Development Board Recomendations ??? [Archive]

tico

- 26th January 2007, 03:41

I have been looking to purchase a development board to use with PBP. There are so many out there to choose from.
What boards do you guys use or what would you recomend.
Pro and cons to boards greatly apreciated.

chuck

- 26th January 2007, 18:55

I would go for EasyPIC 4 this comes with ICD it support 8-40pin

I have the easypic3 board and fnd it very useful loads of features

some say but you may not use all of the features but it very good value for money, My Easypic3 cost me £99 and that come with GLD and LCD

regards,

chuck

malc-c

- 26th January 2007, 22:26

Been thinking of getting one of the EasyPIC boards for some time now, and with the pound so strong against the dollar, it might actually work out cheaper purchasing direct from the US than via the UK distributor :)

Edit:
Just checked and the cost from the US is:
Product Total: £ 63.84 GBP
Shipping: £ 13.41 GBP
Order Total: £ 77.25 GBP

The cost from the UK distributor (http://www.paltronix.com/index.html ) is

Subtotal £69.00
Shipping (Standard Post) £5.00
VAT £12.95
Total £86.95

So you could save yourself £9.70 buy ordering from the US. Only drawback is the time it takes to get here. If you want it next day then the cost is £89.89

muddy0409

- 27th January 2007, 03:40

Hi all,
I am using one from Microbyte Electronics in Australia. www.microbyte.com.au
It does everything I want Very, Very well. Comes with IC-PROG and handles 8 - 40 pin chips. There will be a PLCC44 adaptor available pretty soon. In short, this is a great board (although quite expensive) and I cannot say enough good things about it.

mister_e

- 28th January 2007, 23:42

Any board from MikroElektronika!

I have EasyPIC 4 + various accessory boards and really love it. It support all < 40 pins PIC, from the 10F to 18F. On board USB programmer etc etc etc. For what you have on-board, you can't beat it. OK the ICD is useless if you don't have any MikroElektronika compiler but... i never use ICD (or 1-2 times / year) ... my ICD-2 is gathering dust here ;)

In USA, i recommend Circuit-Ed (https://www.shop.circuit-ed.com/splashPage.hg)

tico

- 29th January 2007, 00:37

Well I guess 3 out of 4 developers recomend the EasyPic 4.
Thanks for the input.

bbarney

- 29th January 2007, 17:48

Where to get it here in Canada Mister E

mister_e

- 29th January 2007, 20:58

As far as i'm aware of there's no Canadian distributor. I got mine from Circuit-Ed.

For now, to proceed an order to ship in canada, you have to contact Warren directly with your order.
[email protected]

They have a pretty nice and quite fast service.

bbarney

- 29th January 2007, 23:48

Thank's Steve

vacpress

- 30th January 2007, 00:10

so... i looked at the easypic 4 boards -they seem amazing featurres\dollar... however, one major issue held me back... is it really helpfull to have to switch in LEDs and switches in banks of 8?

Sure it makes the device more economical and easier to route, but really, putting all of port a as switches and b as LEDs is a bit silly?

most of my programs have a few switches and LEDS, not 8 and 8! what does this do to the smaller devices? also, is there any flexibility with LCD pin assignments, etc?

please correct me if this is not the case, or if you have found this concern isnt an issue in practice! i had my card out at one point! then i read the manual and backed off...

-Robert

mister_e

- 30th January 2007, 04:30

i have to agree, it's a bit silly but, you could still attach your breadboard to it really easy. 2 choice, do your own personal adapter or use the EasyConnect adapter

http://mikroe.com/en/tools/easyconnect/images/easyconnect_onboard_250.jpg

sometimes EasyInput is also handy

http://mikroe.com/en/tools/easyinput/images/easyinput_onboard_250.jpghttp://mikroe.com/en/tools/easyconnect/images/easyconnect_onboard_200.jpg

Have a look at their plug-in board. Cheap enough to buy few of each.

And nope, there's no way to change the default LCD pinout. It's assign to PORTD (+ PORTB for GLCD) all the time and don't work on smaller device than 40 pins unless you trick the board. Nothing is perfect!

I had an idea for the ultimate development board... but when i calculate the final pricing, it was clear enough that it was way too expensive and out of the actual competition pricing. So i flushed the idea.

vacpress

- 31st January 2007, 01:14

i would be very interested in a board that has everything the easy pic 3/4 has, but with more routing flexability.. this dosent have to be a major cost inflation over their design... i just needs to be a bit different, and possibly not use PC style jumpers, but instead use 2 sets of female header and jumper wires or something... i mean... i really want this board.. but i dont want it to end up being a terminal for some 40 pin pic i never take out of it..

it seems great for education or something...

this doohickey i see with the screw terminals... this just extends a port to 8 screw terminals?

sorta OK... i mean.. wouldnt it have been Cooool if it was possible to have the 2 LCDs at least on different ports?

