Learning to PIC

I want to learn microcontrollers, and to code in assembly, so I’ve chosen to work through the PIC’N books by David Benson.

I’ll share my progress highlights here.

My advice is to use PIC24 - much easier and enjoyable to program than the lower families thanks to lack of memory bank stuff, multiply and divide instructions, table lookup, and more.

4 Likes

I agree with Julia, I teach PIC18 at the university as ad adjunct professor, is a class for the mechatronic engineers, but it is in C, although I teach some assembly basics so they can learn how the CPU works, the data memory banking makes this particular architecture not a very pedagogical one. It quite confusing for the students, specially for this major since they dont have all the digital background as the EE’s. And even worst is the PIC16 since it also has program memory banks.

For me, any CISC type Von Neumann or even pseudo-Harvard architectures like the 8051 are much more pedagogical than RISC, but is my old and grumpy opinion.

So as Julia says, PIC24 a great choice, In fact, I have proposed this change to the faculty.

2 Likes

@JuliaTruchsess @pvillarr Thank you Julia and PV for the really great advice. :eyeglasses: I do have a PIC24 as well so will take your tips to heart as I work through my self-study. Much appreciated !!