Looking for pic chip recommendation for project Tia Sal

Greetings All,

First of all I would like to thank everyone that helped me with my question and pulsing lasers
I've decided to dive into pic programming to do my pulsing of my 4mw lasers due to the
control I have with programming in PIC.

I will be pulsing multiple pen laser (only 3 at this) in a sequence which will vary in time and duration
can anyone recommend a good pic chip and the best way to get started in programming and what I might need?

This is what I will be doing with the pic chip to start off with http://www.onewithall.net/laser_pulse.gif

PS: I have a programming background and an Electrical background

 

All the information you could ever want about the PIC is available
through microchip (www.microchip.com). Take a look at their product
tables to try and find a product that meets your needs. I think that
your main issue is going to be in timing, finding a chip that operates
fast enough so that you can accurately control the lasers at the
minimum timing might be an issue depending on how fast you need to
pulse them.

When it comes to programming microchip offers there MPLAB IDE at no
charge. This is a nice ide that allows for syntax checking and
compiling of programs for the PIC. The only problem (if you consider
this a problem) is that you can only write code in assembly using this
setup. For coding in C they require you purchase the compiler, or you
can search for freeware compilers. To program the chip itself there
are several different programmers available. microchip has a few to
choose from (~$200+) or you can find other companies that offer PIC
programmers (I found a pretty nice one for ~$100). Most of the PIC
controllers allow for in circuit serial programming which lets you to
program the chip without removing it from the circuit everytime you
want to change the code. The additional circuitry for this is minimal
and the documentation is very good in the PIC manuals.

Hope this helps,
Michael