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Howdy All, I finally made it here

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
Almost everyone that knows me says that I have too much time on my hands. Well, I'm here to prove it.

Being retired from TV/Radio service, Radio Shack repair services, and topped off with 34 yrs at a NY state college in electronic maintenance was a trip but NOW I'm ready for the fun. I like to do some breadboarding (no not bread to eat) and like to repair vintage whatever.

Right now its my Buick 95 Roadmaster.. oops that is an auto forum. I have built several Heathkit kits (sorry to see them go) and other kits (mostly for ham radio). I'm working on some flat screen TV repairs and some vintage tube type radios as well as some old test equipment.

It sure is a great feeling to see some ol piece of equipment come back to life after hours of troubleshooting, replacing this and that a few choice words.

I ran into my ol electronics teacher way back when in high school (yuk) and he introduced me to this forum gig. Looks like fun and hope to make some friends it that is allowed hahah..

Hey. BTW where are all the ham radio enthusiasts or am I in the wrong place? If I may say so.. That is one of my main purposes in this electronics gig. If there are any ham operators, ham home brewers out there in this forum then don't be bashful and introduce yourself too.

Well, here is my toast (coffee) to all you and just maybe we..... well you fill in the blanks..but keep it clean.

73 (that's best regards in ham radio talk)
Keef
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
4,878
Joined
Jun 21, 2012
Messages
4,878
Welcome to EP, Keef. It sez you joined on Mar 1, 2017, but your first post here was yesterday? Jeez, I thought I was good at procrastinating, but that's pretty good.

I was licensed as a Novice (KN8UTJ) in 1966 while serving in the Air Force at Kincheloe AFB, MI. Finished my term of enlistment in 1967, but I never made the trip from Dayton OH to Columbus OH to take the FCC exam for upgrade to Technician or General. I could have passed either one because I spent almost a year pounding a key on the 80m novice band using a homebrew full-QSK transmitter and a Heathkit SB-300 receiver. Back then you had to demonstrate some Morse Code proficiency to upgrade, and Novice licenses were good for only one year and not renewable. So, I was "off the air" for most of my electronics career.

Fast forward to 2013. About ready to retire at age 69, but still employed. Studied for, and took the Technician, General, and Extra exams administered by VEs from the Dayton Amateur Radio Association. No code by then of course, but I plan to operate CW again "real soon now.". Passed all three exams, one after the other, in one sitting and was awarded my Amateur Extra license (AC8NS) by the FCC on April 1, 2013.

Still waiting to get back on the air because I currently lack an antenna since moving to Florida last year. I'm pretty sure the FCC assigned me AC8NS because NS stands for "No Station". Nice CW call though... I am building an octagonal 80m magnetic loop antenna from eight five-foot sections of half-inch copper plumbing pipe, but I haven't finished it yet. Found a spiffy vacuum variable capacitor at the Orlando Hamcation earlier this year for 75 bux, but I may have to use a homebrew "trombone" pair of capacitors until I figure out how to mount and remotely position the plates (bellows-connected plunger) on the VVC beast. It's probably good for 1500 watts, but all I have is a little Elecraft KX3 with a 100 watt Elecraft linear for my rig. Still, at the price I couldn't pass it up. Picture below.

upload_2017-12-9_0-31-39.jpeg

So, don't be a stranger here. There are several hams in residence, but we don't much discuss amateur radio stuff, probably because there are other forums more suitable for that.

73 de AC8NS (Hop)
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
Howdy Hop,
That VVC looks expensive.. hi hi .. I bet your in one of those situations where you cant put up an antenna in that housing development.. maybe that is why you are doing the magnetic loop?

Yeah, there is probably some forums for Ham radio also.. well of course there is QRZ.com which I am a paying member of, So there ya go. I am not sure if you need to be a QRZ member to look at my Bio on it or not.. My history in general is all there.

I am glad that I passed the code for the novice and then of course did not need it for tech and then needed 13wpm for the general. I think I had to take it twice to pass. I never went any further than that because I could not see needing the so very little bandspace that would be available to me.. I have always had this appetite for CW. Oh, I have used phone, RTTY, SSTV, and now the digital modes but find that CW for me is the most rewarding.

I also run QRP and QRPP but with the low solar activity it is a real challenge.

Iike to breadboard Arduino and am wanting to do some raspberry over this winter. I have taught some high school home schoolers some basic electronics which I might delve into again this spring.

