Pic Development Board

[malc-c]

Hi

I've been thinking of getting a DEV board for some time and liked the look of the EasyPIC 4 board. However I've stumbled on what looks like a cloan from the China, offered on E-bay


This seems to offer really great value for money as it includes the graphics screens, temp sensors, eproms, SD cards etc, which on the EasyPIC4 are options and thus inflates the cost. This QL200 even comes with a load of PICs for experimentation with, which for around £80 plus £18 shipping seems extreamly good value for money - More info Here

Has anyone tried one of these boards ?

[mister_e]

Looks great to me. They understood that an ICD connector is handy for some user. This also mean you can plug a PICKIT2 to it with the right adapter. They also have more stuff on board. Would be great if their edge connector would be 100% MikroE compatible. As it is right now, you have it reverted... no big deal... just annoying if you already have MikroE plug-in boards.

They don't have USB connector available for USB PIC though... big mistake...

[tenaja]

I would like you to consider this, when buying a clone: If you were the person who had spent 100 hours or more developing a great product, for the purpose of selling and earning an income, and then one of your customers cloned it, would you want your customers to buy replacements from the clone company, or from you?

[malc-c]

tenaja,

I used the term "cloan" as it looked similar to the Easypic3/4 boards. If you actually compare the two items you'll note that there are lots of simularities, but also a lot of subtle differences between the two. I should of called it an "alternative" rather than a"cloan".

Steve,
USB - I totally agree. Given that nearly everything these days that connects to PC's tend to be via USB. I also note your comments on the compatibility between the two boards. More thinking is required...

[duncan303]

tenaja,

I used the term "cloan" as it looked similar.............., but also a lot of subtle differences between the two. I should of called it an "alternative" rather than a"cloan"...

As in "cloan" not being the correct discriptive word, perhaps.... sounds ok but.........


Board looks ok but...........


__________________________

[Acetronics2]

Looks great to me. They understood that an ICD connector is handy for some user. This also mean you can plug a PICKIT2 to it with the right adapter. They also have more stuff on board. Would be great if their edge connector would be 100% MikroE compatible. As it is right now, you have it reverted... no big deal... just annoying if you already have MikroE plug-in boards.

They don't have USB connector available for USB PIC though... big mistake...

Hi, Steve

If you look at the DEBUGGER adapters (AC162050, AC162051, + ...) you can fully use your Easypic with MPLAB ICD2 ...

for the ridiculous cost ... do not hesitate.

This Chinese card more looks like a BigPic and Easypic breed ...

A copy, with no doubt, as MkE cards schemes are furnished ... but NOT the reset circuitry !!!

Alain

[mister_e]

Yeah i know, i just never use a ICD ... Well maybe once a year.. just to know if it's still work

My EasyDsPIC board have this ICD connector built-in, not my EasyPIC 4, neither EasyPIC 5... probably EasyPIC 6 Sure, everything can be hacked/modified anyways... do you really think my board still looks like the original ???

Really nice board so far. Let's see if they will survive in the long run. I bet they will. I may decide to buy one myself one day.

[J. Mark Wolf]

Hi

I've been thinking of getting a DEV board for some time and liked the look of the EasyPIC 4 board. However I've stumbled on what looks like a cloan from the China.
Has anyone tried one of these boards ?

By all means, let's continue to support Chinese thievery.

[Melanie]

Actually we have a lot of Chinese partners who are diligent, hard-working and produce quality product at sensible prices – something a lot of folks in the USA and Europe seem to have lost touch with. You will get product piracy in any country – not just China.

[malc-c]

Well put Melanie

By all means, let's continue to support Chinese thievery.

Try reading the tread and looking at the board. To be a thief you have to steal something, and this board has enough differences that its obvious that they didn't steal it from the makers of the EasyPIC boards. If you search the net you will see that the market for this sort of product is dominated by the boards offered by MikroElektronika, so maybe the Chinese feel that there should be more competition and developed their own "version" of a development board ?

I also recal that the schematic for the easyPIC3 was available from their website as a PDF at one point, so even if this board from China is based on the same design, you can't accuse them of stealing the design as it was in the public domain anyway !

[J. Mark Wolf]

My apologies.

Caught me on an "off" day.

[malc-c]

Well I've bit the bullet and placed my order for a development board...

