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Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) PIC Chip Support (Read 43713 times)
fatboyatdesk
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PIC Chip Support
Apr 20th, 2013 at 7:20pm
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Love the product. Efforts much appreciated.
One suggestion I have is support for the Microchip line of products possibly the Chipkit which I believe arleady supports AVRDude and GCC also their Microstick II.

Keep up the good work folsks.
Allan
  
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SkierHiker
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #1 - May 4th, 2013 at 3:44pm
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I agree. I'm a 20 year veteran of Visual Studio and am migrating a fully developed .Net Micro Framework (GHI chipset) over to the chipKit Max32. I need this chipset for the CAN and processing support. I'm brand new to the Arduino platform so working in VS would be a huge plus. Donation is not a problem especially if the debugger would work too.

Just for fun, I renamed the mpide.exe to arduino.exe and Visual Micro accepted it. However when I compiled for the Max32 the cpu header file did not find it. Poking around it seemed that maybe its not a super big deal to add the PIC processors, just a lot of grunt work. But I'm totally new to C and C++ so I'm a little out of my league. But I would volunteer to help coordinate the effort. Just let me know what has to be done and I'll try to find people to do it.

Mark.
  
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Tim@Visual Micro
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #2 - May 4th, 2013 at 4:14pm
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Thanks

Actually I think the latest beta is quite a few steps closer to being able to achieve version 1 of this functionality.

I think the config you will need will include a core. In which case the system will attempt to include the arduino.h but you can make your own core folder and add an arduino.h that simply includes the header files you need

I'm pushed for time and will write more about the features of the latest beta but there are some documents that tell you what you need to know here. The SITL example is simply an example of a radically different tool chain and does not relate to this post

Custom Build Example (Advanced Users)

Cygwin Install Guide (SITL)


The support for other tool chains and cores will improve again during the next few weeks whe the arduino 1.5 compatible system is released. Older arduino systems will still be fully supported but the 1.5 build process is also very flexible. 

Visual Micro already supports a combination of arduino, teensy and its own build settings. The next release should support all of these + 1.5

I hope this helps, if not please remind me in a few weeks to re-look at this. If you take up the challenge feel free to ask questions along the way Smiley

You need 1305.01 or above from our codeplex downloads list to use these settings

Thanks

ps: Some of these features will not be available in the Atmel Studio version of Visual Micro unless the resulting compile has some relationship to Atmel hardware
« Last Edit: May 4th, 2013 at 4:25pm by Tim@Visual Micro »  
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John Currie
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #3 - Jul 15th, 2013 at 9:46pm
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Any news?  I need to jump to these boards for one of my projects for canbus.

Using VS would be ideal Smiley
  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #4 - Nov 12th, 2013 at 12:23pm
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Any more news anyone on ChipKit / MPIDE support? I really could do with this working and I will certainly buy the full version if this is feature is added. I find the Arduino hasn't enough grunt for my projects and a quick knock up of a 32MX440 board which worked first time is proving to be exactly what I want. Pity the MPIDE is rather rubbish and the JVM keeps crashing when using the Serial Monitor.

Please, please can you get this feature added????

BTW: The app looks awesome, if only it worked with MPIDE Smiley

Thanks, Dan
« Last Edit: Nov 12th, 2013 at 12:24pm by Daniel Riches »  
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Dennis Mabrey
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #5 - Nov 12th, 2013 at 3:14pm
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I don't mean to take this post off topic but I was wondering if you or the OP could answer a question.    

My question is why not buy PICKit3 to do true debugging??   I know you need to do a little work upfront to get the MPIDE to work with the MPLAB debugging as spelled out in the Debugging chipKIT™ with MPLAB ® IDE 8 document but is it really that difficult?
« Last Edit: Nov 12th, 2013 at 3:27pm by Dennis Mabrey »  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #6 - Dec 9th, 2013 at 11:56am
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So no news then Tim?? Please can we have an update? I don't mind it being a 'No, we're not going to support chipkit'. Something other than no response at all would be much appreciated, even Andreas the guy designing the Parallella board (massive undertaking) has responded quicker than this, tsk tsk Tongue
  
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Tim@Visual Micro
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #7 - Dec 10th, 2013 at 2:17pm
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Hi Daniel,

It's always interesting to hear that people who make a profit from selling hardware respond quickly. I provide this forum and the plugin for free in my personal hobby time and I am pleased that I often manage to respond quicker than the "for profit" guys Smiley 

The debugger that we have recently started to sell is a small income tool that doesn't replace my day job, it might pay for food for my pet Smiley So this is still a 99% free service.