Over this winter I have some flat screen TV's, Test Equipment (some of it vintage) and other home owner things to do. My favorite activity is doing nothing while setting in front of the wood stove. (winter time of course). Also, am going to homebrew some open ladder line 450 ohm to feed some back yard dipoles this spring.

Are you much into electronic repair?

I see you have many messages and likes here on the forum so you must be a regular. Since 1944? hi hi

73
Keith
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
4,878
Joined
Jun 21, 2012
Messages
4,878
Howdy Hop,
That VVC looks expensive.. hi hi .. I bet your in one of those situations where you cant put up an antenna in that housing development.. maybe that is why you are doing the magnetic loop?...
That Jennings VVC would have cost several thousand dollars when it was new, but it was one of two identical VVCs pulled from a surplus Collins military transmitter's final output impedance matching pi-network. This one was connected to the plate of the final (through a DC blocking capacitor) and other one was used on the antenna end of the network, and tested for a somewhat lower voltage. But other than that, the two were identical. The ring gear operates the VVC plunger by rotating a cam with ball-bearing cam followers attached to the plunger. Rotation is about 180 degrees from full insertion to full retraction, so with the proper drive mechanism tuning will be quick. I may be able to tune both the low end of 80m as well as 40m. All depends on how much stray capacitance I wind up with.

I originally planned to use a homebrew pair of "trombone" pipe capacitors, insulated with polycarbonate plastic in lieu of Teflon, which is very expensive. The movable pair of inner pipes would be attached (soldered) to a copper plate and that would be driven by a 1/4-20 stainless steel lead-screw and a stepper motor. I have all the parts I need to assemble it and solder it into the top of the loop to finish it, but was waiting to see if a VVC that I could afford would turn up. I spent a few years surfing the Internet looking for a VVC I could afford that would handle a hundred watts. Lots of Russian surplus is available, but I really wanted either a used Comet or a used Jennings. Both are American-made, available here, tested and guaranteed from reputable surplus sellers, but the price is a little bit too high. I also found some nice, new, Chinese VVCs too, but no cost saving there.

Most VVCs for amateur radio use have a fine-pitched lead screw that moves the plunger in and out to change the capacitance. About thirty turns or so from minimum to maximum capacitance is typical. If I were operating on just 80m or just 40m or whatever band I built the loop for, that would be acceptable... but it would take forever to move from minimum capacitance to maximum capacitance or vice versa in order to change bands. I didn't even know that direct push-pull plunger operation was an option until I purchased this one earlier this year at the Orlando Hamcation. Because of the vacuum inside, it takes considerable force to pull the plunger out against atmospheric pressure acting on the inside of the bellows. Still, I think I can work with that.

When we visited Florida to look for a house last year, we specified to our real estate agent that we were only interested in properties that were not deed-restricted with regard to antenna structures, nor require membership in a home owner's association. AFAIK our property at 4151 Pompano Rd, Venice, FL 34293 (Google that to see it) meets those requirements. There are at least two amateur radio towers within a two block radius of my house in South Venice. One belongs to an inactive ham who wants me to take it down, but after inspecting it I think I will pass on that. Hurricane Irma wiped out the yagi he had attached to the top of his tower and ripped the tower from its anchor-point on his house. The tower does not appear to have been sunk into a concrete base either, and it shows signs of rust on the gavanized and welded steel zig-zag braces. Besides that, I want a tilt-over tower about forty feet tall near the front of my property, well clear of the high-voltage power lines at the rear side, that I can lower when a hurricane blows through Venice. During Field Day this past June, I visited a ham who has at least a fifty foot tower, well-guyed, on his property near Nokomus, FL. Our Tamiami Amateur Radio Club had permission to operate from his detached garage for Field Day, but we put up our own temporary antennas. I asked how his antenna "farm" fared during Hurricane Irma and was told "no problems".

When I got licensed again in 2013, I was living in a house on a small lot at 168 Medford St, Dayton, OH 45410 (Google that to see it). Didn't really have enough room to put up a wire antenna, nor room or funds enough for a small tower or radials for a vertical, so I decided that an 80m mag loop about twelve feet off the ground might suffice... and I could purchase copper pipe ten feet at a time when I had the cash available. I did put up an ad hoc inverted-L, end-fed, antenna with a random length of silver-plated stranded copper, Teflon-insulated, 20 gauge hook-up wire from a spool that I happened to have acquired at a good price. Ran it from a three-foot long stick of wood, attached to the roof peak of the detached garage, to a second floor window at the rear of the house, then down the side of the house about two feet from the aluminum siding to a purpose-driven copperweld grounding rod where I wire-nutted it onto the center conductor of some salvaged 75Ω RG-59 coaxial cable, connecting the shield to the grounding rod. Then I ran the coax back up the side of the house and into the second floor window, down the stairs to a first-floor rear bedroom, and thence to my rig in the corner of the bedroom. See picture below of me operating from there.

upload_2017-12-9_23-33-29.jpeg

I did make a few contacts on 40m with this rig, enough to convince me that I needed a real antenna.

