Geraldo Novais Electronic Engineering, Software Development and WEB

The chips or integrated circuits are used in almost all modern eletronics systems and revolutionized the electronic engineering world. Imagine being able to develop and install a software on a chip for it to do, within certain limits, what you want. One way to do this is using microcontrollers.

A microcontroller is an integrated circuit containing several internal components that can be manipulated by software installed on it.

Among these components we can cite:

• Central Processing Unit (CPU)
• RAM memory
• EEPROM memory
• ROM memory
• Timers and Counters
• Interrupt Controller
• Input/Output Data Port
• Interface for serial port
• etc.

Besides the items mentioned above, some microcontrollers has internal components such as analog to digital converters, PWM module, analog comparators, among others.

Among the various models of microcontrollers, PIC microcontrollers (Microchip), 8051 (Intel) and 6811 (Motorola) can be cited.

In this article we will focus on PIC microcontroller, the most popular commercially.

There are many models of 8 to 40 pins PIC with families of 8, 16 and 32 bits.

What is needed to start developing with PIC microcontroller?

• PIC microcontroller;
• PIC programmer (eg. McFlash+ marketed by Mosaic);;
• The sowftware MPLAB (Microchips's IDE for editing and simulation) that usually comes with MPASMWIN (compiler) and ICPROG (recording software)
• A breadboard for implementing the eletronic circuit with the PIC.

Some links to more detailed information:

MPLAB® IDE - User´s guide (em inglês)

Basic Guide to PIC 16F628A (in portuguese)

Step by Step of a simple project with PIC and recording circuits. (in portuguese)