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[on:]

Hi
about a year ago i was intersting on ARDUINO, i liked the language very much, and i started to make some profesional projects (i am manufacturing LED displays) with arduino! maybe some people laugh with that, but for me arduino is not only for amateurs but it it very good for professional projects.
thanks to the support of this forum i have succed to do a big work.

Yesterday i saw chipKIT UNO32 and i saw that it uses the same language with arduino's.
I would like to create my own PCB-BREAKOUT with the chipset of chipKIT UNO32 (PIC32MX320F128H) and s
Is it posible to program that chip as standlone?and how?
Do i need to burn bootloader and if yes how can i do that?

the problem is that i like the language of arduino and i can't use accemply or any other language. So i want to put this chip on my own board and program it via the arduino/chipkit interface

sorry for my bad english

[Reply #1 on:]

Is it posible to program that chip as standlone?and how?
Do i need to burn bootloader and if yes how can i do that?

Yes.  The PIC32 processors used on the ChipKit boards can be programmed with a clocked serial protocol somewhat similar to the "ISP Programming" used to program standalone AVR chips.  All you need is a compatible device programmer, like the  Microchip PICKit-3  I don't know if there are any very low cost programmers like there are for AVR; there were some "PICKit-2" clones that were a bit cheaper than the real microchip product, but I'm not sure whether pickit-2 can program the pic32 chips.  (PICKit-3 is "only" about $50.)

the problem is that i like the language of arduino and i can't use accemply or any other language.
So i want to put this chip on my own board and program it via the arduino/chipkit interface

You do realize that programming in the "Arduino Language" will gradually teach you enough of C and C++ that after a while, you might look at a program written in C and say "hey, I can read that!  C isn't so impossible after all!"

sorry for my bad english

Your english is quite good!

[Reply #2 on:]

If i burn a new chip with bootloader using PICKit-3, after that am i able to program it using chikit language? (same as arduino) how can i do that? just wiring a FTDI chip with rx/tx of PIC32 chip?

all i want is to buy some fresh PIC32MX320F128H chip,burn them with bootloader and then to be able to program them using CHIPkit/arduino language.

[Reply #3 on:]

There is a lot of information about the UNO32 and the MAX32 at the chipkit forums (http://www.chipkit.org). The MPIDE for the chipkit boards also supports other common PIC32 boards like the CUI32 or UBW32. There are pre-compiled boot loaders available for these as well. The CUI32 and UBW33 are boards that do not use the FTDI USB chip but instead make use of the on-board native USB connectivity of the PIC32MX795 and PIC32MX440 chips.

So the MPIDE environment is quite versatile when it comes to support for PIC32 hardware.

I started using the UNO32 as I am much more familiar with PIC hardware then Atmel. Used to do assembler on 8-bit PIC's. I also have a variety of programmers for PIC, whereas I had nothing "modern" for Atmel. Having lots of parts laying around I did eventually buy a couple bare PCB for Duemilanove. To get the boot loader into the chip I picket up an AVR ISP MKII. I guess my thinking is that with the Arduino IDE in particular, and programing in C on AVR or PIC32 the differences between these platforms are no longer all that significant.

For some shields and libraries it is much simpler to use the official Arduino hardware. I.e. I am working with a GSM shield from Seeed Studio. It turns out that out of the box the Seeed Studio GSM module is wired to use digital pins 7 and 8 for software serial. Well, the software serial library is not supported on the chipKit hardware, it hasn't been ported yet. The workaround is to use the second hardware serial port. But that required some hardware hacking to bring the 2nd serial port pins from the UNO32 to the appropriate place on the GSM shield. Not a huge deal, but certainly required a few hours of time to get it sorted out. Anyways, don't get me wrong, I like the chipkit hardware, it is really nicely done and I am certainly going to be working with it for some upcoming projects I have in mind.