I've got a PICkit3

In my hand is the PICkit3 a small demo board from Microchip that includes a PIC18F45K20 microcontroller. The demo board itself is quite simple. It has three inputs a reset button (if you can call than an input), a single jumper switch and a variable resistor that is probably for playing with the ADC on the micro.

The PIC18F45K20
The PIC18F45K20 is a RISC based microcontroller that has 64kbytes of code space and 3936bytes of data space. It has been optimized to work with a C complier and is capable of speed of 16MIPS. It has a number of built in peripherals such as a  watch dog timer, ADC,  35 I/Os, PWM, I2C and a UART.

Why do I have it?
Apart from what I have discovered above I know very little about this microcontroller and has it been a little while since I have played with embedded electronics. My aim therefore over the next few weeks is to explore the features of this pic and record my results in this blog. Initially I will follow the tutorial that comes with the demo board than I will do something of my own. However the tutorial looks like it is mainly based around using the C compiler, but it is my view to get to know a micro we need to look at its architecture and play with some assembly code. So I also intend to do this as well.

I will leave you with a link to a YouTube video I stumbled across that gives some more information about the PICkit3. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!