How to get started with PIC?

[ElectricDruid]

There's a lot to be said with startiung on a low end basic PIC...else you'll be swamped with the huge amount of new info to take in setting up all the peripherals.

My preferred PIC of choice nowadays is a 16F1828 (it's chocka with stuff for just a quid), but I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner ....when I started learning this stuff a couple of years ago the starter kit came bundled with a PIC16f690 which was peripheral rich, but an absolute bar steward as a starter PIC! (and hampered me no end), So perhaps start with a lowly PIC...wrap your head around what they're doing with all the registers & then gear up & start getting into some funky more powerful PICs.

Totally agree with that. I started with the PICKit1, which came with a 12F675 and a 16F684. Both pretty basic chips for starters. The reason that the VCLFO and VCADSRs that I did use the 16F684 is because of that starter kit - it was simply the chip I had.

The recent 32MHz 16F18xx and 16F19xx chips are really something else for the money they cost (pennies!). They move it up another gear. The 32MHz max clock is a 60% speed boost for a start, and that affects timer accuracy, maximum PWM speeds/resolution, etc etc. It's a big change.

As to the endless debate AVR or PIC, I don't care. I've seen great work done on both platforms, and shitty code on each too. If you can be bothered to try both, choose the flavour that suits you best. Personally, I find the process of finding my way around another new development environment and so forth so bloody painful that I don't do it unless I have to. I finished up using PICs not AVRs by accident, not as the result of some careful evaluation process, but I don't actually think that matters. I'm quite sure I'd have been able to do all the things I've done on AVR just the same. In fact, I know some people who have!

Tom