Newbie to pic but not electronics

[SteveB]

I'm sure you will hear this eventually from someone, so I might was well be the one to say it:

Have you got just a simple LED blinking? Did you get it responding to your button? Have you got the PIC to read the POT and output the value in some way (like a LCD)? Have you been able to TX/RX serial over normal lines, like with a PC?

Here is the point. As most of us have discovered, there is a bit of a learning curve, both with the hardware portion of PICs as well as the firmware. So start small. Take it a one part at a time. Once all the individual parts are functioning, start assembling the parts into a whole application to meet your needs.

In this process you will get a lot of help from the folks on this forum.

SteveB