... Yeah, there is probably some forums for Ham radio also.. well of course there is QRZ.com which I am a paying member of, So there ya go. I am not sure if you need to be a QRZ member to look at my Bio on it or not.. My history in general is all there....
I am an un-paid member of QRZ.com, so if I knew your call sign I could look you up. WD2K points to a radio club, and I didn't bother trying any other WD2Kxx combinations... Keef.

... I am glad that I passed the code for the novice and then of course did not need it for tech and then needed 13wpm for the general. I think I had to take it twice to pass. I never went any further than that because I could not see needing the so very little bandspace that would be available to me.. I have always had this appetite for CW. Oh, I have used phone, RTTY, SSTV, and now the digital modes but find that CW for me is the most rewarding. ...
I agree with you. I loved the year I pounded brass on the 80m Novice band and want to get back into CW again. The digital modes are interesting, too, but I think I will try CW first once I get an antenna up.

... I also run QRP and QRPP but with the low solar activity it is a real challenge....
You want a real challenge? Try EME (moon bounce). No solar activity necessary (or desired).

Are you much into electronic repair?...
Only when I have to! I like to play around with PICs and Arduino and I have an RPi that I haven't done anything with yet, but I hope to fire it up "real soon now" as a server.

... I see you have many messages and likes here on the forum so you must be a regular. Since 1944? hi hi

73
Keith
Yeah, since "retiring" I hang out here a lot... too much according to my wife.:eek:

73
Hop
 
Last edited:

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
Lots of Russian surplus is available, but I really wanted either a used Comet or a used Jennings. Both are American-made, available here, tested and guaranteed from reputable surplus sellers, but the price is a little bit too high. I also found some nice, new, Chinese VVCs too, but no cost saving there.
Thanks for the Info on that as I might be interested in one or two for a base load project for a vertical.
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
The tower does not appear to have been sunk into a concrete base either, and it shows signs of rust on the gavanized and welded steel zig-zag braces.
Yeah, you better stay far away from that one.. Unless you want to meet your maker a lot sooner. hi hi
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
I did make a few contacts on 40m with this rig, enough to convince me that I needed a real antenna.
I see that you are using the KX3? Nice port rig. I would like one someday but as you had indicated for us poor OM. "money don't grow on trees".
Hey, What a trip to see all these guys that come up on QRZ featured ops that have all the gear in the world.. I am not coveting here but sure would be nice if some of them were willing to permanently share hi hi
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
See picture below of me operating from there.
Hop, Looks like single op station hi hi .. When you get a real antenna up then let me know and we could try 40m some morning. I will have to see how well FL comes in what time a day.
Keith or otherwise keef and the call is WD2AGQ. I am a general ticket and could never see the incentive for going to extra for only a few Kc more. Listen to the bands and see how even the extra's don't use that portion anyway.ahhahah
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
That Jennings VVC would have cost several thousand dollars when it was new, but it was one of two identical VVCs pulled from a surplus Collins military transmitter's final output impedance matching pi-network. This one was connected to the plate of the final (through a DC blocking capacitor) and other one was used on the antenna end of the network, and tested for a somewhat lower voltage. But other than that, the two were identical. The ring gear operates the VVC plunger by rotating a cam with ball-bearing cam followers attached to the plunger. Rotation is about 180 degrees from full insertion to full retraction, so with the proper drive mechanism tuning will be quick. I may be able to tune both the low end of 80m as well as 40m. All depends on how much stray capacitance I wind up with.

I originally planned to use a homebrew pair of "trombone" pipe capacitors, insulated with polycarbonate plastic in lieu of Teflon, which is very expensive. The movable pair of inner pipes would be attached (soldered) to a copper plate and that would be driven by a 1/4-20 stainless steel lead-screw and a stepper motor. I have all the parts I need to assemble it and solder it into the top of the loop to finish it, but was waiting to see if a VVC that I could afford would turn up. I spent a few years surfing the Internet looking for a VVC I could afford that would handle a hundred watts. Lots of Russian surplus is available, but I really wanted either a used Comet or a used Jennings. Both are American-made, available here, tested and guaranteed from reputable surplus sellers, but the price is a little bit too high. I also found some nice, new, Chinese VVCs too, but no cost saving there.

