Guide in choosing good overall PIC dev board

Our department getting grant to buy development board and I do not want them to buy same old FPGA board which we have 100 of and only 10 uses so far.

Need your enourmous experiences in helping make good choice of development boards.

Friends with me interested in learning following PIC parts:

PIC18F4550
PIC18F46J50
PIC18F46J53
PIC18F47J53
PIC24FJ256DA206
PIC24FJ256GB106
PIC24FJ256GB210

In time we will also be interesting in dsPIC and PIC32 but all these right now together too much load, so beginnning only above.

I see **broken link removed**

Of all this the Explorer 16 100-pin board is interesting.

At $130 **broken link removed** has the nice option of interchangeable Plug-In Modules.

I assuming this means we can make our own boards with the above PICs also and just pluggin them as Plug-In Modules?

Also finding the following boards, but confused if it possible to replace the PIC already present on the board?

$65 **broken link removed**

$60 MPLAB Starter Kit for PIC24H

$60 MPLAB Starter Kit for PIC24F


Development board from Microchip is recommended as easy to make dean agree, budget of around $200 or less per board

Explorer 16 is a good choice if you think you want something a bit better than the 8 bit devices. You can use it with the PIC24H, PIC24F and dsPIC but also PIC32. There may also be a PIC24E module for it, I am not sure. I am quite a fan of the PIC24H using C.

Keith

I'm personally partial to Microchip development boards. I have several Explorer 16s and high recommend them, the PICtail plus boards allow a new peripheral to be introduced painlessly. The also have an adapter which allows you to mate the PIC32 Starter kit boards with the Explorer 16:

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The Explorer PIC18 is a nice unit as well with interchangeable PIC18/PIC16 modules, along the the PICtail slots for the corresponding peripheral modules:

**broken link removed**

For future reference:

I've been buying FPGA development boards from Digilent for years and they have recently release several very nice Microchip PIC32 dev boards at very good prices. Plus they have an Academic Discount program as well. They also have their module system, PMODs, which is somewhat similar to the PICtail series.

bigdogguru said:

I'm personally partial to Microchip development boards. I have several Explorer 16s and high recommend them, the PICtail plus boards allow a new peripheral to be introduced painlessly.

The Explorer PIC18 is a nice unit as well with interchangeable PIC18/PIC16 modules, along the the PICtail slots for the corresponding peripheral modules:

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bigdogguru, thanks you for insightful and detailing post!

I ask - possible to make own PIM for Explorer 16 Development Board with PIC16F or PIC18F and use this board with it?

Yes, Microchip sells blank PIMs both for the Explorer 16 and PIC18.

MA180016 - BLANK PIM FOR PIC18F8XJ1X OR PIC18F6XJ1X

Here's the PIC32 starter kit adapter for the Explorer 16:

AC320002 - PIC32 Starter Board to Explorer 16 PIM Adapter


Both the Explorer 16 and Explorer PIC18 are excellent dev boards. I highly recommend them, I have several of both models.

If you have any other questions concerning Microchip dev boards or kits feel free to ask. I have quite the collection of them.

BigDog

bigdogguru said:

If you have any other questions concerning Microchip dev boards or kits feel free to ask. I have quite the collection of them.

BigDog

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You reply very fast! Thanks you again.

I thinking if I can use 5v PIC18F or PIC16F if I supply external 5v and connecting GND together?

Also, I see you in South California! Some seniors helping me there too - do you member of any electronics club or group there where they can join too and meeting interesting people like you and others?

sghosh said:

I thinking if I can use 5v PIC18F or PIC16F if I supply external 5v and connecting GND together?

Click to expand...

Possibly. You may want to contact Microchip and ask them, they may offer a convenient solution.

Microchip does offer quite a large selection of PIMs for both the Explorer 16 and PIC18:

**broken link removed**

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sghosh said:

Also, I see you in South California! Some seniors helping me there too - do you member of any electronics club or group there where they can join too and meeting interesting people like you and others?

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I actually live in the mountains of New Mexico. There's not very many people out here, but I have several friends who business is similar.

BigDog