Production programming

[jmgelba]

For the first time I have to provide firmware for an assembly company to program boards on an assembly line at around 20,000 units a year. I've only ever programmed at low volume which I do manually with PicKit3 and MPLAB. Currently I set the fuses in MPLAB but now I need to have them embedded in the program.

What do I need to provide for them to program the board? What questions should I be asking them?

Thanks.

[HenrikOlsson]

First of all I need to be clear that I don't have any experience with farming out programming to assembly houses etc. OK, that's done.

Embedding the COFNIG fuses in the code is easy. Just use the #CONFIG directive - provided you have PBP3 - if you're still on 2.6 or whatever you need to do it the old way and edit the device specific include file.

Exactly how to program the devices depends on if it's supposed to be fully automated programming setup or if there will be an operator there. The "easiest" and cheapest is probably to get them a couple of PICkit3's setup for PTG with the firmware loaded. Connect programmer, press button, wait, done.

I think I've seen some blog posts somewhere about scripting/automating the PICKit3 software for fully automated programming which may be of interest. A bunch of PICKit3 connected to a bed of Nails on to which an whole panel is placed and away you go. This of course comes at a cost of designing and building the programming fixture etc.

Another viable option is to buy the chips with the code already in them. Microchip will do that for you at very little additional cost.

Well, that's me thinking out loud. Hopefully someone with actual experience will chime in.

/Henrik.

[mark_s]

One option, Microchip will pre-program chips for a small fee prior to board assembly.

Edit Henrik beat me.

[Ioannis]

If you give your hex file to a third company, then they can copy all your project.

I think it is more wise, as others posted, to have Microchip do the job for you, especially at this scale.

Also Pickit3 is not a production tool. It is not very reliable from my experience. ICD3 is OK.

Ioannis

[LinkMTech]

have Microchip do the job for you, especially at this scale.

I 4th the motion.

Congratulations! by the way.