There will be a hands-on workshop at the [2] ASEE annual conference in June 2009 on using the PIC24 in an introductory microcontroller course. Participants are assumed to already have familiarity with microcontroller basics (the particular vendor/family is unimportant). Given this assumed background, the workshop is a fast-paced introduction to assembly language and C language programming/interfacing with the Microchip PIC24 microcontroller family. Participants will need to have a portable PC that runs some form of Windows (Windows 2000 or later) in order to install the various software tools used in the hands-on exercises. Participants should also have two free USB ports on their PC in order to take full advantage of the hands-on exercises.

Take-home Package

The ticket cost is $70, for which the participants will receive to take home:

• A[3]  PIC24-oriented textbook donated by [4] Delmar/Cengage that covers both assembly language and C language programming/interfacing.
• A[5]  PIC24 breakout board that contains a PIC24HJ64GP502 CPU, 3.3 V voltage regulator, power LED, reset switch and an interface to an FTDI USB-to-serial cable. The breakout board will be populated with pin headers that allow it to easily plug into a standard breadboard for experimentation purposes.

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• An experiment board that the previously mentioned PIC24 breakout board plugs into. The experiment board contains 3 LEDs, two push button switches, a SPI temp sensor, I2C temp sensor, analog temp sensor, SPI potentiometer, I2C EEPROM, a SPI DAC, an analog potentiometer, an 8 MHz crystal, and a 32768 Hz crystal. The experiment board + CPU breakout board will be the platform used during the workshop for assembly language and C programming/interfacing. The picture below shows the CPU module plugged into the experiment board.

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• An [8] TTL-232R-3V3 USB-to-serial cable that is used for CPU module communication to development tools hosted on a PC; this serial link is used for serial communication by C programs and also for downloading new programs into the CPU via a [9] serial bootloader.

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• A [11] PICkit2 programmer donated by [12] Microchip that can be used to download new programs into Microchip microcontrollers. A small PCB (picture to be added) that contains a ZIF socket for easily programming CPUs in DIP packages will also be provided to participants.

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Tentative Schedule

A tentative schedule for the workshop is show below:

9:00—9:30       Introduction, Setup
9:30—10:30     PIC24 Introduction, Assembly Language Programming
10:30—11:30   Hardware Introduction
11:30—1:00     Parallel I/O & Working Lunch (graciously provided by the ECE division)
1:00—2:00       Interrupts/Timers
2:00—3:00       Serial I/O
3:00—4:00       Data Conversion    
4:00—4:30       PICkit2 Usage
4:30—5:00       Wrap-up

The schedule is aggressive, and the hands-on exercises are designed to be self-paced. There are more exercises included in the workshop material than we can actually cover, so participants can continue working with the material at home if desired.

We have also reached a tentative agreement with Intronix to provide an [14] Intronix 34 Channel USB logic analyzer to each participant for use during the workshop (but not to take home). This is a great USB logic analyzer that is also very affordable (~$400). 

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Participants will install the following tools on their PCs to be used during the training:

• Microchip MPLAB Integrated Design Environment
• Microchip PIC24 C Compiler (Student edition)
• Microchip PIC24 PICkit 2 GUI
• Bootloader GUI software
• Intronix USB logic analyzer GUI