Most VVCs for amateur radio use have a fine-pitched lead screw that moves the plunger in and out to change the capacitance. About thirty turns or so from minimum to maximum capacitance is typical. If I were operating on just 80m or just 40m or whatever band I built the loop for, that would be acceptable... but it would take forever to move from minimum capacitance to maximum capacitance or vice versa in order to change bands. I didn't even know that direct push-pull plunger operation was an option until I purchased this one earlier this year at the Orlando Hamcation. Because of the vacuum inside, it takes considerable force to pull the plunger out against atmospheric pressure acting on the inside of the bellows. Still, I think I can work with that.

When we visited Florida to look for a house last year, we specified to our real estate agent that we were only interested in properties that were not deed-restricted with regard to antenna structures, nor require membership in a home owner's association. AFAIK our property at 4151 Pompano Rd, Venice, FL 34293 (Google that to see it) meets those requirements. There are at least two amateur radio towers within a two block radius of my house in South Venice. One belongs to an inactive ham who wants me to take it down, but after inspecting it I think I will pass on that. Hurricane Irma wiped out the yagi he had attached to the top of his tower and ripped the tower from its anchor-point on his house. The tower does not appear to have been sunk into a concrete base either, and it shows signs of rust on the gavanized and welded steel zig-zag braces. Besides that, I want a tilt-over tower about forty feet tall near the front of my property, well clear of the high-voltage power lines at the rear side, that I can lower when a hurricane blows through Venice. During Field Day this past June, I visited a ham who has at least a fifty foot tower, well-guyed, on his property near Nokomus, FL. Our Tamiami Amateur Radio Club had permission to operate from his detached garage for Field Day, but we put up our own temporary antennas. I asked how his antenna "farm" fared during Hurricane Irma and was told "no problems".

When I got licensed again in 2013, I was living in a house on a small lot at 168 Medford St, Dayton, OH 45410 (Google that to see it). Didn't really have enough room to put up a wire antenna, nor room or funds enough for a small tower or radials for a vertical, so I decided that an 80m mag loop about twelve feet off the ground might suffice... and I could purchase copper pipe ten feet at a time when I had the cash available. I did put up an ad hoc inverted-L, end-fed, antenna with a random length of silver-plated stranded copper, Teflon-insulated, 20 gauge hook-up wire from a spool that I happened to have acquired at a good price. Ran it from a three-foot long stick of wood, attached to the roof peak of the detached garage, to a second floor window at the rear of the house, then down the side of the house about two feet from the aluminum siding to a purpose-driven copperweld grounding rod where I wire-nutted it onto the center conductor of some salvaged 75Ω RG-59 coaxial cable, connecting the shield to the grounding rod. Then I ran the coax back up the side of the house and into the second floor window, down the stairs to a first-floor rear bedroom, and thence to my rig in the corner of the bedroom. See picture below of me operating from there.

View attachment 37850

I did make a few contacts on 40m with this rig, enough to convince me that I needed a real antenna.


I am an un-paid member of QRZ.com, so if I knew your call sign I could look you up. WD2K points to a radio club, and I didn't bother trying any other WD2Kxx combinations... Keef.


I agree with you. I loved the year I pounded brass on the 80m Novice band and want to get back into CW again. The digital modes are interesting, too, but I think I will try CW first once I get an antenna up.


You want a real challenge? Try EME (moon bounce). No solar activity necessary (or desired).


Only when I have to! I like to play around with PICs and Arduino and I have an RPi that I haven't done anything with yet, but I hope to fire it up "real soon now" as a server.


Yeah, since "retiring" I hang out here a lot... too much according to my wife.:eek:

73
Hop
 

WD2Keith

Mar 1, 2017
9
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
9
I am interested in programming PIC and I thought I came across a thread that indicated that you do that. If so, maybe you could steer me to some educational site to get me started. Seems like I have heard that there are at least two different languages for PIC.
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
4,878
Joined
Jun 21, 2012
Messages
4,878
Listen to the bands and see how even the extra's don't use that portion anyway.
Ha ha ha. This Extra currently doesn't use ANY of the bands because of the wee antenna problem.

