MICROMEISTER!

Hi everyone!

I say everyone, it's probably nobody at all, yet.

I'm a microprocessor engineer. I've recently tried finding another one to replace me, because I've been doing this too long. I've found loads who say they are, but they're not.

So, here am I, offering to teach anyone who's interested how to get involved with this INCREDIBLY TECHNICAL AND CLEVER STUFF! Dear reader - it isn't. Really it isn't. It's very, very simple. The people who make the chips and the software we use are the clever ones. They make it easy for us ordinary people to use them. To be honest, the hardest bit is thinking of something to do with them.

If you're interested in this sort of stuff, you will have heard of things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi and such like. "Make your own computer," they say. No, you won't. You'll buy theirs, and there will be strange experiments to do, using strange languages, and you won't have MADE anything. You won't learn much either.

There's a reason these things exist. It's because to do the "real thing," where you start off with a bag of wires and chips and resistors and LEDs was all very well until you had to buy the programming kit to go with it, and that was expensive.

Now it's changed. Microchip, the huge company who make the microprocessors that I, and probably the vast majority of us engineers use, have brought one out that's not only really cheap, but also works, like magic. I don't know why they've done that; I'm guessing to compete with such things as the Arduino. Either that or they've gone all altruistic.

Perhaps I have too. I don't want any money for this. Nothing. It's just that I know there are a lot of people who'd be interested and I'd like to help, just for fun. I've been looking at prices of the bits and pieces you need and you can buy them all straight off Farnell, RS, Mouser, Digikey, eBay etc. Or you can buy them off me, because I've been checking out some stuff straight from China and its amazing what you get for your money if you buy a few hundred pieces.

You will need a PC, or a laptop, with a USB socket. Apparently this stuff will also work on a MAC but as I haven't got one I won't be able to explain much about getting it working on one, but feel free to have a go.

Here's one I made earlier. It's all you need to get started, programming and using the development system (it's free at the moment and I can't see why it won't stay that way) and program and play with your own chips. This took less than 2 minutes.

The board is a breadboard I bought from Alibaba for next to nothing. Sadly the shipping was about ten times as much as the board, but if you buy a few hundred it's a tiny percentage. The wires are jumper wires. you don't need to use those, but they're nice. You can buy multi-coloured single-core cable from eBay and strip the ends yourself and cut them to length for a few pence. The chip in the top left-hand corner is a Microchip PIC16F1459, because that's one I had in the junk box. It is a very advanced microcontroller and costs less than £1.

The little circuit board with the green LED on it is a Microchip SNAP programmer/debugger, which I bought direct from Microchip for a fiver. Again, the shipping was more than the piece, but in quantity it's a sensible percentage. I have modified it to add a little socket to plug the red wire in, and you can do that yourself with a soldering iron, but I reckon I can get them done by my mate's 11 year old for 2p each.

Add to this an assortment of resistors, capacitors, LEDs, switches etc, for a few pence each, and you can do loads with this. But mainly you'll learn how easy it is, and be off doing your own thing before you know it. You probably know what a LED is, and a switch. You will find out soon what a resistor is for, and what a capacitor does.

Just to say again, I don't want to make any money, and I'm happy if you buy all the stuff yourself. Or I can put it all together and get us a huge discount.

There won't be any maths. The main reason is that I'm pretty bad at it, and I haven't really had to use anything much since I left school, and that was a very long time ago now. You need to be logical, that's all. Common sense. And you'll need to learn a programming language called C. It's pretty simple, and you'll only need to learn one small thing at a time.

Think you can? KNOW you can. I know you can.

Anyone interested? Just to get an idea of numbers so I can see if it's worth going ahead?

Just leave a comment below. Rude as you like.

Look forward to your feedback!