[amsat-bb] Re: PIC rotator control

[Gordon JC Pearce]

On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 21:50 +1000, Andrew Rich wrote:

> Sometime I wonder if just programming in perl on the LINUX side might be 
> just as easy

The PIC microcontrollers are frankly *dreadful*, without a single
redeeming feature.  What makes me like them even less is that you're
forced to use the bloody awful Windows software to program them, and the
programming hardware is extremely finicky.  There is a PIC assembler
that runs under Linux, but it sucks elephants through very fine mesh.

I've ditched all my PIC stuff and now use AVR, which is extremely well
supported on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.  It's a better product, the CPU
core is generally faster clock-for-clock and it's only slightly more
expensive.  How much is your time worth?

If you're not convinced yet, buy an Arduino board.  You probably
couldn't put together an AVR board for less in onesy-twoesy quantities.

Gordon MM0YEQ