Brads Electronic Projects Forum

Hi everyone, well it's been months in the making but my latest kickstarter campaign is up and running! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/141 ... nt-platfor

It's called the PICnDuino and it's a dual microcontroller direct to USB development platform. It is compatable with Arduino and Amicus18 (and others such as swordfish basic) and doesn't require any extra hardware or programmer to run. Just plug it into USB and get coding!

Check out the Kickstarter campaign and if you could - tell everyone you know about it! (facebook, blogs forums etc...)

Thanks guys!

That's perfect! I've been meaning to start getting into PICs, but learning how to program, hook up, code, and debug them seems like a large jump. This project would make it simple by focusing solely on the coding. (I'm definitively supporting it.)


p.s. Microchip should have made an Arduino alternative ages ago.

Haha, cool project!!! The only down side I can find is that the boards are delivered around March 2013.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I think that people will actually get them late February but just to be safe, I went with March. The main problem is that Amazon hold payments for 14 before they pass it on, then it can take 5 days to transfer the funds to the manufacturer - so it adds nearly three weeks to the production time just because different companies want to earn some interest!

Glad to get your support by the way, I think you will certainly enjoy using it - it's so easy to use!

Math:
Arduino Uno ~ $30
picKit3 ~ $50
PICnDuino = $17


How can you program these chips for such a low cost? And why are the Arduino and PIC programmers so expensive?

Also, would it be easy to modify the PICnDuino to program other PIC and Atmel chips?

It is quite a bit cheaper isn't it

Although I have had comments around the internet where people have said the PICnDuino is stupid and why would anyone want to buy it. But I guess you are always going to get people like that...

The PICnDuino is so cheap because the components themselves aren't that expensive, If I get them manufactured by the hundreds - then that brings the costs right down too. The atmega and PIC chips have a bootloader (provided freely by arduino and amicus18 people) which allows you to directly program the chips without the need for a dedicated programmer.

You can use an arduino to program the arduino bootloader onto blank atmega's see here:
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

the picnduino should be able to do this without any issues but I had better test to make sure

Brad wrote:Although I have had comments around the internet where people have said the PICnDuino is stupid and why would anyone want to buy it. But I guess you are always going to get people like that...

Maybe there just gutted they didn't come up with the idea first!?! I think its a neat design, and hoping that it reaches its backing I want one in every colour!

you can use an arduino to program the arduino bootloader onto blank atmega's

You can, but it will not program code into a bootloaded Arduino unless you take the Atmega chip off of the first Arduino.

I thought there was a problem with programming pre-installed Atmega's (I had a few issues when experimenting with my picnduino initially)

Very close now to the pledge I hope it keeps going up after.

How cool does this look: If you have a look at other successful kickstarter campaigns, it appears that funding seems to dramatically increase towards the end of the campaign. How cool would it be to get up to $34,000!

How cool does this look

Very.

We did it!

I can't wait until I get my unit.

You should have some great fun with it!