Which PIC Micro?

[oliver602]

There are soooo many, is there a particular range of 8bit PIC micros that are most commonly used in the industry eg: because of high availability or good price?

[Psi]

Microchip like to make a very large range of ICs all with different feature sets so you can pick the best one for your application, (that has only what you need and not what you don't). This way your not spending money on features you'll never use.
The approach has advantages in industry but not so much for hobby use.
There is just so much to choose from its overwhelming.

There probably is some more general use PICs, i'm sure someone will list them.

[gregariz]

In the old days it used to be the 16F84 was used in alot of stuff
but it appears that that has been replaced by the 16F628 as a popular version
The 16F877 is probably the most popular 40 pin version.

These are not necessarily the best for your application, just the ones I see alot of.

[westfw]

Skip all the PIC16F series and go straight to the PIC18F with appropriate peripherals.  Much less painful.  (and if you're not picky about that "8bit" requirement, you might consider going all the way to PIC24 chips...

There's a ... superstition ... that the older, simpler chips (16F84 is a good example) are cheaper than the more modern and fancier chips.  That's simply not true; newer chips are often significantly cheaper (newer design rules means more chips per wafer?  Different fabs?)  Besides, these days you're talking about the price difference between a $4 chip and a $6 chip, which is a lot less significant than the price difference between a $6 (16F84) and a $15 windowed non-flash chip (as you might have had to pick between 20 years ago.)

[ElektroQuark]

You always can use Microchip Part Selector tool:

http://www.microchip.com/productselector/MCUProductSelector.html

It simplifies the selection based in the needed properties of each microcontroller.

[Mechatrommer]

There are soooo many, is there a particular range of 8bit PIC micros that are most commonly used in the industry eg: because of high availability or good price?

you start with your design requirement, eg how many io pin required. and then you can go to digikey type "PIC" and then choose the closest pin count (preferebly give a free 2 or 3 pin extra for design extension who knows, or simply for debug purpose) (or other spec from your design etc in the parametric search) do some research on how many stock available incl from other site (mouser, farnell ebay etc), if you are not satisfied with stock count, move to the next PIC series or email the microchip to ask to increase production for the pic you want coz you tell them you want to order millions part when you finished your design

[Bambur]

Go for PIC18F2550/4550 (or 2553/4553). Those are good for studies and are used in many projects in the Internet. I'm currently learning PIC18F4550 myself

And yes, PIC16F84 was an awesome part in the past. There is PIC16F84A as a replacement available. These days you need more features in the MCU like serial communication, ADC, support for USB, low power and etc.

[jakeypoo]

I would have to say that the PIC18F series is very common these days in many applications. But, the 16F877 is a good place to start learning. If you are just starting out, or even moving from a high level MCU set-up like arduino to a low level, the 16F series is probably the best place to start.

The PIC16s have the basic functionality without the limitations of the PIC10 series that would run a beginner into trouble. Once you get a hang of the PIC16's you can scale up or down easily. And you don't need USB support, several UARTs, hardware multipliers, etc if you are just starting out.

If you are just getting into PICs, I would suggest the PICkit3 + dev board combo:
http://www.microchipdirect.com/ProductSearch.aspx?Keywords=DV164131
It's the best bang for your dev-kit buck. And you can develop on the PIC18 board it comes with and scale up or down to your project as needed.

As for software, MP Lab is about your only choice. I would stick with the HI-TECH C compiler, but that is just my personal opinion. I always thought the HI-TECH C was better than Microchip C.

[oliver602]

Thanks for all the responses.  I have a PICkit 3, (which has only given bother until, in a mind of its own, decided to start working today), some 12F683s and 16F883s, having previously played with a 16F84 a long time ago.

The part selector tool is very interesting and usefull, I have not used it before.

Haven't programmed in C or used the 18F range, something I need to try.

[gregariz]

I actually prefer the PicKit 2 which is also available on microchips website, the reason being that pickit 3 has a soldered down SMT device whereas the pickit 2 allows you to install a number of different 8/14/20 pin pic's using an oldfashioned DIP socket.

Pickit 3 however has some advantages though, particularly a higher pin count (and interface pin count) 18F part.

Just on the 16F and 18F comparison... one reason I sometimes prefer the 16F parts is that I prefer to use the FTDI USB interface chip instead of the inbuilt USB interface in the 18F parts. I've had trouble in the past with the 18F interface driver being installed into PC's automatically.. I find the FTDI chips' windows driver to be alot more reliably autodetected and installed.. In addition there are a number of free bootloaders for the 16F + FTDI chip that are available.

But the 18F parts are superior in some ways so I guess its horses for courses.

[Bambur]

There is also this nice product selector PDF, which I like very much. For some reason it's not easy to find, but it's there in the site.

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/groups/picmicro_sg/documents/devicedoc/en540743.pdf

gregariz, what kind of problems with built-in USB SIE did you have? I'd like to hear, since I hope to use it. However, I just finished implementing the ICSP algorithms for PIC18F2XXX-4XXX and started reading a book on USB. So a long way is ahead

Btw, I see strange bytes in some locations in the PIC18F4550 memory I torture currently. Even if I do the bulk chip erase, some bytes as not erased!

From the ID EEPROM address space:

200000 ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
200040 0c0e806e01c0d3ff801e81b0fdd78068 02c0d3ff0000000081a4926881a20300 806a92688a360400fdd7ffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff00
200080 ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffff61ff
2000c0 ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffffffff06ff0bffffffffff


From the config registers address space (first 14 bytes are config registers of course):

300000 00051f1f008385000fc00fe00f400000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
300040 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
300080 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
3000c0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
300100 01070000010b00000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000

There might be more. I found these by accident while debugging the ICSP algorithms. I wounder what those are? Any ideas?