Start With PIC Micro Controller

This is my little post to start with pic microcontroller,
here we will look into creating a PIC programmer,Creating a test project

Download following tools

ICProg - For loading program into PICMicro
Also download IC-Prog NT/2000 driver from there

http://www.ic-prog.com/

PIC Simulator IDE - We are going to use its basic compiler for the test program

http://www.oshonsoft.com/

Now build the Programmer





In my programmer i changed a little

Pic needs 13.2V in mclr . In circuit you can see a varible resitor in 7812 , I usded two 1N4148 instead of varible resistor to get 13.2V.

I used 2 gates of 74ls05 instead of uln2803, Also i was able to program PIC16F628A in 12V input instead of 15-18V . Its also working in the given 15-18V


Now build the test project to blink an led

I am using PIC16F628A , an led is connected to RB5(pin 11)



Now write the test code

open pic simulator IDE

goto options->Select MicroController->PIC16F628A
goto Tools->Basic Compiler

Write following code

'Set PORTB all output
TRISB = 0x00
loop:
PORTB.5 = 1
WaitMs 1000
PORTB.5 = 0
WaitMs 1000
Goto loop

Now save & compile a hex file will be generated

Load Program Into PIC

Now connect the programmer to the PC
open ic prog ,if u are using 2000/xp or higher goto options->misc->enable 2000/xp driver else error messages will come

Select device as PIC16F628A

Now load the hex file

Set options in right side

Oscilator - intRC I/O
Fuses - tick PWRT,BODEN

See screen shoot





Now in ic-prog command menu->Program all

If you successfully loaded the program to the PIC, Place the loaded PIC in the test circuit

Check! the led will blink every second!

Happy PICing!

My PIC Micro Experiences

It has been about 2 years that I did anything with Pic micro as I didn't have much time for that. But I did some in 2004-2006. During that time I was searching the net for studying PIC microcontrollers. I collected a lot of information.

So, here I am writing my old experience with Pic micro.

For me coding for Pic micro was not a problem. It took me only a short time to study Pic micro programming in high level languages, I have coded in Oshon Basic, PicBasic,MiKroBasic,MikroC,CCS.

My first problem to start PICing was to get a Pic Programmer . Pic Micro was not available in my area, it was only available in Ernakulum about 100+ km from my home. A ready made PIC Micro Programmer was available at Cochin but it was priced 2500Rs. At that time I couldn’t spent that much money. So I decided started to make one my own. During that time (2004) I was away from home for studying, I used to Come home only once a month. So, it took me about 4 months to build a working PIC Programmer.
In internet I found Mike Prekedo’s Elchepo. I built it but I was not able to make it working. I think I burned a 5-10 PICs. After that I found Oshon soft of Mr Vladmir Soso, There i found

A parellel port based PIC Programmer circuit & software

PIC Simulator IDE - A great PIC simulator with a basic compiler

I could successfully built this programmer and programmed a PIC16F628A,The first one I made was to blink an LED every second.After that I made another simple programmer (a JDM based one) it was a very good one, simple, serial port basedAfter making that programmer PICing became easy for me, but the components available were limited, (i didn't even get 3.2768 MHz crystal!) I made a clock, a water level controller, remote control for Pc. Some other simple ones like Pic with serial port, LCD etc. I am planning to make an embedded web server, but yet not started.

I ended my PICing a long time ago; i wish to start it all over again!

Read my next post on Starting PICing


Happy PICing

T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit)

I read about it month or two ago in Scott Hansel man's Blog. But I didn't try it at that time. Now when I tried it, I found that it is very useful & you can save a lot of time by using it. You can generate code/SQL, anything you want. I have created a Data Access + Stored Procedure generator using it. May be you already know about "code smith". It is a great template generating tool but it's not free. T4 is free, it's already included with VS 2008. we can use it for VS 2005 too by installing an addin. Oleg Sych has an excellent tutorial about T4.

Scott hanselman
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/T4TextTemplateTransformationToolkitCodeGenerationBestKeptVisualStudioSecret.aspx

Oleg Sych Tutorials

http://www.olegsych.com/2007/12/text-template-transformation-toolkit/

Software Developer After Death

PROGRAMMER















NETWORKING EXPERT
















HTML / XML EXPERT

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery Server Edition

From my view its a very good backup/disaster recovery tool. We can take full back of system drive(C Drive or system os drive) also can set to take data backups of selected folders.
Can schedule backups for particular time in a week day , can also set to take backup more than once per day .The best thing about it is its ability to restore to dissimilar hardware. So we can recover from a dissaster very quickly. The recovery disk is a very usefull one ,its really a vista bootable cd (like VISTAPE). In the recovery cd there is lot of tools., we can provide drivers, can connect to network(so its possible to restore from network), browse/manage file system, windows command prompt, can do everything as with vistape or bartpe . I have taken system drive backup of an old AMD athlon 3000+ with VIA chipset system and successfully
restored to another hardware (a new laptop with AMD athlon dual core with NVIDIA chipset) . On restore process its asked for lan driver for the new system (can skip this) , i provided the driver path containing the inf and driver files, after restoration i found the network card working fine. The restoration process was very smooth, My sytem drive backup was about 3 gb , it took about 10 minutes to restore. It was a windows 2003 server backup. On booting up restored system as its hardware are different windows 2003 showed detecting and installing hardware process , after that its showed network hardware detecting. Its took about 20 minutes
after that my systm was working fine ... same as like when i took the backup . Total time taken to restore to dissimilar hardware is about 30-40 minutes, look it will save lot of hours when a disaster occur. I also tried successfully to restore to the same hardware , it only took 10 minutes.....

Note: On restoring to dissimilar hardware you may require to activate the windows again.

Buy Symantec backup exec 12.5 at a Low Price from eCostSoftware

ScreenShoots

Experiences in managing web sever

For the past three weeks i am successfully managing a web server. I have installed sql server 2005 and .NET 3.5. I am using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery for taking backups. Please see my post about it. I have no problems with the server yet except some hacker attacks, i am regularly getting continuous sql server,ftp login attempts from china, pune(india),korea its are coming from same ip everyday.