Arduino used as a PIC programmer

[Protoboard]

Yesterday I was looking for the schematics for an USB PIC programmer and I came across some very interesting projects. A lot of people are using Arduinos as PIC programmers. The simplest one I found is one by a guy called Kirill Kulakov: Arduino as Pic18F programmer. He just uses an Arduino and a few cables and resistors and that's it.

I have an Arduino sitting in my toolbox so I'm going to put it to good use and I'm building this programmer tonight.

Have you donde something similar in the past? Do you know of any other interesting PIC programmer using an Arduino?

 

[(*steve*)]

Looks cool. Let us know how it goes.

 

[Protoboard]

Yesterday I finally got time to check out the programmer. The circuit is pretty simple, all what's needed are four resistors and a few wires. I loaded the included blink.hex file into the 18F2550 and saw the LED connected to the PIC start blinking.

 

[CDRIVE]

The notes included with that schematic states this:

note! the pins should be connected through a resistor, I used 1.2K. anything over 200R will be just fine.

Huh??

Chris

 

[(*steve*)]

Huh??

I have seen series resistors like that used to protect the programmer (and the chip being programmed). It allows you to wire a pair of outputs together, or an output to a power rail, with a fairly low chance of destroying something.

Not sure if that's the reason, but it's not uncommon.

 

[CDRIVE]

I get that but my issue is with the "R value" statement. "Anything over 200R will be fine" implies near infinity is OK.

Chris

 

[(*steve*)]

Ah, gotcha. I was thinking about commenting that 1k2 would probably be close to or beyond what I would expect to be the maximum value.

 

[Protoboard]

Maybe the guy writing the notes should have said anything between 200R and 1K2 will be fine

In my case I used 330R, those where the resistors I had at hand.

 

[CDRIVE]

Yeah, that works for me. 'Vague' is never a good spec in any field of study except politics, where vague & blatant BS is prized above all things.

Chris