The only reason I tested for General and Extra was because I passed Technician first. I think I would have been happy working 2m and up versus long-wave. There are a bunch of repeaters in Dayton sharing space on very tall commercial radio and television towers. D Star and other digital modes abound. A ham friend who introduced me to the hobby many years ago (way before I obtained my Novice ticket) had "only" a Technician license, but he seemed to enjoy those bands as much as or more than anyone with a General license, especially portable and mobile operations from his car. My first "ham adventure" was participating in a Fox Hunt with a home-brew Yagi, hand-held out the passenger side window while he drove the car! Back then I couldn't afford a radio, much less an amateur radio station, but he and the DARA Hamvention got me "hooked" on ham radio.

The VE asked me if I wanted to try the General exam, after he had graded and said I had passed the Technician exam. So I said, "Sure, bring it on!" DARA sponsors free VE testing under the auspices of the Laurel VEC; there is no fee for testing, nor any fee for same-day re-testing if you fail. So, why not give it a try, I sez?

Some time later I handed in my exam answers, and soon after that the VE came back again and said I had passed the General exam. He then asked if wanted to try for the Extra exam. So I said yes to that too. And, amazingly, I passed that one with only two wrong answers! Not bad for "multiple guess" questions, huh? Of course ALL the questions, as well as the answers, from which the test questions are randomly selected from a pool, are published on the Internet by the FCC. That's like shooting fish in a barrel IMHO!

Bear in mind that several weeks (maybe a month) before that, I had signed up with hamtestonline.com and had purchased first the General, and later the Extra, tutorial packages after trying them out for free. Not having to bone up on Morse Code was a blessing... I've forgotten most of the symbols and pro-signs as well as most of the alphabet, and still find myself counting dits and dahs to decipher numbers. Pretty sad, really, 'cause I am SURE I coulda passed the General 13 wpm code test in 1967, and pretty sure I coulda aced the written exam back then too. Of course I wasn't eligible back then to test for the Advanced, much less the Extra class licenses. But not testing for ANYTHING, and having my Novice license EXPIRE without opportunity for renewal simply meant that I was OFF THE AIR from 1967 to 2013, forty-something years.

Not every ham that is a member of DARA (Dayton Amateur Radio Association) was pleased when I was awarded a "coveted" Extra Class License without undergoing (as apparently they did) the full Monty of blood, sweat, tears, and a zillion hours of on-the-air CW contacts using a home-brew crystal-set receiver with a 6L6 final in their home-brew transmitter. In other words, it wasn't "fair" that the FCC changed the game, and the rules of how the game is played, just to help revive a hobby and a public service that was slowly dying from the competition of CB radio, cell phones, the Internet and the general dumbing down of the population. Heck, I completely lost interest in radio, once I had an opportunity to earn real money using advanced electronics and other toys.

Not sure why I wanted to become a ham again, except I had the time and the money to do so and it was getting a little late in life. Sort of a now-or-never decision point. Getting the Extra ticket was just icing on the cake. Maybe if I had a few acres for an antenna farm, a full-gallon of transmitter power, and wanted to punch through the QRM like the "big naughty boys" I could use the extra bandwidth to advantage. And it IS nice to have a AC8NS call instead of K8UTJ, which is what I would probably have been awarded to replace my KN8UTJ Novice call sign if I had tested out for a Technician or General license in 1967 of 1968. Ah, well, the road less traveled... Qualified for the Quarter Century Wireless Association (QWCA) with that Novice license... they changed their rules, too, dropping the requirement to be "continuously licensed" for twenty-five years. Sort of like what the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars did, requiring only that you served, instead of being assigned to a combat or war zone.

Hey, What a trip to see all these guys that come up on QRZ featured ops that have all the gear in the world.. I am not coveting here but sure would be nice if some of them were willing to permanently share hi hi
I used to drool over and covet anyone who could afford a Collins rig, but I got over it. My Heathkit SB-300 kit receiver had "gud enuf" sensitivity and selectivity, especially when using the optional CW crystal filter with my 80m dipole and its Teflon-insulated coaxial cable feed.

The KX3 was my own personal reward to celebrate getting re-licensed. Yeah, I know, selfish of me to do that. Of course now I covet and lust after Elecraft's K3S 100 watt Transceiver with all the trimmin's, including the P3 Panadapter and the 1500 watt KPA1500 linear amplifier. Next time someone hands me twelve thousand bux and sez "Go play!" I will be on the phone with Elecraft ordering a new rig. Or maybe I could put that money toward a tilt-over, crank-up, fifty-foot tower with a really spiffy, multi-band, beam antenna like the steppIR that DARA has on one of their three towers. Hmmm. Maybe DARA would "allow me" to install a K3S rig in their clubhouse, with remote control from Venice, FL, to connect to their steppIR HF beam antenna... they allow out-of-state memberships. On second thought, make that a gift to me for twenty-five big ones to cover transportation and installation costs. Or maybe add a dozen or so mil so I can purchase a few acres of property here and build from scratch. But I guess I actually have to purchase a Powerball ticket to have a chance at that...

