Suggest PIC programmer/development kit

[Streak]

I want to play around a little with PIC micros.
Maybe build a little LED PWM application as it's easy to see the results.

There appear to be many kits on the market. In your opinion which would be the best for a real beginner?

 

[Hack On Wheels]

The PICkit 2, starter kit, was what as recommended to me.

It seems nice so far but I've been slow learning assembler and I can't really give much feedback yet.

 

[[email protected]]

The Atmel ATTINY series parts are nice. An Atmel Dragon programmer/debugger can be had for around $50. And that includes a debugger offering breakpoints and single step debugging. Nice for only $50.

The AVRStudio IDE is pretty decent and I've been very impressed with the GCC optimizing C compiler that is part of it.

Don't get me wrong, I love PICs. Been using them since 1994. I still use them in lots of projects where they make sense. But the Atmel parts are pretty cheap to get started with, and if you use C, no worse than the PICs. Go check out www.avrfreaks.com for tutorials and forums that will answer any questions you may have.

Mark

 

[Streak]

Thanks for the replies.