What is a PIC 2 Starter Kit?

The Pickit 2 Starter Kit is an all-in-one package offered by the company Microchip that allows a user to program a Pic microcontroller.

It's really a package that allows microcontroller programming.

In order to program a microcontroller, several components are needed. First of all, you need the actual microcontroller chip, which is the actual chip that you are programming.

This chip we are programming with the Pickit 2 starter kit is shown below:

The PIC16F690 chip is a 20-pin, 8-bit, flash-based microcontroller chip. It is also called the MCU, which stands for microcontroller unit. It is the heart of the starter kit.

However, it cannot stand on its own because peripheral devices are needed to connect to the MCU in order to program it. In the Pickit 2 starter kit, the USB stands as the peripheral device to give power to the microcontroller and to program it. So the starter kit is the whole kit, including the MCU, and the peripheral devices needed to program it.

Many starter kits, including this one, the Pickit 2, also includes other electronic components, such as LEDs, switches, potentiometers, etc. This specific starter kit comes with 4 LEDS, a switch, and a potentiometer. This is so that we can build projects that can light LEDs on and off, such as a blinker circuit. We can use the switch as any type of mechanical switching device. We can use the potentiometer to vary resistance, which is what would be needed to dim a light source, so that we can vary its brightness or a sound device so that we can vary its volume.

So now that you know the Pickit 2 starter kit allows us to program the PIC16F690 microcontroller, let's move on what we can do with the starter kit that is useful?

What Can the Pickit 2 Starter Kit Do?

The Pickit 2 Starter Kit can basically do anything that any microcontroller can do.

We can program the microcontroller to blink an LED so that the LED turns on and off every second, every 2 seconds, every 3 seconds, etc. We can program the microcontroller to a 7 segment LED Display to show all numbers from 0 to 9. If the microcontroller is connected to several 7 segment LED displays, it can show things such as time or it can function as a scoreboard for a game. We can program the microcontroller to a LCD module, where we can print any message that we want.

So the starter kit can be interfaced to basically any electronic components, and with the appropriate software code, we can program the microcontroller to communicate with other electronic devices.

Today, practically all electronic devices can controlled by microcontrollers. Microcontrollers function as the brains of the electronic devices, which can be programmed and use this programmed code to seemingly make decisions and carry out actions. All types of electronic devices today, including washing machines, dryers, microwaves, ovens, cell phones all have microcontrollers embedded inside of them. With firmware installed in them, which is preprogrammed code in the hardware, the microcontroller carries out actions based on user input.

The starter kit is a great way to begin learning embedded program, so that a user can begin to learn how to program microcontrollers, which are embedded in electronic devices.