Seriously, I have read a lot of articles lately on software defined radios (SDRs) and most of them appear to be affordable, even for po' folks like me, retired on a fixed income and at the mercy of Congress and Uncle Sam. We're not talking about several throusand bux for a Flex radio or an Elecraft, just a few hundred to build an SDR rig... like in the good ol' days with vacuum tubes. I really like the idea of using the latest affordable technology to communicate with stations "below the noise floor" that inhibited advances in analog communications in the 20th century.

When both stations have the benefit of atomic-clock frequency stabilization and coherent modulation and detection, it only requires patience to recover a low-bandwidth signal deeply buried "in the mud". I realized the truth of this forty years ago while taking a communications course in college, but in the 1970s the technology was hardly up to the task unless you had some very deep pockets full of cash, like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California did to build telemetry for deep-spacecraft probes. Amazing engineering they did. Some of that stuff is still operational and still sending data back to the Mothership (Earth). Maybe AMSAT will eventually become involved, and help advance the state-of-the-art, if we ever figure out a way to get the amateur radio satellites out of near-earth orbit in order to play around in the solar system. Probably need some very reliable and efficient ion engines for that. Or maybe solar sails. Or a combination of both.

I am interested in programming PIC and I thought I came across a thread that indicated that you do that. If so, maybe you could steer me to some educational site to get me started. Seems like I have heard that there are at least two different languages for PIC.
I do PIC programming... in native assembly language, so far. There are free C compilers available for the Microchip development system (which is free to download and use), and a friend of mine here in Florida is becoming quite good at using C with the PIC processor line. You can also purchase third-party compilers, probably in other languages as well as C and C++ but these all add some overhead to the final code that gets downloaded and executed on the PIC. Banging on the bits with assembly code has always been attractive to me because it's about as close to the hardware as you can get. You can also buy into a simpler solution: the PICAXE microcontroller.

There are very good forums at the Microchip website that are gentle to beginners. I may have had an advantage when I began playing around with PICs a few years ago because I was programming Intel 8085 microprocessors in the 1970s through the 1990s, building embedded systems without any formal training... an "earn while you learn" approach to new technology... not to be confused with "fake it 'til you make it," which apparently is an Amway slogan.

There is a wealth of free material available online in the form of datasheets, application notes, and white papers. I highly recommend a "hands on" approach to learning how to use and program PICs. I would start with a simple 8-bit PIC in a dual in-line through-hole package (DIP) and breadboard some simple input/output circuits using push-button switches and LEDs. It is extremely important to read and understand the datasheet for each PIC because Microchip crams fifty pounds of functionality into a five pound bag with all their PICs.

There are plenty of people here on EP that can help you once you get started. You will need to purchase a Microchip programming pod, PICKit 3 (about fifty bux through Mouser) and download the free Microchip MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment package for Microsoft Windows. DO NOT try to purchase an el-cheapo "PICkit 3" from an Asian vendor. DO NOT download MPLAB X from any website other than Microchip. You might get lucky, but many so-called "PICkit 3" pods are counterfeits and will not work reliably. And who knows what software from Asia contains? I purchased my pod and downloaded software directly from Microchip, but there are many authorized Microchip distributors, such as Allied Electronics and Mouser. It will cost you less than a hundred bux to get started, but spend wisely. I suggest getting at least a half dozen 8-bit microcontrollers to begin learning with. You can go on to bigger, better, more feature-rich versions later with very little additional cost. I started out with a PIC10F200T-I/OT but I believe this is now obsolete. Suggest you get PIC10(L)F320 or PIC10(L)F322 microcontrollers to learn with. These come in a 6-pin SOT-23 surface-mount package as well as in an 8-pin plastic DIP. The DIP is recommended for bread-boarding/prototyping.

If you jump right in and try to program one of the higher performance PICs before cutting your teeth on the simple ones, you may give up in frustration. Better to take baby steps and learn the Microchip design philosophy before diving into deeper waters. PM me in a private conversation if you want to, but we should discuss specific problems and solutions here in an open forum so others might benefit.

Hop
 
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