[time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project?

[johncroos at aol.com]

Nice topic. I learned at bit. One source of info on the PIC is a course book and 
programming kit, programmer, prototype board and components set up by the ARRL. 

www.arrl.org

You get all the stuff you need to get going. Software and a integrated development environment is provided. All in one package. They also have a couple of new courses on the Raspberry PI and the Arduino. 

I got into the PIC course last summer, read the extensive course book and learned to program the things. Made lights blink - also made LCD say "Hi Hottie" to my wife.

My only comments -

1. Nice course for a beginner - my roots are old and in BASIC and FORTRAN  Still used today, on junker laptops. So it was fun go fool with assembly for while.

2. My impression is that the PICs are powerful if you do a lot with one, but there is a lot of work involved to get up the learning curve. 

3. My conclusion is that my next venture - should it occur will be with an integrated product that I can program in high level, with good input and some display capability, because I just want to get on with the project, but then I am not making a production device.

Others comments re the more complex boards appreciated and noted for future reference.

-73 john k6iql
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