PICMAN, A Diy Prototyping Setup

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi] wanted a rapid prototyping tool that could be easily and cheaply built at home. He came up with the PICMAN, a breadboard compatible PIC based board that has everything you need to get the ball rolling. He’s using a PIC18LF4553 which has built-in USB support that can be used with a bootloader for programming. The board also features a voltage regulator for non-USB power sources, some indicator LEDs, a user-defined button, and a reset button. The chip is on the underside and a combination of through-hole and surface-mount parts make for a one-sided PCB that can easily be etched using the toner transfer method. You will need a PIC programmer to burn the bootloader firmware the first time but once that’s done this becomes a self-contained package.