Snap programmer

[towlerg]

Get it woring from within IPE first.

Good advice, but having got it working with IPE why bother with MPLabx? From memory theres a CLI (or similar) within IPE to allow programming from PicBasic IDE (ala PK2 et al)

[HenrikOlsson]

Good advice, but having got it working with IPE why bother with MPLabx?

No reason, but IPE comes as part of the MPLAB X download/installation - I don't think you CAN download IPE by itself...

From memory theres a CLI (or similar) within IPE to allow programming from PicBasic IDE (ala PK2 et al)

Yes, and I'd bet that under the hood the IPE application calls upon that same CLI when programming so once the Snap is working from within the IPE application setting it up in MicroCodeStudio shouldn't be too hard.

[Dick Ivers]

Yes, I now have MPLAB X IPE version 5.30 installed and there is some progress. The Snap programmer is now recognized and my connected PIC device is correctly identified. However, I have more work to do as the basic programming functions are not behaving as expected, i.e. Read, Erase, Program

Yes, of course I would like to get the Snap programmer to work within MicroCodeStudio . What is a CLI?

[HenrikOlsson]

CLI is Command Line Interface, how you would "drive" the programmers software from the command line.

[Dick Ivers]

Update: All the programming functions are now working when I use the Snap programmer from MPLAB x IPE v5.30. I found that the Snap device must be run from the Advanced Mode in order to view the program memory and eeprom memory fields on the output screen.

Where can I find the CLI text in order to insert it within MicroCodeStudio? Is this idea really feasible at all? To me it seems unlikely given that the MCS software is so old.

[HenrikOlsson]

Hi,
Like I said, I don't have a Snap but if I'd venture a guess something along the lines of:

-TPSNAP -P$target-device$ -F$hex-filename$ -E -M -OL

Programmer exectuable is ipecmd.exe

In your MPLABX installation path you'll find a subfolder called docs. There you'll find a file, Readme for IPECMD.htm, take a look at that.

/Henrik.

[Dick Ivers]

Final summary on the Snap programmer:

1. The programmer works well when using MPLAB X IPE as long you have the latest version (5.30) running. (Thanks Henrick)

2. The device does not work under MicroCodeStudio, at least not for me. MCS requires a named executable. None could be found for this part.

3. For the $7.48 discount price the programmer is not bad as a back up. Note that this item does not supply power to the target … must be powered separately.