go away spammer

Author Topic: $50 robot programming software  (Read 2207 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Juicaj1Topic starter

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 7
  • Helpful? 0
$50 robot programming software
« on: August 26, 2010, 08:18:16 PM »
I took a robotics summer course at digipen, which was awesome, and so we got MPLAB for programming and I was wondering if that would work fine with the $50 robot or if I'm better off downloading all the stuff from the tutorial?

Offline waltr

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,944
  • Helpful? 99
Re: $50 robot programming software
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2010, 07:12:55 AM »
MPLAB is for working with PIC processors from Microchip. It is also available as a free download.
http://www.microchip.com

The $50 robot tutorial uses an Atmel processor and requires different software tools.
However, if you can write your own code from the functional descriptions in the $50 tutorial a PIC processor could be used instead of the Atmel.

Offline Juicaj1Topic starter

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 7
  • Helpful? 0
Re: $50 robot programming software
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2010, 04:10:21 PM »
ok I'm kind of understanding that. the $50 robot is just written in C though right? so I could just copy the code into MPLAB? As you can probably tell I'm pretty new to all of this stuff. We also used Terra term for controlling our robot and loading the code on to it. Would I be able to use that at all with the $50 robot?

Offline waltr

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,944
  • Helpful? 99
Re: $50 robot programming software
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2010, 06:04:06 PM »
Much of the C code for a different processor would work on a PIC. However, there is the initialization of the PIC hardware that would be different and you would need to write. You would also need to buy a device to program the hex file into the PIC. The PICKit2 from Microchip is highly recommended and only costs $35.

A nice feature of the Microchip tools, MPLAB and HiTech C compiler, is that they are free to download. You can then start learning and working on code without buying anything. Since you already have experience with PICs and MPLAB go for it. The AVR source code for the $50 bot is also free so you can work on porting it to a PIC.

Good luck and have fun.


 


Get Your Ad Here

data_list