Programming PIC Microcontrollers with XC8

Gets you going fast, with basic ideas and examples. Great for those of us who have done PICs before and don't want to get stuck over minor changes in software and hardware. Ok for beginners as long as they watch for typos (e.g., "Waterdog Timer"). Would recommend for an intro lab text to accompany a more detailed text for theory in electronics technology.

It does program PIC Microcontrollers with XC8. It does not 'explain' such. The errors are atrocious - lucky part might be that the errors I have seen probably will not be apparent in the code written unless expanded by the user to add additional features of the primary purpose of the code, especially with the configuration bits. Upside is if one reads the datasheets and other material found on-line one can discover and learn from the errors. Some of the pages of the Table of Contents has the printing offset so some of the printing is off the page so portions of the table of contents are missing - will try to post pictures if I can without copyright infringement. The printing in most of the book is offset in the middle of the page which is annoying - it is like a 'dot' off so some letters are skewed. A point that is frustrating is that the Author indicates that they will comment the code but then does not so if trying to learn XC8 or C-programming - this will not help you as much. Another annoying aspect is that the Author lets the reader know that they have to figure it out for themselves rather than provide an explanation in somewhat of a cavalier 'you can figure it out' way. I am a low to moderate level PIC programmer and trip over C-Language quite frequently. I am also a hobbyist. A professional person in my opinion would not recommend this book. But for me it does have some 'frustrating' value. Suggest a heavy experienced technical edit of the book and to display the code in the correct format without old-style 'wordpad-wrap-text' format.6/13/21 - not worth the cost ... too many issues ... waste of time discovering them ... C Language references are needed and the online resources are much better. You can do it without this book.

An excellent book for learning and using PIC

Exelente herramienta para el aprendizaje de programación gracia.

Good book. I just don't like the chips...

The book glosses over too much to be very useful. The coding is presented at beginner level, but anything related to electronics is left as an exercise to the reader. The code is completely unformatted and all of the code is left aligned.The slow pace for the code does have the advantage of allowing you to fully grasp the concepts (as long as you know how to hook all of the electronics with ease).This book seems more like a bunch of blog posts copy and pasted into Word and published without any editing.

Easy read and well thought out.

Breadboarded projects comprise the bulk of the book and they are pretty interesting.If you commit to working through the projects, you’ll find yourself buying lots of relatively cheap parts listed at the beginning of the book to get them running. This purchasing process in itself was a learning experience as you navigate eBay, Amazon and other sources for the right items at the best price.The code in the Kindle version (not sure about the print version) is all left-aligned which would be problematic if all of the projects weren’t available on GitHub (just search for the book name) as complete MPLAB X IDE projects.It’s also worth noting that there aren’t a lot of current PIC training books out there and this one is pretty recent with a 2017 publication date using the current 8-bit “enhanced mid-range” 167F1717 microcontroller.There’s two ways to look at the top-heavy projects vs. explanation approach in the text. One view might be that the instruction part is too thin, but another would be that you’re left to do more investigation yourself. The topics glanced over are general enough that there’s a wealth of information available online. I didn’t mind this since I preferred to take the approach of running the projects and then understanding better how they worked. It’s more the examples and less the instruction that makes this a quality book for me.I feel the best target audience for this book is not for the absolute beginner, but someone who has tinkered with Arduino and can understand basic schematics and wants to take the next step into PIC and more direct control of microcontrollers.I like this book, though it may not be for everyone.

The book presents a relevant selection of applications for PIC microcontrollers. Overall, the exposition is ok. Introductory chapters about the C language and electronic components are painfully superficial and could have been omitted.WHAT MAKES ME ANGRY. The author has IMPLEMENTED A COPY LIMIT FOR THE KINDLE EDITION, without giving prior notice in the book . ALL OF A SUDDEN (after finishing my first sample projects) I WAS INFORMED THAT THERE IS ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF COPY/PASTES AVAILABLE. NOW I HAVE LOST PERMISSION TO COPY/PASTE SOURCE CODE FROM THE KINDLE BOOK to my PIC development system. THIS IS A RIP OFF, sorry to say.

parfait

Il vero manuale per iniziare a programmare i PIC in C. Ricco di esempi e teoria base. Pur essendo in lingua inglese è consigliato anche a chi ha difficoltà nella lingua inglese poiché ha un linguaggio molto semplice.Ottimo!

This is a great book, written by a man who understands how difficult it can be for beginners. He uses only C, and gives an excellent crash course on using the language for PIC. Complaints about type-setting are irrelevant.

As a hobbyist I have been using Arduino as well as PIC microcontrollers (uC) for years. Arduino is much easier; contrary to PIC uC’s, there is a wealth of well documented and tried libraries and resources available on the web to aid the novice programmer. However, there is no feeling like that of developing a uC solution to a problem using a $3.00 chip occupying the surface area of a dime. The work is harder (among other things, PIC libraries tend to be device specific), but it also brings the developer a lot closer to the workings of the uC. Many moons ago I learned the ropes of PIC uCs using Myke Predko’s and Lucio Di Jasio’s books. However many things have changed since then, including the revamp of the Microchip MPLAB IDE, the new compilers and the new generation of uCs with new features. Subero’s book was therefore for me an opportunity to update my skills with this new generation of 8-bit PIC uC’s.The book is a fairly good introduction to those uCs and is properly addressed to both beginners and intermediate developers. It uses the bigger 40pin PIC16F1717 but the lessons learned can be applied to its little, less expensive siblings. In addition it introduces the new features of the new generation of 8-bit uCs such as the Peripheral Pin Select (PPS) module that gives the developer great flexibility of pin usage vs function. Considering myself an “intermediate” programmer, I found particularly interesting the chapter on communication protocols. It introduces useful libraries for managing USART, SPI and I2C communications that will help me develop new applications beyond those of the book. The user will greatly benefit by using the datasheets associated with the PIC16F1717 uC as well as those associated with the various components used in the projects in order to better understand how things work.I will also gladly put the HD44780 LCD display library in my toolbox as well (although I did have to change a stabilization delay, 1ms to 5msec, to make the display work properly). There are a couple of typos here and there, no showstoppers but enough to make one work a bit (I wish there was an online resource for errata reporting and fixing; I could not find one). The LCD-OLED and LCD touchscreen introduced in chapter 10 are quite interesting devices. Again the author offers useful libraries that can be used on a variety of projects. I did have some issues with the OLED code; once programmed the circuit would not always boot correctly from a cold start; I intend to look into this in more depth (again, a way to report the issue would be nice). The touchscreen (Nextion NX3224T024_11) is a great device; I did have to change the code to make it work though (from “EUSART_ReadText(buf, 11)” to (“EUSART_ReadText(buf, 4)” to match the incoming character string and make the code work. The author refers to tutorials on the web in order to program the touchscreen itself; luckily the learning curve is not bad. As to the other features offered by the next generation 8bit uCs, the author introduces us to the MCC (Microchip Code Configurator) for quickly developing code but in a rather superficial manner (“…There are a lot of tutorials on how to use the MCC, so I leave it up to you to learn on your own…”). Similarly his introduction to the Configurable Logic Cell module is limited to three pages, enough to raise interest but short on usefulness. Nevertheless, this remains a useful book for those wanting to tackle this interesting suite of microcontrollers.Things to watch for: I had to slightly adjust some delays (upwards) when dealing with displays to get better stabilization. Also the code shown in the book, particularly in chapter 10 (the excellent SSD1306 OLED display), is missing statements. One should rely on the code from github for reference.