I recently updated my MPLAB X installation to version 5.10. The compiler hasn't changed, just the IDE. Two surprises occurred. First is that my SAMD board now crashes the IDE when I plug it in. Only on Windows 10 on my HP tablet. Works fine on my Mac. But I won't get into that today. […]
I bought the Adafruit Metro M0 Express because it has both a debugger port soldered on and has a SAMD21 chip on it. While it has a bootloader and CircuitPython on it, I'm actually only interested in using it as a potentially student-friendly development platform for learning C / C++ on the Cortex M0+. I […]
After a few months twiddling PIC16 bits in simulation I need to get three, three-hour lab sessions written up for the PIC16F84. The school has provided me with two versions of their PIC16F84A boards, one designed for Mechatronics students and one for EE students. The board designs date to the dawn of the Arduino era […]
Introduction Here we're going to "kick the tires" on examining a simple example program, using three 8-bit microcontrollers: the classic PIC16F84A, it's updated cousin found on the Microchip Curiosity Board, the PIC16F1619, and the ATMEGA328P made famous by the Arduino UNO. We'll be using a "debugging first" approach to programming that is intended to enable students […]
As of MPLAB X 5 (v 5.05 and XC8 v2 compiler tested) you can develop projects for 8 bit MCUs like the PIC16, PIC18 and 8 bit AVR ATMEGAs. You can even reprogram your Arduino UNO board using the new Microchip PICKit 4! Here I'm going to have a look at using at the Assembler […]
I don't like Assembler programming. I was forced to use it in 1997 in EE 380 on the Motorola 68000 with Prof Nelson Durdle at the University of Alberta. Ditto, for C++. My C professor, Prof. Martin Mintchev, in EE 445 convinced me that it was bloated and terrible. So, since that time, I've been […]