I found this chip to be suitable for robotics and possibly POV displays (maybe it is overkill). I think I would need a Jtag connector. I would have to find it in a dip form unless I want to learn surface mount soldering and invest in the equipment over time.

http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/De ... e=en534177

100 pins and 80MHz clock
A bit more of the features:
USB 2.0 On-The-Go Peripheral
Dedicated DMA Channel for USB OTG
512K Flash (plus 12K boot Flash)
32K RAM (can execute from RAM)
4 Channel Hardware DMA Controller
Flash prefetch module with 256 Byte cache
Lock instructions or data in cache for fast access
Programmable vector interrupt controller
Fast and Accurate 16 channel 10-bit ADC,
Max 1 Mega sample per second at +/- 1LSB, conversion available during SLEEP & IDLE
2 wire programming and debugging interface
JTAG interface supporting Programming, Debugging and Boundary scan
Fail-Safe Clock Monitor – allows safe shutdown if clock fails
2 Internal oscillators (8MHz & 31KHz)
Hardware RTCC (Real-Time Clock and Calendar with Alarms)
2 x SPI, 2 x IIC
And loads more.

One off price $7.59

Surface Mount Soldering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NN7UGWY ... r_embedded

So I'm wondering how to get from the basics to this level.

Man that is one mother of a microcontroller!

Good luck in getting that bad boy in DIP form. 100 pins is certainly alot.

I guess a big difference with that one is that I think it is a 32bit processor (whereas all the ones that I have used have been using are 8bit)

But with that much memory and peripherals, you can certainly do just about anything with it.

The chip is only 7.59 and they have samples. I have no idea what the XBGA version is so I'm going to stay away from it even though it has more (121) pins.

The Pic 32 USB Starter Kit II board is only $55. It says the programmer is built in and all you need is USB which is good and it boasts a C programmer with an asterisk "*" but I don't know what the asterisk refers to so there may be some catch. It says "Free MPLAB IDE v8.41 or newer" which is good. I'll give you the link to it:

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcpl ... e=en535536

The Pic 32 I/O Expansion Board is $72. The rest of it is where it gets outrageous because the C Compiler is $895 and the MPLAB REAL ICE PROBE KIT was around $500. I could see spending money on the board but the C compiler and MPLab Real Ice Probe Kit will never happen.

I'm not sure if I need a Pikit3 in circuit debugger or why they have it on one of the pages.

I really dont think you would need to go anywhere near these pics, they certainly are very powerful, way more powerful than I would need for any of my projects.

If I were to use one for say, my ledboy system - it would work however it would be like my grandma buying a ferrari only to use it to drive to the shops once a week. It gets the job done but it's just not being used to the full potential.

I highly recommend the 18f4550, it has plenty of pins - comes in surface mount or dip packages and doesnt have any of the programming and paging issues that the 16f series pics have.

See if you can find an 18f experimenters board, im sure they would not be too expensive.