Me and my wife recently had our first child.  I’ve been trying to come up with some projects I can do for the kid.  Well, around this time of the year the fireflies go crazy around my house, so we came up with the idea to do led fireflies in a jar.  It should be something cool for him to stare at and is easy to build.

Schematics, C source code and hex file are available here on our wiki.  If you want to build one it should only take about an hour.

I’m planning on making a version 2 with some changes, stay tuned for that one.

[View with PicLens]

PicKit2 Debug Express

Paul King has created the first tutorial called “Using the PICkit2: As a Programmer” of his planned series of PICkit 2 tutorials. This one covers setting up the MPLAB software and PICkit 2 programmer to quickly compile and program the 44 Pin PICkit2 Demo Boards.

Subsequent tutorials will cover using the programmer hardware as a Debugger, Logic Analyzer, Logic Output Tool, and a UART Tool.

Be sure to read David Powell’s “Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C” as a precursor to Paul’s series.

Happy Hacking!

We just posted a new tutorial called Programming PIC Microcontrollers with C. It’s designed to get you started programming using MPLAB and CCS C Compiler. The only hardware you need to get started is the PicKit2 or PicKit3 which comes with a demo board. The demo board contains 8 LEDs, 1 Potentiometer, and a Pushbutton all wired and ready to go.

Check it out Here!