Chipkit might actually be supported via the new app config system that was released in Visual Micro a couple of months ago. It just needs someone with the time to setup the config file and I can help with any missing config keys. We have a 80% solution but I have not had the time to complete it.

I will try to find time during the end of year break however because chipKit uses old Arduino Serial code the debugger will not work.
« Last Edit: Dec 10th, 2013 at 2:19pm by Tim@Visual Micro »  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #8 - Dec 11th, 2013 at 1:26pm
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Hi Tim, 

I didn't mean to offend, so if I did I apologize! It was more of a request for an update regardless of the outcome. Hearing that the support for ChipKit is about 80% done gives me great hope. 

I'll take a look myself and see if there's any way I can get Visual Micro to work with the chipkit build system. If there are any pointers you can give me to start me off, that'd be a great help. Of course anything I find out or if I can get it to work I'll post on here...

Thanks again for your hard work, it is most definitely appreciated Smiley

Thanks, Dan
  
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Tim@Visual Micro
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #9 - Dec 11th, 2013 at 3:11pm
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Hi Dan,

Also sorry, didn't want to appear to react Smiley

Because of the unfinished config it was removed from recent versions. I will try to dig out a config file and email it to you with some instructions. Got some other stuff to finish first so might take a week or so.

Any help will be appreciated.
  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #10 - Dec 11th, 2013 at 4:51pm
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Hi Tim,

That would be great, if I can help out I'd be glad to, but no promises Wink

Thanks again and have an awesome Christmas!

Dan
  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #11 - Dec 17th, 2013 at 10:26pm
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Hi Tim,

I know you're busy and I'm not expecting a reply until the new year but I thought I'd update you with my initial findings on trying to get mpide to work with your awesome plugin.

Firstly I have my own board based on a fubarino sd and I have updated my boards file and made all the necessary changes. All my different test apps work perfectly under mpide. So I renamed c:\arduino\mpide.exe to arduino.exe, installed VMicro and started VS2010. My board is listed so I selected that and Arduino 1.0.x as the configuration.

Sadly it won't build, the output however gives me a lot of hope. It seems the projectname.vsarduino.h file, in the header files section in the solution explorer, is changed just before compilation starts. Herein I think is the problem because it's not reading the mpide boards file properly (it does have extra info inside) and this is evident in the above file where the define for the core is set to __AVR_32MX440F512H__ with a blank define on the next line. Also there's a define set to __AVR__ which needs to be __PIC32MX__, once this is done we'll probably get a few more errors but it's a start.

I tried setting the file as readonly but compilation won't start unless that file can be written to. The output from the build lists all the avr processors and then shows:

TouchScreen.cpp : MCU '32MX440F512H' supported for assembler only
System_Defs.h : In file included from
pins_arduino.h : from
WProgram.h : from
TouchScreen.h : from
TouchScreen.cpp : from
cpudefs.h : #error cpu not defined
p32_defs.h : In file included from
wiring.h : from
WProgram.h : from
TouchScreen.h : from
TouchScreen.cpp : from
cpudefs.h : #error cpu not defined
wiring.h : In file included from
WProgram.h : from
TouchScreen.h : from
TouchScreen.cpp : from
cpudefs.h : #error cpu not defined
Error compiling

I hope this is useful, let me know if I can get any other debug etc... Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Dan
« Last Edit: Dec 17th, 2013 at 10:28pm by Daniel Riches »  
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Tim@Visual Micro
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #12 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 12:07am
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There is a bit more to it than that because the Chipkit boards.txt format is very different to Arduino. The following is where we are up to in providing a visual micro custom app config for mpide. There is no support for this and to complete the definition you need a lot of knowledge but try it and let us know what builds if anything.

