helpful or don't have it onstock.

I think Wouter can be helpful in this respect. He ships stuff from his
webshop (http://www.voti.nl) all over the world.

> A second part about sensing the outside world, controlling dc motors, 
> doing ir communication, midi, could be pic specific.

Definitely.

> 
> The beginner can search the wiki to find out what pic to start with by 
> looking at examples. the first steps are pic independent so that's 
> already covered.
> 
> splitting up this information has following advantages:
> 
> Like I was told, different projects have different (pic) needs. Covering 
> multiple pics in the first part gives you a starting point to write 
> other documentation on, for specific types of pic's.

The problem is that it's confusing to new users not to have a specific
example.

> It would be like reading a book: first, you learn what applies to all of 
> them, and how to get 'going', then you learn what your specific needs 
> are. If you start reading in the back of the book, you could order the 
> hardware,  and flip in the beginning to get things working lateron 
> without problems.

I always approach this by starting with a single chip that has all of the
facilities on it, then introduce those facilities one at a time. For example
in the 16F 18 pin family, that part is the 16F88. It has everything. Since it's
a superset of all the other 16F 18 pin family PICS, simply by using it you
get all of the others under its umbrella.

> only one last thing:  I learned that a pic16f84 is 'old' ( by looking at 
> the creation dates of the html pages) 90% of the documentation is 
> written for this, but I can't get it anymore in any local shops, this is 
> confusing.

It's frustrating. That's why I wrote my 16F84 is obsolete pages.

> I am an art/mediatechnology student. I have limited programming 
> skills(perl) and I wouldn't mind learning assembler. I'm now doing 
> things in jal, but it's just as new as assembler would be.

jal, C, pyastra, (eventually NPCI), and other high level languages all have
their advantages. The problem I see is that so much of PIC culture is based
around assembly that everything else seems fractured in comparison.

> Hope I didn't open my big mouth just to cause annoyance,

I'm glad you opened your big mouth. No annoyance at all.

BAJ