[sdiy] WHICH PIC/UCONTROLLER should I buy today

[Eric Brombaugh]

On 08/13/2010 03:54 PM, dan snazelle wrote:
> what are the main differences between a PIC and a DSPIC?

They've _very_ different beasts:

* PIC is 8-bit, dsPIC is 16-bit
* PIC has only one working register, dsPIC has 16
* PIC doesn't do DSP natively, dsPIC has MAC w/ 2 48-bit accumulators, 
single-cycle multiply and parallel load/store/inc address modes
* dsPIC max CPU clock is faster
* dsPIC has on-chip peripherals PIC doesn't have (DCI, DAC, CRC, 12-bit 
ADC, pinmux, etc)
* etc

> the PIC/DSPIC family, what language is it based around?

You can use both C and assembly for either PIC or dsPIC. Some PIC 
systems also provide flavors of BASIC.

> Is it possible to jump into DSPIC's without any prior experience?

Sure. It might be slow going if you've never programmed anything before 
though. Some notion of how to do signal processing might help with the 
DSP side of things.

> the FV-1 from spin is relatively easy and has good support, is the same true of the PIC/DSPIC community?

Hmmm - you've found the FV-1 to be easy? In that case you should have no 
trouble with PIC/dsPIC. The MPLAB IDE that MCHP provides is much easier 
to use than the development tools that Spin provides and is much more of 
a professional tool.

Eric