Easy Pic'N: A Beginners Guide to Using Pic16/17 Microcontrollers from Square 1 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"Easy PIC'n" is intended to ease the beginner toward understanding and application of the PIC line of microcontrollers from Microchip Technology, Inc. The approach is hands-on with many examples, all of which may be demonstrated using a very simple demo board (a project) described at the beginning of the book. The reader is shown step-by-step how to write code. Examples of assembly language programs range from a simple one to turn on LED's to more complex ones for timing and for event-counting. Writing programs is covered in-depth and the use of flow charts as an aid to visualizing what a program does is emphasized. The reader's code is used to exercise the demo board giving tangible results.

"Easy PIC'n" provides a crawl, walk, run approach to learning about PIC microcontrollers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Square 1 Electronics; 3.1 edition (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965416208
• ISBN-13: 978-0965416207
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,058,342 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not cracked up to be what is expected!, February 9, 2000

By	Chris Camerlin (West Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

I was a beginner with microchips PIC's when I purchased this book. My high expectations were left shallow after reading Easy PIC'n. In fact, it was no help when I started my first project. The data sheet supplied at no cost from microchips website was jammed packed with more info than Easy PIC'n. In fact, I feel that Easy PIC'n was a re-write of the data sheet. The book was very vague in describing the specific functions of the assembler instructions used with the PIC and the architecture involved. If you are a beginner with PIC's I would suggest first by reading the data sheet and any other resources off of microchips web site. If you have absolutely no idea of how to write the assembler language, I would suggest buying a book specifically designed to teach you programming. If you want more of my thoughts or need help deciding what to do, feel free to e-mail me at <[e-mail]>

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great for the beginning experimentor, February 16, 2000

By	M. Simmons "maxhavoc" (Austin,TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

preempt: im a mech engr, with little programming experience of uC (6811 in college), hobbiest interest in electronics, and a want to learn the basics of the PIC uC...

i picked up another PIC book first, only to have my head swim with too much initial information... i just couldnt get started....

i picked up Easy PIC'n, and it seems that this was the book i had been looking for to start the learning process (the other book is now a great reference once i was able to boil everything down)...

i even had a friend who has never programmed anything in his life, nor really tooled with any kind of electronics, and even he was able to understand what was going on...

you will still need a programmer and he offers schematics for a test board... enough to get your feet wet, and move on....

exactly what *I* was looking for...

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as it could be, but still useful., April 9, 2001

By	Spiff (Europe) - See all my reviews

I used this book for a microcontroller assembly class in college last year where I had to program a 16F84 to activate and change intensity of some lights sources, controlled via RS232 with a PC interface. Overall, I guess the book was quite helpful, far from perfect, but it did make the job a lot easier. I somewhat agree with the other reviewer that the book is a big vague sometimes and that reading the programming datasheets available on Microchip's website is essential. The datasheets are extremely complete, but sometimes they are really useful only when you know what you're looking for and how it works. Basically, they are perfect for reference, but not enough when you're learning from scratch. The book also has some code bits, for very common uses like Loops, doing For and While cycles, Time Delays,Lookup tables, interrupts, etc. The amout of info covered in about 150 pages (including the usual command and register lists) is insufficient. I often found myself needing more details. This is definitely no PIC bible. The book is also very focused on programming and not really on the electronics. You get a few circuit diagrams, but not much. (to me this was good, since I had to deal only with the assembly and not really with circuit design).

Overall, it is a useful book, but incomplete and lacking better organization (not to mention the cheap and amateurish print look, but that doesn't really matter). It is worth reading if you're starting with PIC 16F84 assembly. Perhaps a bit overpriced for what it offers, but since some parts are very well explained and very clear, it is the perfect companion for the official Microchip Technology programming datasheets.