PIC programminging in linux
 

What is a good pic programmer in Linux?

reference
 

see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=532172

I work with AVRs now, however, here are some of my PIC resources:

Linux Compatible PIC Programmers

Intro to Programming PIC Microcontrollers in Linux

Programming PIC's in Linux using C with SDCC

And of course, there's the gnupic mailing list and website: http://www.gnupic.org/

Good luck.

Micah,

Perhaps you could explain how an AVR differs from a PIC? I've done some reading on the matter, but just can't put my finger on it.

They're both 8-bit microncontrollers. They both have comparable feature sets in terms of peripherals and configurations-- timers, ADCs, serial interfaces, PWM outputs, etc. The PICs have been around longer and have a larger selection of chips. The difference, as it applies to why I chose AVRs after working with PICs for a couple years, is the architecture and instruction sets.

The PICs are "simple" in that there are only 30-some ASM instructions to learn, which has often been a selling point. However, AVRs were specifically designed for higher level languages (such as C) and thus a branch of GNU Utilities was built for them. This is great for us Linux nerds. You can program your microcontrollers using your favorite Linux IDE (I use Gedit) and compile/program the chip with a simple makefile based on GCC and the other GNU tools. You can even do some debugging with gdb.

I am very, very glad I switched. Although I had to get setup with a new programmer and learn new register names and the like-- it was worth it. And they're similar enough that it's not a huge effort to learn the other.

I use microcontrollers for robotics projects, and in one particular robot was able to switch from a PIC16F877 to an AVR ATMega8 without having to change much of the circuit. And it was much easier coding in C and using gcc-- a compiler for which I have grown accustomed to it's error messages and general usage.