PIC microcontrollers are used worldwide in commercial and industrial devices. The 8-bit PIC which this book focuses on is a versatile work horse that completes many designs. An engineer working with applications that include a microcontroller will no doubt come across the PIC sooner rather than later. It is a must to have a working knowledge of this 8-bit technology.

This book takes the novice from introduction of embedded systems through to advanced development techniques for utilizing and optimizing the PIC family of microcontrollers in your device. To truly understand the PIC, assembly and C programming language must be understood. The author explains both with sample code and examples, and makes the transition from the former to the latter an easy one. This is a solid building block for future PIC endeavors.

New to the 2nd Edition :
*Include end of chapter questions/activities moving from introductory to advanced
*More worked examples
*Includes PowerPoint slides for instructors
*Includes all code snips on a companion web site for ease of use
*A survey of 16/32-bit PICs
*A project using ZigBee

*Covers both assembly and C programming languages, essential for optimizing the PIC
*Amazing breadth of coverage moving from introductory to advanced topics covering more and more complex microcontroller families
*Details MPLAB and other Microchip design tools

5 Responses to “Designing Embedded Systems with PIC Microcontrollers, Second Edition: Principles and Applications”

1. Mr. Mark Mccrea says:

   March 23, 2010 at 12:00 am

   I think this is a terrific book ,for anyone trying to get up to speed with Pic’s.

   It makes programming with Assembler and C an achievable goal for most people.

   I worked my way through this book from start to finish and enjoyed every page.

   I built the the ping-pong and Derbot which helped me gain a better understanding of the code and the chips.

   I found the introduction to MPLAB IDE to be of great value to me as debugging doesn’t really change through the range of Pic,s.

   The book takes you from a small Pic 16f84a all the way up to 18xxxx Pic,s.By the time you are done with these there,s a nice overview of whats next.

   I am now on De Jasio’s Pic32 book,and It was not such a giant leap to get going with these pics as I am now pretty familiar with MPLAB and the basic Pic mindset.

   In my opinion it is a good beginners course, after which you can complete your project or start the next level with confidence.

   Reply
2. J. Z. says:

   October 2, 2009 at 12:00 am

   From Fall of 2008 to Spring of 2009, I was part of a senior design team whose aim was to create a control board. After a poor start in the Fall, I decided to see what resources were out there in the form of books. I literally looked through every book on Amazon that fell under designing with the PIC microcontroller (yes, that might be neurotic, but our senior design professors weren’t that helpful and I was desperate) and came across this book. There were only a few reviews at that time, but they spoke extremely highly of this book. I decided to gamble and purchased the book from Amazon and was not disappointed. This book answered many questions I had about PIC controllers and embedded systems in general. I would recommend it for anyone with a good basic knowledge of electronics and mathematics. I would tell a beginner in electronics to keep the book in mind for future use when they have built up knowledge and experience.

   As for the control board? It was an abysmal failure, but that is another story. :)

   Reply
3. Derek Workman says:

   April 24, 2009 at 12:00 am

   Tim Wilmshurst knows how to look through the eyes of a beginner. He makes the reading fun, and well organized. There are plenty of code examples and illustrations as well. I was a complete novice in the field of Microcontrollers before I bought this book, but now I feel like I’m on top of what is going on.

   This book is complete; I keep going back and reading the same chapters over, because I learn something new every time. I have not found a need to buy another book about PIC Microcontrollers this one covers all of the principles you need to know.

   In a short description of the book:

   He teaches the complete structures of Microchip’s 16F84A, 16F873A and 18F242 PIC’s. He teaches the assembler code, and how it works. He also gets into C code a bit. He gears his book around the robot you see on the front cover, and near the end of reading this book, you should be able to build it if you know basic circuit analysis. Another thing I liked about this book is that it gave real world examples and strategies that can be used to simplify circuitry.

   I am not good with words, But this is an excellent book if you want to learn how microcontrollers work! Buy it.

   Reply
4. Peter Match says:

   January 27, 2009 at 12:00 am

   I’m an electrical engineer who designs high voltage power supplies, so it’s been some time since I’ve done any programming. I wanted to be able to design simple micro controller circuits. I found this book to be a great refresher, I especially liked it since I was already partial to Microchip parts. Also, this book helped me to make the leap to programming in C, I liked that it gave very specific examples using an actual compiler.

   Reply
5. D. Lee says:

   December 21, 2008 at 12:00 am

   I think this is not intended for a beginner. For primers in PIC, look other books.

   Reply