Hello!
Before discussing further:
- Do you have some kind of development board? If yes, which one?
- Do you have a keypad? An LCD?
If you don't have anything, you may consider buying something inexpensive
First, the keypad and the LCD. I like real keys, not the plastic capsule kind.
The LCD is a 4lines x 20 char. You can find cheaper items, but on the other hand,
it depends whether you want to build one program and then forget everything or
if you want to invest some time on the long term.
Order today, ships today. COM-14662 – Keypad Switch 12 Polymer Keys Conductive Rubber Contacts Matrix Output Non-Illuminated from SparkFun Electronics. Pricing and Availability on millions of electronic components from Digi-Key Electronics.
Order today, ships today. MC42005A6W-SPTLY-V2 – Character Display Module Transflective 5 x 8 Dots STN - Super-Twisted Nematic LED - Yellow/Green Parallel 98.00mm x 60.00mm x 14.00mm from Midas Displays. Pricing and Availability on millions of electronic components from Digi-Key Electronics.
You may consider buying a few LEDs with their resistors. A Led is like "Hello World" in
the MCU community.
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[ I just notice that what follows is off topic because you are considering PIC. I leave this
in case somebody else find it useful]
Now for the processor itself, it's a little bit trickier.
Similarly, it depends on what you want to do.
- You have the Arduino series, very easy (too easy??) to use, but you will not learn as much.
- There are myriads of other chips.
From my point of view, may not an ARM chip from the beginning, because it's not easy to
start without some basic understanding.
I would recommend for instance MSP430 (quite powerful boards around 20 USD or less),
very simple to start with. It's the simplest chip I have used. But I haven't tried everything.
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That's about it without further info.
Dora.