Today we’re going to get to know the PIC16F690 development kit, a board that fits on one side of the breadboard. 8bit microcontrollers are no longer new, but they are still very useful. You can do a lot of cool things with them.
Compared with Arduino UNO, it has the following specifications:
| PIC16F690 | Arduino UNO | |
| Program memory | 7kB | 32kB |
| RAM memory | 256b | 2kB |
| EEPROM | 256b | 1kB |
| IO | 18 | 14 |
| PWM | 4 | 6 |
| Analog inputs | 12 | 6 |
| i2c and SPI | Yes x1 | Yes x1 |
Note that the PIC16F690 has less program memory, RAM and EEPROM, but has more IOs and analog inputs. In the end, they are similar chips. Doing an internet search I found the chip between R$5 and R$8. The board we are going to make will only cost a few dollars more.
This can make it interesting to have on your bench. Let’s now look at the electronic circuit of the development board.
See that the board has a connector for PICKIT3 programmer, a filter capacitor, a resistor and LED on pin RC0 and a 20-pin connector for the breadboard. The first prototype is seen in the image below.
I have a series of videos (in this link) where I talk about his programming. More videos are coming, stay tuned. In addition to the schematic diagram, I designed a printed circuit board for the product.
All manufacturing files in Kicad are at this link on my Github, enjoy. If you want to purchase the PCI card from me, comment below or on my Linkedin. There is also the Hackaday project page.
Do you also want to know other plaques I made? for example an oscillator with 555, a PWM generator and a timer.