[sdiy] WHICH PIC/UCONTROLLER should I buy today

[Eric Brombaugh]

On 08/13/2010 05:18 PM, dan snazelle wrote:
> On Aug 13, 2010, at 7:19 PM, Eric Brombaugh wrote:
>> On 08/13/2010 03:54 PM, dan snazelle wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> 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.

Ah - that makes sense.

Don't try to read too much into the instruction set sizes of various 
processors. The FV-1 chip has only a few instructions, but they're 
extremely complex - each one does many things at once and learning how 
to use them effectively can be challenging. The dsPIC has more 
instructions, but they're simpler and easier to grasp.

FWIW - I converted some FV-1 code to dsPIC a while back and it takes 
about 5X more instructions to do the same function in dsPIC. That may 
translate into being able to do more operations in a sample period with 
the FV-1, but the dsPIC provides you with a lot more I/O and memory 
access than an FV-1 chip does. Pluses and minuses...

As far as support goes, there is also a fairly active forum for PIC & 
dsPIC on the MCHP website, so do give those a look too. They're not as 
geared towards audio applications, but they can be helpful.

Eric