Khoa's electronics and hobby page.back to main
PIC programmer from 99% scrap parts
Attention beginners!!!: If you are new to microcontrollers and would like to get a better understanding, click on this beginner's page I made. Click Here
Update: This webpage was recently featured on a DIY website called "hackaday"
and there were some questions as to what software to use with the programmer.
This is a common JDM type programmer but the schematics are
actually intended for ICSP (in-circuit serial programming), the only
modifications I did to it was wired the TX/RX/MCLR and voltage/ground lines to
an IC socket for plug-in programming. I personally use the WinPic hex loading
software, but both IC-Prog and WinPic are free. =)http://www.ic-prog.com/
http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/winpicpr.html
Be sure to check out some of my other projects on the main page!
If you are ever in need of a microchip programmer, sometimes you need not look further than your junk electronics. I had a broken monitor laying in my closet for some time now (I'm a pack rat, nothing is thrown away, EVER!) and recently I started scouring it for parts to be used. A friend that I have dealt with and given me many cool parts to use, I wanted to do him a favor by getting him a microcontroller programmer, however, I'm a bit tight with money right now so I took a look at the broken computer monitor, I was a bit surprised that I found almost everything I needed to make a programmer with. I was able to build this programmer with a couple transistors, handful of diodes and some capacitors. The only thing I didn't find in the monitor was the female serial connector and the perf board on which I soldered it (I was even able to use the IC socket from the monitor! It was a wide one, so I clipped it and put it closer together to fit the footprint of the chip I was using). My programmer is based on the PG1 by Olimex. The schematic is an ICSP programmer, however, I directly wired it to the socket, so it programs any 28 pin PICs.
Notice how the components are on the surface of the board? They were yanked from the monitor's circuit board so their leads are very short. I had to solder them directly on the surface of the perf board. On the picture below, it's hard to see, but I actually soldered wire extensions to the diodes at first, but I gave up and just soldered them together directly to save time.
