Introduction: Program PIC With Arduino

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About: Industrial electrician with a keen interest in exploring all sorts of control and automation systems. Still teaching myself the basics of digital electronic circuit design. Huge fan of fast, cheap prototype it…
This is just another "show and tell", but once again, there are gerber files and so on included.

This Arduino shield is a PCB version of a circuit designed by Rhys Weatherley. When used in conjunction with two arduino sketches and a host program also designed by Rhys, it provides a pretty neat way of programming various 8 and 18 pin PIC micros using an Arduino as the programmer. Full list of supported devices, sketches, host program, schematics and instructions for use are here.

The circuit is the same as the one on that site, except that I have added a jumper to allow you to select pin 9 or 10 as the program pin. This lets you program a couple of extra PIC models in the ZIF socket. The circuit is easy to build on a proto board - especially one of mine! ;)

If you are not comfortable with command line interfaces or you are not willing to play around a bit to teach yourself how to use this hardware and software, this is probably not the project for you. There are cheap PIC programmers available supported by free software with good GUI's. This one is for the fun of DIY!

PCB was designed using free designSpark software by RS components and manufactured by SEEED Studio. Because I ordered other boards and parts at the same time, I paid around $23 for 10 of this PCB (worth if for me, as I made up some of the spares as gift kits for friends).
Alternatively, you can use the supplied .pdf file to do the toner transfer method and make your own.

Gerbers and other resources at the end.

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