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SPI for microcontrollers

In this article we will take a closer look at Serial Peripheral Interface, also called SPI. This is the third and last serial communication module...

I2C for PIC Microcontrollers

In this article, we will take a closer look at the I2C serial communication protocol. This is the second in a series of three articles...

USART for PIC Microcontrollers

The USART module, also referred to as the Serial Communications Interface (SCI), is a crucial hardware module that enables a microcontroller to communicate with other...

Prerequisits

To make it easier, I assume you have a basic knowledge of the following:

Basic circuitry knowledge; such as resistors, transistors, diodes, relays.
Basic programming knowledge in C; understand what are functions, operators, data types, and more.
Digital electronics, such as logic gates.

On some occasions I will explain it from scratch, but to understand everything, it is best to brush up on the basics so that you can follow the tutorials.

Required Software

For these tutorials we use Microchip’s own software package that includes:

MPLAB X IDE
XC8 Compiler
PICKIT3 programmer/debugger

All the tools can be downloaded at the official website of Microchip Technology

Required Hardware

The full tutorial consists of many different types of electrical components, sensors and actuators. It depends completely on your own project what you need. However, in all cases you will need a Pickit3 tool to install the software and you need at least 1 PIC16F877A microcontroller to install it on.