I found there were two sides to the final sketch that runs on the Arduino – the bit that talks to the host program on the PC, and the other bit that interfaces with the PIC itself to perform the programming. The program that is used with the K150 programmer is basic but works for uploading HEX code, so I set out to emulate the function of the programmer board, which includes a working USB-Serial link (included in our Arduino at no extra charge!), some extra components to get our signals in the right place, and of course, an Arduino sketch to make it do all the things a programmer should. There are online guides to building your own version, but they usually start with “take a blank PIC 16F628 and the PIC programmer you already have”, (which sounds a bit like some recipes for building 3D printers). In short, I was able to get it working on my 10-year-old laptop running Windows XP, but I wanted something a bit more future-proof. I got myself one of these with the idea of refreshing my knowledge of PIC microcontrollers, but quickly found driver issues related to Windows 10 and (apparently) counterfeit USB-Serial ICs.

These appear to be clones of the programmers originally produced by a company called “Kitsrus”. I wanted to design a simple-to-build PIC programmer for the 12F675 PIC, so that it would be easy for people to build the PIC Pocket Remote Control project, and what I’ve ended up creating is a breadboard (or protoboard –it’s simple enough to be built on a breadboard or protoboard) that, when combined with an Arduino compatible board does the job of the “K150” type programmers, which can be found online these days. So far, the programmer works with the 12F675 of the PIC Pocket Remote Control and the ubiquitous 16F84A. So in the spirit of the PIC programmers of old (say 10 to 15 years ago), I decided to build something myself, and along the way, I learned a lot about how the PIC programming protocol works at a low level. Nowadays, there are USB solutions for PIC programming like the PICkit 3 (Updated to PICkit 4), but if you want something a bit more bare-metal (and cheaper too), it’s a case of DIY. With a setup like this, a PIC was the accessible microcontroller choice like Arduinos are today, and many circuit designs could be found on the early internet. Many years ago, when computers had parallel printer ports, you could interface directly to the hardware, and a PIC programmer was not much more than a few passive components that pushed data straight onto the chip. Program a PIC microcontroller with an Arduino? Yes! And not just because we can, but because it’s easy to build and program stuff with Arduino.īUILD TIME: 1-1.5hrs DIFFICULTY RATING: advanced

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