Arduino PIC Programmer Writes To 18F Family

[Kirill] wrote in to share his Arduino-based PIC programmer. It is capable of writing to the 18F family of chips, including 18F2XXX and 18F4XXX. We think that’s pretty exciting because this line of chips has USB functionality and there are bootloaders out there that let you program them via USB. So if you wanted to build your own PIC dev-board (like this one) you can use your Arduino to flash the bootloader.

This post comes hot on the heels of the Arduino being used as a PIC 16F programmer. That hack has a rudimentary programming GUI, something that [Kirill] admits his lacks but has no plans to implement himself. Perhaps someone will do a little porting work to merge the projects, adding to the range of chips supported by this programming technique.

10 thoughts on “Arduino PIC Programmer Writes To 18F Family

  1. I looked for something like this for quite awhile before finally buying a real pic programmer. Not that they are all that expensive, but why spend money if you don’t have to?

    The nice thing about the PICs is the built in USB. You can easily make a USB hid device with nothing but the PIC itself, a USB cable or port, and a couple passives.

    I have one such device built dead bug style in the bottom of a staples easy button to use as a foot pedal for push to talk voice chat.

    The arduino is only needed to load the initial USB bootloader – after that you can reprogram the pic on it’s own.

  2. Krill has PGM marked twice, going to 6 and 7. Does anyone know if this is intentional? Unfortunately he doesn’t show a schematic and the one picture of the breadboarded circuit is taken from an angle where you can’t actually see the connections.

  3. I guess if you don’t havea serial port and a programmer to program your pic, but this seems like its going wayyyy out of the way. Or buy a PC that has an actual serial port? and most motherboards do indeed have serial ports, you just have to find the header and header to dsub to fit it.
    OR-OR just buy a USB pic programmer, do ICSP and stay away from BLOAT loaders, I mean boot loaders. They are for sissys.

    1. Ryan: Well trolled. Why buy a whole PC to program a pic when pickit2 is $45? That makes no sense. There’s a swath of people that want to build their own pickit style programmers to do ICSP, but they have to get the firmware onto a 18F2550 to start. Hence projects like these. A lot of these people are also arduino people so they want to use the tools they already have on hand.
      “Just buy a usb programmer” is a circular argument. Buying new tools when you could just use the ones you already have in a creative way “is for sissys.” Lulz.

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