[sdiy] WHICH PIC/UCONTROLLER should I buy today

[dan snazelle]

well when i say easy, I mean it hasnt been too hard to get some basic things going. the instruction set is quite small and there is a good forum for the chip.

thanks a lot for the info!!!




On Aug 13, 2010, at 7:19 PM, Eric Brombaugh wrote:

> 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
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