Customer Reviews

Embedded Design with the PIC18F452

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Writing a book as complete and well-thought-out as this one takes a Herculean effort, which is why most technical books are lacking in detail. Somehow, John Peatman has pulled it off, producing a book that is complete and detailed in every way. He completely describes the new, juicy, full-featured PIC18F452 and does it well. Two years ago, I wrote a disparaging review of Peatman's "Design With Pic Microcontrollers," feeling it was sketchy and lacking examples. Now, in "Embedded Design," he has produced a clear, well-written and complete package. Each chapter has a nice set of problems at the end, for those who will use it as a text. Appendices describe an inexpensive demo board and free debugging software. He shows you what to buy to set up a development lab and how to use it. .... If you want to buy one book that contains everything you need to learn about PIC chips, buy this one!

Although some material in the book can be read from spec sheets found on the net, the book really helps to sort through a lot of the clutter in spec sheets. A major benefit of this book is that it provides plenty of detailed illustrations to help you understand the facilities of the PIC instead of simply giving you page after page of techical specs. It also provides plenty of "template" code to help you get up and running if you're kind of new to microcontroller assembly.
If you do the sample projects throughout the book, they really help you better understand most of the facilities of the PIC.

One thing to note is that the book is written for a semester long college course though I think it's doable for self-study if you have at least some background with PICs. It even provides a PCB on the back cover whereby you can build your own board (I think you can order a package from digikey that has all the parts you need to build one) to run your code on.

John's book is a great follow on to his original book, "Design with PIC Microcontrollers. The book is not a cut and paste solution (As are two other good books "Easy PIC'n" and "PIC'n Up The Pace") and is intended to teach the student how to best use the architecture. The intent of the book is to give the student enough theory to use the PIC18F452 and understand the design philosophy of the architecture. The book is a great compliment to the Microchip datasheet service as a "user's guide". Great examples of how the 18F452 architecture can be best utilized, well organized diagrams (Which, by the way do not require "flicking back and forth" any more that a typical technical book I've read ). The subject material covers all of the highlights of the PIC18F452, giving examples for typical usages of LCD displays, A/D, Interrupts, I/O pin considerations, timers, math subroutines, I2C/SMBus usage, UART, etc. There are supporting code template designed to suggest possible code organization. The book develops a very useful utility (SASM) to preprocess PIC assembly in an attempt to make assembly language more structured. The utility IS NOT required and the rest of the book may be read without using the utility. I had no problem obtaining the components for the included circuit board (All required parts can be purchased as a kit from Digi-Key at a discount) and found it very comparable to Microchip's own demo boards.

This book is an excellent introduction to the PIC18F452 microcontroller. The book begins with very basic concepts and is quite easy to learn from. It is also nicely sectioned so that you can easily pick and choose which topics you wish to learn.

I have used this book extensively for several designs. The book contains practical examples that can be adapted to many types of designs.
The code examples are well written with text that explains the code and strategy behind it. The author has taken the time to fully explain the many
aspects of microcontroller design, pitfalls to avoid and methods to get around the limitations of an 8-bit micro. The book is down to earth but challenges you at the same time. I found the hardware data in the book to also be of great value. I highly recommend the book to any student or engineer serious about learning PIC microcontrollers. Kudos to John Peatman.

Make no mistake -- this book would be at home in an Engineering Class. It will make you THINK and examine his teaching of Single Board Systems at a higher level.
+ If you want a "cut & paste" book to get thru a rough spot & finish a project that is due, you'll be disappointed.
+ If you want to understand what you are doing so that you can apply your skills better, you'll like it. No free lunch, remember?

The book contains short chapters included short descriptions..The 18F452 register construction , subroutines and the examples are in a skin-deep manner.I should say that I have learnt more knowledge from the 18F452 datasheet than this book..I think it is written very quickly for a short time so it had to be poorly...

>Most code examples are not directly comaptible with MPLAB and must be run through a third party translator that must be downloaded from a website.

The Included circuit board has componets that are not readily avilable. >Even the condition of the book was not very good. Several pages were fused together (not cut)

Technical Errors Abound.

I have been programming the 18F452 for a couple of months now and every bit of information that is in the book can be found on the NET without paying .

This is the only book about microchip PIC18f452, but the only useful information this book has to offer is in chapter 2 and 3, after that you get lost trying to understand what the author is talking about. Chapter 2 and 3 cover only the basics, nothing else. Save your money! more books on microchip are coming up. If you have to take a microcontroller class, then you better get a good instructor.

If having technical diagrams over the page to the corresponding text annoys you, then be prepared to be annoyed! The book doesn't get going really until chapter 3, however I found that having the technical figures (in most cases) not on the page or adjoining page, but having to flick back and forth a distraction to my concentration. The diagrams while helpful are a little confusing with the way in which they are layed out.

In some places after describing a method in addressing registers, the example uses an alternative - fine, if in the context of, there is more than one way to achieve this, but this is patently not the context here.

The book seems to be really designed to be part of a classroom tutorial and discussion.

Be ready to put in some extra concentration if your buying this book without resource to other literature.

On the whole the book is technically useful, the hardcover pleasant, but the placing of the diagrams really let the book down.