Pic Programmer

On Tuesday, we were able to acquire our pic programmer, which we hastily began to work on. Using our own laptop with the necessary software (MPLAB IDE), we immediately took some simple code (to test the functionality of both the programmer as well as our pic) that would light up a LED light, and attempted to test it. But after hooking up the pic to the LED, we were baffled to find that the LED did NOT light up. Initially, we assumed that our code was incorrectly programmed, and proceeded to debug it. But after we found no error, we assumed that we were not using the software correctly. It was only after we brought up our problems with Professor Ihler was the REAL problem found. We had bought a OTP pic: One Time Programmable. Naturally, we did not do this intentionally. But we had overlooked this one piece of valuable information. Good thing we had bought two spares of the same pic.

We now have two paths we can choose to take. We could go ahead and order another pic (this time a RE-programmable one) and work off of that, OR to save money, we could thoroughly test our program on the software simulator, THEN attempt to program on our remaining pics. This approach is extremely risky (as we only have two tries before we are out of options) but is a road we are still contemplating as we have already passed our set budget.