oh well. it still looks like a rad board.. many less 'is it this or that' problems to face durring debugging... i guess you develop the project on the board and then change the code for the actual device... i dunno... ~$150 can buy alot of other neat stuff if you allready have the essentials of what the easypic has...
carry on :_)

muddy0409

- 31st January 2007, 02:37

Hi Vac,
Did you have a look at the Microbyte board I mentioned above?
That would address most of your queries!!

vacpress

- 31st January 2007, 09:45

sorta.. eeexcept.. almost twice as expensive with marginal differences. the easypic board has some key features for me.. the usb port for working with 4550s, my main interest, as well as the usb programmer... this board looks nice as well.. i think i will stick with breadboards and my $25 carrier board i added terminal strips to and a usb port and other various common goodies.. for a total cost of like $40...

muddy0409

- 1st February 2007, 01:20

Yep, fair enough.
Can't argue with that!

malc-c

- 3rd February 2007, 21:49

Came across another board, on a slightly smaller scale than the EasyPIC boards, but a lot more expensive :(

http://www.msebilbao.com/tienda/images/picschool.jpg

http://www.msebilbao.com/tienda/product_info.php?cPath=23_87&products_id=341

tico

- 20th February 2007, 16:15

Just wanted to say thanks for all of your input. I ordered the ezPic4 and its in began toying with it and must say it has alot of nice feature modular expansion and a built in programmmer.

Thanks for all your advice and guidance.

mister_e

- 20th February 2007, 16:23

Sweet!

I never used ANY development board before i decide to buy EasyPic 4. Of course for specific project i'm not going to use it anyway. But for short term, fast test and/or development it's really THA right thing to use.

To test forum user code.. it's even better and save me tons of time ;)

Enjoy!

EDIT: if you want to launch the Programmer within MicroCode Studio, here's the command line you need

-pPIC$target-device$ -f$hex-filename$ -e -w

tico

- 20th February 2007, 17:02

great thanks
I also use -Q that exits the programmer when completed

HenrikOlsson

- 21st February 2007, 06:30

Steve,
That's great! I've been holding back on buying one because it didn't support the MCS bootloader. I didn't know you could kick that programmer from with in MCS.

Programming a 18F2431 with my PICStart+ takes about a minute, bootloading it takes a couple of seconds, depending on size of code ofcourse. How is the built in programmer speedwise compared to a bootloader or the PICStart for example?

TIA
/Henrik Olsson.

mister_e

- 21st February 2007, 17:58

It's actually faster than PICSTART, just send me your .HEX file (in a ZIP) in my e-mail, i'll do the test for you.

BUT YES, you can use the Bootloader as well. The only thing if you don't do a little modification to the board is that you'll need to press on RESET each time. No big deal.

On the other hand, the modification to do is sooooo simple. a SOT-23 n-channel mosfet (or transistor) and a few inch wire is all you need.

It take about 1 minute to modify it... big deal...

MOSFET gate to DB9 pin 4
MOSFET drain to the MCLR line (a via can be found close to the E5 capacitor... near the + sign on the bottom side of the board. It's also PIN 7 of the PIC PROG IC)
MOSFET source to DB9 pin 5

everything fit pretty well on the bottom side. The SOT-23 mosfet have two pin directly soldered on the DB9 pin. Easy easy easy.

HenrikOlsson

- 21st February 2007, 19:13

Hi Steve,
Thanks for the offer, I really appreciate it! (hex file sent off list)

For the record:
The hex file is for a 16F877 and compiles to 1502 words.
PICStart+ takes 28 seconds to flash the device.
MCS Bootloader takes ~2seconds to write the code to the device.

Now, I understand that the PICStart+ writes to all memory locations and the bootloader only to the ones actually being used by the program.

Anyway, looking forward to the results, if you can squeese it in - no rush!

And thank you VERY much for the retrofitting details on the EasyPIC4!

/Henrik Olsson.

mister_e

- 21st February 2007, 19:26

with the .HEX you sent me, it's around 10 seconds with the verify option checked. so close to be 3 time faster than PICSTART.

if i remove the verify option... around 5 seconds.

To me the BOOTLOADER option is always handy even using this board. Using the mod i suggested.. it's pretty slick :D

As i previously said, on some device, the on-board programmer fail for some odd reason, you just need to reprogram the device once again.... this NEVER happen with the bootloader.

HenrikOlsson

- 21st February 2007, 20:29

Steve,
Thanks! That's a lot better than the PICStart+ then....hmm wonder why...never mind. Now I just can't find an excuse not get a EasyPIC4.

Thanks again!

/Henrik Olsson.

mister_e

- 21st February 2007, 20:39

Well i think the explanation is really easy... compare the data transfer capability of the USB against RS232... and PICSTART is still old. I think it's working @9600 baud :eek: but i'm not sure of it...

EDIT... ALWAYS handy to have a serial COM port sniffer... PICSTART work @19200 Bauds

Port opened by process "MPLAB.exe" (PID: 2028)

IO Control: 21/02/2007 3:52:36 PM.50064 (+0.0000 seconds)
UP (0x00000000): IOCTL_SERIAL_GET_BAUD_RATE: Retrieve Baud Rate
Baud Rate=19200

jcleaver

- 24th March 2007, 23:52