Unsolicited MPLAB Xpress board

[rolycat]

I have just received an MPLAB Xpress evaluation board, sent from Microchip Ireland.

No cover letter, no associated email, nothing but an envelope containing the board in a cute little cardboard wrapper and a paper schematic.

I've had an online account with them for years, but never used MPLAB Xpress.

Anyone else get one of these out of the blue?

[CJay]

I have just received an MPLAB Xpress evaluation board, sent from Microchip Ireland.

No cover letter, no associated email, nothing but an envelope containing the board in a cute little cardboard wrapper and a paper schematic.

I've had an online account with them for years, but never used MPLAB Xpress.

Anyone else get one of these out of the blue?

Nope, but it's an interesting little board, looks like a USB dedicated ICSP programmer attached to a small dev board. It can be used with MPLABX as a general purpose board as well.

I got one a few months back and after the initial curiosity wore off, it's back in its box on a shelf.

[elecman14]

Microchip had a form on their website awhile ago that if you filled it out you got a free board. The delivery time for mine was a couple of months. If I remember correctly all I received was a board in a small box with no letter. Maybe you filled out the form and forgot or maybe they think they can sell you some stuff  O0.

[rolycat]

Microchip had a form on their website awhile ago that if you filled it out you got a free board. The delivery time for mine was a couple of months. If I remember correctly all I received was a board in a small box with no letter. Maybe you filled out the form and forgot or maybe they think they can sell you some stuff  O0.

I don't use 8 bit PICs much these days, so it was interesting to see that newer chips now have the PPS pin remapping feature from the PIC24 range. Very handy, that.

Maybe they can sell me some stuff...

[JPortici]

I got mine today too!
This is a nice surpise, I applied for the free board raffle but i never received confirmation or anything

[Howardlong]

Microchip had a form on their website awhile ago that if you filled it out you got a free board. The delivery time for mine was a couple of months. If I remember correctly all I received was a board in a small box with no letter. Maybe you filled out the form and forgot or maybe they think they can sell you some stuff  O0.

I don't use 8 bit PICs much these days, so it was interesting to see that newer chips now have the PPS pin remapping feature from the PIC24 range. Very handy, that.

Maybe they can sell me some stuff...

These new(ish) 16f18xxx devices have reinvigorated my interest in the 8 bitters. I've already used the 8 pin 16f18313 in a number of projects, amazing little device.

[true]

I too received an unsolicited email telling me a board would be on the way, but I had moved so my address was incorrect. Signed in and updated my address but haven't received anything. There are no orders on my account for this board, only other orders I had placed.

A confirmation in the e-mail would have been nice.

If anything was sent. I do hope the recipient uses the board. (Almost certainly though, they will not.)

[ralphrmartin]

I paid for one of these - it cost about a fiver.

However, I have a weird problem. When plugged into one Mac, the drive to which you download the code to program it shows up as READONLY. On another Mac, it shows up as READWRITE. Weird. Has anyone else seen this? Or got a suggestion for a fix? (Trying to reformat the board fails).

[JPortici]

i'll check with mine tonight

(i have yet to use it)

[Wilksey]

Gits never sent me one!

Where did you buy yours from for £5? The cheapest I can find it is around £8 but then you got to either spend over £30 or pay £4 / £5 for delivery!

[ralphrmartin]

Try this link. US$10 + free delivery.
www.microchip.com/Xpress

That indeed was what I was referring to; you may need the code  EXPINTRO16.

[Howardlong]

A bit disappointed in this board to be honest, unless I've missed something there's no onboard debugger, just a bootloader self-programmer, and it doesn't directly interface with MPLAB X for programming as far as I can see, you have to generate a hex file and copy it to the device.

For me it's little more than a toy, and of no use for development if it doesn't directly integrate with the tools.

[JPortici]

heh, the average child/maker doesn't care for that (he uses arduino after all)
he wants something good to go, easy to use and self sufficient.

the main point against pic micros i heard the last few years was that the programmer was too pricey. from that point of view this bootloader is very insteresting

[westfw]

A sad thing is that at about the same time that Arduino first started, there was also the "USB BitWhacker", which also plugged directly into USB and used a bootloader to bypass the need for a traditional programmer, and was similar in cost and capabilities (#pins, etc) to the original Arduinos.  All it lacked was a free and capable  HLL compiler, the hubris to target non-programmers, and evangelists of the caliber that Arduino somehow managed to acquire...   An interesting set of boards to compare!  ( http://www.schmalzhaus.com/UBW/index.html )

[Wilksey]

Thanks wilfred + ralphrmartin for the link / info!

I'll check it out.

[CJay]

I built a few UBW clones on matrix board, nice way to get used to using the Microchip USB stack but it lacked quite a bit compared to Arduino so most of mine either got torn down or remade as MCHPFSUSB dev board clones.