I opted for an EasyPIC5 board (plus a few extras), which was ordered direct from the manufactures website (the strong pound ment that it was actually cheaper than purchasing from a UK supplier !).

The main reason I opted for the EasyPIC5 board over the one on e-bay was mainly down to support. I Know that if I have any issues with the board, software etc that no only is there a good forum, the company seem to be very responsive. I found very little on the net regarding the e-bay offering and whilst it offred very good value for money, just didn't feel confident enough ordering from e-bay.

Whilst the e-bay offering had some very useful features, which the EasyPIC5 is lacking, it didn't have some of the features we all tend to talk about on this forum such as USB interfacing.

I'm now lookingn forward to learning more with this development board, but I'll still be using PBP and will not be moving to Mikrobasic

[malc-c]

I found very little on the net regarding the e-bay offering

Must of entered the wrong seach string... found a PDF of the manual plus quite a few otherh hits !

http://www.pic16.com/soft/QL200_user_a4_en.pdf

[rmteo]

I'm now lookingn forward to learning more with this development board, but I'll still be using PBP and will not be moving to Mikrobasic

Just out of curiosity (and I don't mean to start a war here), what do you see as the advantages of PBP over MikroBasic?

[malc-c]

I received my EastPIC5 board today, and what a delight it was. The board is built to a very high standard and I can't wait to get started with some of the examples, or continuing with my own PIC projects.

I've got one question for anyone else who owns one of these boards (Steve ?) - Do you use the supplied editor, or is it possible to use the USB programmer with Microcode Studio. The only option I see listed is a serial programmer rather than USB listing for the programmer.

[BobP]

Hi Malc,

I was impressed with the board. I received mine last week so here are the settings to use the onboard USB programmer with MCode.

Select the Compile and Program options (its under 'View' for some reason?)
Select the Programmer Tab then click on 'Add new Programmer'
Select 'Create a custom programmer entry' and click 'Next'
Enter any name you want to identify this programmer and click 'Next'
Enter the program filename PICFLASH.exe
Enter the file path (yours may be different) C:\program files\Mikroelektronika\PICFLASH-mikroICD
Enter the code parameters -pPIC$target-device$-f$hex-filename$
Click 'Finished'
Then 'OK'
Now its ready...........

Bob

[malc-c]

Enter the code parameters -pPIC$target-device$-f$hex-filename$
Click 'Finished'
Then 'OK'
Now its ready...........

Bob

Thanks Bob,

Shows how rusty I was, not remembering the path settings. After I posted I worked it out apart from that last bit above.

I had fun last night working on an old project, and in less than half an hour had the board configured to work with the chip, which with the old way of using a solderless breadboard took me more than twice as long to patch up.

Cheers

[Copy'nPaste]

EasyPic 3, 4, and now 5, a real pleasure dealing with mE, and their range of Add-on boards grow by the day :-)
Eensy weensy problem with heat, if you run the boards on external power, nothing a real techie can't solve.
And PicFlash is lightning fast.
Then, what do I know ?
My sig says it all !

[f_lez]

Well I finally decided to buy a board after building a few small ones of my own, and wanting something a bit morer 'all in one'.

I looked at the easypic 4/5, and the QL200's from HK etc.

I decided purely on price to go for the HK one, ignoring the 'clone' aspect as after all its a dev board, its got switches leds's and chip sockets, you cant clone that more than you could clone a torch with a battery switch and bulb......

As to the programmer on it, I dont know much about that yet otherwise than its USB, seems to create a virtual comport, and works well, you can read/write a running pic, it just stops it running, reads/writes it and then restarts the pic

I can see with that feature that developing software will be a bit quicker as I can make changes ''on the fly''

I went for the top package, got the board, an assortment of pics, 3 types of lcd screens and a stepper motor, no I dont know why I wanted the stepper motor....

Build quality seems fine, but for some one of my LCD's did not have its connector soldered on, fitted, but not soldered........

Software on cd, you get the programmer, mplab, and some examples no doubt they have pulled of the web, all in basic, and a demo version of basic.

It had one pic fitted, a 16f877a, when powered it flashes the led's, but for some reason I cant read the code, I cant see why you would want to code protect an led flasher thats given free to show the board works.

anyhow, I have not had time to play with it yet other than to test write a chip in it, more of a mini review to follow.