Product Description

The PIC microcontroller is enormously popular both in the U.S. and abroad. The first edition of this book was a tremendous success because of that. However, in the 4 years that have passed since the book was first published, the electronics hobbyist market has become more sophisticated. Many users of the PIC are now comfortable shelling out the $250 for the price of the Professional version of the PIC Basic (the regular version sells for $100). This new edition is fully updated and revised to include detailed directions on using both versions of the microcontroller, with no-nonsense recommendations on which is better served in different situations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #446746 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
John Iovine, our 'Amazing Science' columnist...[is] bound to spur the imagination and inspire plans for using PICs in new products and projects... -- Poptronics, October, 2000

From the Back Cover
"Bound to spur the imagination and inspire plans for using PICs in new products and projects." --Poptronics

BESTSELLER!

NO ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE REQUIRED! 6 BRAND NEW PROJECTS!
What can you do with PIC microcontrollers? Practically anything -- from creating "photovore" robots that hunt light to feed their solar cells to making toasters announce, "Your toast is ready!" These low-cost computers-in-a-chip let electronics designers and hobbyists add intelligence, responsiveness, and functions that mimic big computers to any electronic product or project, including robotics.

Fully updated for use with the PICBasic Pro as well as the original PICBasic, this new edition of the PIC Microcontroller Project Book gives you hands-on directions for putting Microchip's RISC-based chips to work. Starting with simple projects and experiments, this book leads you gradually into sophisticated programming techniques. You need absolutely no programming experience to get started. John Iovine coaches you through every single step. Written with the beginner in mind, PIC Microcontroller Project Book gives you A-B-C guidance on how to:

* Get the equipment you need (includes lists of suppliers)
* Program your chip, from plugging in the breadboard to running the compiler, with lines of code to copy
* Use CodeDesigner and the latest Windows software
* Make your chip count numerically
* Deliver messages on a liquid crystal display
* Synthesize human speech
* Control DC motors, stepper motors, and servos
* Convert any analog signal to digital
* Add sensing abilities to robots
* Build decision-making neural and "fuzzy logic" functions into your projects

THE EASY WAY TO MASTER MICROCONTROLLERS
This book will be the springboard for thousands of innovative workshop projects!

About the Author
Electronics professional John Iovine is the author of several popular TAB titles that explore the frontiers of science. He wrote the cult classic Robots, Androids, and Animatrons. He also wrote such popular books as Homemade Holograms: The Complete Guide to Inexpensive, Do-It-Yourself Holography; Kirlian Photography: A Hands-On Guide; Fantastic Electronics: Build Your Own Negative-Ion Generator and Other Projects; and A Step into Virtual Reality. He is the "Amazing Science" columnist for Poptronics magazine and a regular contributor to Nuts and Volts.

Customer Reviews

Great basic PIC book- literally.
This is a good beginner's book on PIC 16F84 microcontrollers as long as you don't mind spending an additional $100 for a third party PIC BASIC code compiler. All of the book's lessons and programs are based on this BASIC compiler (no commonality to Microchip's MPLAB). There are some truly useful projects described such as serial communication, servo motor control and switch inputs, so if your goal is to get a design up and running quickly, this might be for you. It would be more accurately described as a user manual for the BASIC compiler rather than a PIC microcontroller reference. I was kinda bugged that this wasn't mentioned in the book's description.

Outdated and provides little useful information
I'm afraid I need to disagree with the professor's review. If you are at all interested in the PIC microcontrollers and use of PIC Basic you would be best served looking elsewhere for inspiration. John Iovine's book is poorly written in so many ways that even someone new to microcontrollers would find very little use for it. Aside from his writing style being somewhat confusing, this book is full of outdated information. With a publishing date of 2004 I was suprised to find so much information applied to applications and hardware from the 90's inside. Aside from this, which in and of itself is reason enough not to waste your time or money on it, he doesn't list any resources in his text. For example, he makes mention of serial LCD's, but doesn't provide any specific examples of vendors or models and makes claim that they all work the same, which is not true. His projects are the same basic beginners projects you can find all over the internet for free and are less descriptive than those you might find elsewhere. There isn't a single PCB design in the book and he demonstrates all of his projects with a breadboard. Most unfortunate, is the pictures he provides of the finished breadboards - they are taken at an angle, far enough away from the breadboard that not only could you not use the picture to validate your own breadboard design, you can barely tell what is what on the breadboard at all. On top of everything else, he explores only the PIC16F84 chip, which while one of the more popular chipsets ever produced by Microchip, is also outdated information since Microchip has since updated this to the PIC16F84A model and he doesn't cover any other chipset in any detail. One or two of his projects and examples show a different chipset in the schematic, but that's about it. His exploration of the BASIC language is no more or less descriptive than, say, the users guide of the PIC Basic language itself (which you can get for free). There are also many omissions and errors throughout the book, specifically as they apply to his projects. For example, his H-Bridge DC motor controller design is not smokeless (you could easily fry the PIC and/or other components in this design) and is missing several key components (like capacitors) that would prevent the design from working in a real world application. He also has a half a dozen or so shameless plugs throughout the book pointing you to 'other books he has written' to get more information - if this book is any example of what you might find in his other books, you'd be best to stay away from this author altogether. The cover of this book claims it is 'Completley updated and revised' - I guess this means the first edition was really horrible, the second edition is, in my opinion, simply not worth the read.

LOTS OF ERRORS!
I'm an EE undergrad, and had several courses on programming, microcontrollers, etc. I'm using this and other books to teach myself the PIC family. As I proceed through this book I'm finding lots of errors and omissions in code and diagrams - which has the (unintended) blessing of forcing me to really learn by fixing the author's mistakes. Mr. Iovine should have more carefully edited his work - it will likely make the beginner crazy.