PICkit5 programmer support

Development Tools IDE 2.x
1

Sorry, but I am not sure which topic to put this discussion in since there is no specific category for programmer hardware?

The IDE has support for several programmers and I have sometimes used the USBASP to program or rescue AVR boards directly via ICSP. I am about to purchase a couple of ATtiny chips as well as PIC chips and a PICkit5 programmer to explore these products. Since these products all come from the same manufacturer - Microchip, who also makes the AVR family of ICs, I wondered whether there is any support within the IDE of the PICkit programmer? I did notice AVR ICE in the list, but not sure whether this is the same protocol?

I also noticed that on their website, when you look for PIC chips, that Microchip are encouraging users to move from PIC to AVR and that new PIC chip products are being classed as being part of the AVR family and are indeed the feature set found on them is much closer to AVR products than legacy products were. The PICkit programmer can program the entire MicroChip line, so if it doesn’t already, wouldn’t it make sense for the IDE to support it?

2

The IDE uses Avrdude for programming.
The latest version of Avrdude does support Pickit 4 and 5.

3

Hi @BitSeeker.

Support for specific programmers is implemented in the codebase of individual Arduino boards platforms, not in the Arduino IDE application itself (the IDE application only needs to provide support for the general purpose framework):

https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/latest/platform-specification/#programmerstxt

The "MegaCoreX" platform has support for the PICkit 5:

When using one of the boards of that platform, you can select Tools > Programmer > PICkit5 UPDI from the Arduino IDE menus.

All the "MCUdude" platforms (MiniCore, MightyCore, MegaCore, MegaCoreX) have support for the PICkit 4. Likewise for DxCore and megaTinyCore. I don't know whether that support also applies to the PICkit 5.

4

That’s interesting since MegaCoreX is one of the board platforms I am interested in. I am also currently using some of the others mentioned.

This avrdude issue seems to suggest that ICD, ICE PICkit4/5 and possibly including Atmel-ICE all work the same way.

https://github.com/avrdudes/avrdude/issues/1368

That was partly the reason for my question.

I just opened a random project and selected some of the board platforms you mention (MegaCoreX, MightyCore and MiniCore) and can see that under Tools → Programmer it does indeed list PICkit4. I see that it also lists the MPLAB SNAP, and for two of the platforms, the PICkit5.

Thank you for that information. I just didn’t see it because I had the Micro board selected. If/when I get the PICkit5, it will be interesting to see whether the Atmel-ICE option works with it.

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