Im looking for a good uC

[roi_tau]

I know this question may sound strange

but:


Im looking for a 8bit uC (PIC) with internal oscilator and some adc. (maybe from the PIC16XXX family)

I looked in the microchip site but if anyone here has ever worked with such a uC ,please share.

There are so many and I get confused . (Im talking on flash memory and 512 RAM is enough.)

Roi

[MadMax]

the PICs are very good in my opinion, the only problem is that you need to buy a programmer for it (I have one from olimex.com, a PicStart+ remake, works perfectly), and you need to buy an IDE for it. So, you might be better off (I assume this is a first, or one of your first projects) buying an ATMega chip. I also would advice you not to use internal oscilators with ADCs, I happen to get strange readings when not using a good oscillator, I always use a (fairly) high frequency resonator.

[Canabots]

If you're interested in getting started with PICs, I would recommend going with one of the PICKit's from microchip (http://search.microchip.com/searchapp/searchhome.aspx?q=PICkit). I own the PICKit 1, though it is a little limiting because of the limited 8/14 pin microcontroller socket and programmer. The PICKit 2 has a header that plugs into a board with connections to certain pins. They both come with MPLAB IDE and a free Hitec PICC Lite Compiler (which I find pretty decent). I believe they also come with another compiler (I don't know if it's just a trial or not).

Though I have no experience with the ATMega Chips, it does appear there is much more documentation about it (particulairly on this site) and that it's much simpler.

Best of Luck!

Canabots

[szhang]

You don't need to buy an IDE for PICs, MPLAB is free.  I like to use visual studio with MPLAB (mplab can autogenerate Makefiles, which you can build with make).

I also recommand PICKit2, it has a great deal of features in a small and cheap package.  It even have a built-in logic analyzer and a UART tool.

Most people now days seem to work with PIC16F877, though I for one don't like the 8bit PIC architecture, the AVR architecture is nicer (one of the reason why AVRs have a nice, free C compiler).

On the other hand, I love the dsPIC/PIC24 (16bit) family.  For non-commercial purposes you can get a free C compiler for dsPICs too.

[roi_tau]

I already have the programmer with the compiler.

http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/easypic5/


so I think I will go with the PIC16F886 or 883

Does anyone familiar with those uC?

[cosminprund]

You don't necessary need to find someone that's familiar with a particular part. Most PICs work the same and you'll be able to adapt sample codes made for other PICs to your PIC with ease. That being said in the begining it's good to have the exact part that's used in the tutorials/samples you're reading, so you can compile and test and it would work.

[Canabots]

Yes, what cosminprund said was correct. Once, I found code for a PIC16F877 while searching for something for the PIC16F684. All I had to do was change some of the configurations and the pin names and it worked like a charm. You would have no problem with it.

[Robotics Guy]

As a previous poster said, you can get MPLAB IDE student edition for free. You also can get the C18 and C30 student edition compilers for free.

This is the recommended programmer for PIC18 & dsPIC chips:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=5

It's expensive, but worth it. It can program the full range of chips, and also be used for debugging. You won't have tons of problems with this programmer board that you might otherwise have with cheaper boards.

[cosminprund]

I've payd a 3rd of that price on a ICD2 clone. It works just fine, the only difference is that it's missing the RS232 connector (who cares about that when we've got USB ) and it can't power it's target circuit (again, who cares about that, if the target circuit is powered from the ICD2 it is not allowed to draw more then 500 mA, that's not the kind of power you'd use for a servo-controlling circuit!). Because of the missing RS232 and power circuitry my ICD2 clone is the size of a match box. Really nice.

The catch: I boght mine in Romania. It was not made in Romania so it's probably available elsewhere too!

[Robotics Guy]

Can you debug with it?

[cosminprund]

I sure hope so With a bit of luck I'd be testing that tomorrow. Not all PIC's support debuging and the 2 PIC's I got with my PICKit1 don't. I've got two more PIC's that do support debuging (40 pin DIP packages) but I wasn't able to test them because I didn't have a 40 pin socket. I've now got all the hardware and I've also got the required free time to test.