Selecting a PIC

Links Mentioned
Digikey
APP-III

There are many different varieties of PICs that run at many frequencies. Why so many? When you design hardware, you may need a certain combination of features and this will dictate what PIC you select. For a beginner there is really only two choices:

	PIC 18Fxx2 - These are newer PICs with a lot of power, a cleaner architecture, and they are not very expensive. They have many built-in features such as A/D converters, UARTs, and more.
	PIC 16F87x - Some in 40 pin chips, others in 28. While it is only a few dollars less expensive, they are a little harder to use because of their architecture..

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll assume you are using a APP-III which is really a 18F252. The APP-III is a unique PIC that doesn't require a programmer! You simply wire it up to a PC serial port and use the supplied software to download your program to it. You can see a picture of the APP-III above.