APG Consultancy LTD

Microchip PIC

Microchip Technology Inc produce a large number of microcontrollers, analog, interface and memory devices. One of their most popular devices is their range of PIC microcontrollers.

There is an extensive range of PIC microcontrollers with a wide range of capabilities, from 8 pin 8 bit devices up to 100+ pin 32 bit devices.

One of the major advantages of the PIC range of microcontrollers is there low cost. For example, a devlopment kit including demo board, programmer and software can cost as low as £30. Shown below is the DV164120 Starter Kit complete with PICkit 2 programmer.

The kit above includes a PIC 16F690 device mounted on a small board. This board can be purchased seperately and used in your own projects. Also available is the board shown below which has the more powerful 16F877.

Shown below is a table showing a small number of the PIC devices available and their rough cost:

Demo boards are available for all the devices shown in the table above.

When using a C compiler to produce code it is easy to switch between devices with different capabilities.