32 Bit Microcontrollers

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JohnCrow
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32 Bit Microcontrollers

Post by JohnCrow »

Flowcode 7 can now handle 32bit PICs, so I decided to invest in a simple inexpensive development board and give it a try.

The board is based on the Arduino Uno and will take some of the shields.
Care must be taken as the board is a 3.3 V device but most lines are 5V tolerant.
The digital and analogue headers are double row compared to the normal Arduino which has single headers.

It can also be programmed using the normal Arduino software, by downloading a driver from the Digilent website.

The Digilent ChipKit uC32 contains a

PIC32MX340F512 processor (80MHz)
512K Flash
32k Ram

42 I/O Lines
2 User LEDs.

I wrote a simple LED flasher flowchart to flash LED5 (RF0).This was to test everything is working.

The flowchart was compiled to HEX and programmed using the PICKIT3 and MPLAB IPE 3.35.
The board can be powered either from a standard Matrix PSU (9V) or direct from the PICKIT3 (both work).

It is possible to add the PICKIT to flowcode so it can program it directly, but I've not got round to setting them up on FC7 yet.

Programming with the PICKIT will delete the bootloader that allows the Arduino software to be used and will need to be reloaded if the is needed afterwards.

The board costs about £25.00 from RS
Flasher_Fast.fcfx
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ChipKITuC32.jpg
ChipKITuC32.jpg (44.98 KiB) Viewed 5938 times

Another board based on the Arduino Mega footprint is also available.
1 in 10 people understand binary, the other one doesn't !

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QMESAR
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Re: 32 Bit Microcontrollers

Post by QMESAR »

This is absolutely fantastic that Flowcode supports PIC32 now, :D
It opens a new world to FC users .

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