After you set this up visual micro will show a new app in the main list. In addition to Arduino 1.0.x and Arduino 1.5.x you will see Chipkit (MPIDE) which can be configured with a path that points to the location of an mpide.exe.

If you expand this zip into your "documents" folder you should end up with mydocuments\visual micro\micro platforms\mpide.

Visual Micro (MPIDE).zip

Then in "Tools>Options>Visual Micro>Application & Locations>My Visual Micro Configs" enter the Visual Micro folder path that you created. example "c:\users\[name]\documents\visual micro"

For this custom definition to be read by visual micro you need to have the plus pack/debugger activated. If your trial has ended then let me know and I will try to get you another trial key. Please don't buy a license on the basis that mpide will work! If you have already purchased a license for arduino debug then thanks!

If the ide is open during this config then click "tools>visual micro>reload tool chains" then configure your new app path.
« Last Edit: Dec 18th, 2013 at 12:12am by Tim@Visual Micro »  
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #13 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 12:52am
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No 2. I have just done some testing with app config supplied in the zip. The zip has just been refreshed and I noticed a couple of people have grabbed the previous version. 

The refresh still does not successfully compile pic32 boards but it has a lot less errors than before.

Reminder, hold the SHFT key down when compiling in the MPIDE to see the verbose compile.

In Visual Micro switch on "Tools>Options>Visual Micro>Compiler>Verbose"

If you can see the difference between the compilations we can look at what is required to fix it. Thanks

ps: Ignore the Arduino AVR boards listed under the mpide application, they won't work. Only pic32 uno32, max32 are being configured in these tests against the Chipkit (MPIDE) application (nothing to do with Arduino 1.0.x or 1.5.x or Energia etc)
« Last Edit: Dec 18th, 2013 at 12:57am by Tim@Visual Micro »  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #14 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 7:29pm
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Hi Tim,

Thanks for replying so quickly! I gave the above a good try and had to copy the contents of 
c:\arduino\hardware\pic32\compiler\pic32-tools 
to 
c:\arduino\hardware\tools\pic32
as it didn't exist. This is possibly due to the newer version I'm using although it still says May 2011, not so great versioning!!

Anyway after trying to compile it seems as though it's getting hung up on a missing file called syscalls_PIC32.c.o.

The MPIDE output is too long to post, so here is the line which is ok in MPIDE (note the missing : which seems to have been stripped when I copied the text!):

C \Arduino/hardware/pic32/compiler/pic32-tools/bin/pic32-g++  -Os  -Wl,--gc-sections  -mdebugger  -mprocessor=32MX440F256H  -o  C  C \Users\Daniel\AppData\Local\Temp\build3818776942718976953.tmp\TouchTest.cpp.o    C \Users\Daniel\AppData\Local\Temp\build3818776942718976953.tmp\core.a  -LC \Users\Daniel\AppData\Local\Temp\build3818776942718976953.tmp  -lm  -T  C \Arduino\hardware\pic32\cores\pic32/chipKIT-application-32MX440F256.ld  -TC \Arduino\hardware\pic32\cores\pic32/chipKIT-application-COMMON.ld

but fails under VM:
"c:\arduino/hardware/pic32/compiler/pic32-tools/bin/pic32-g++" -Os -Wl,--gc-sections -mdebugger -mprocessor=32MX440F256H "-Tc:\arduino\hardware\pic32\variants\Fubarino_SD/chipKIT-BL-mega.ld" _sd_seeed/TouchTest.map" -o /TouchTest.elf" ed" -lm -lgcc -mthumb -Wl,--cref -Wl,--check-sections -Wl,--gc-sections -Wl,--entry=Reset_Handler -Wl,--unresolved-symbols=report-all -Wl,--warn-common -Wl,--warn-section-align -Wl,--warn-unresolved-symbols -Wl,--start-group /syscalls_PIC32.c.o" \TouchTest.cpp.o" "c:\arduino\hardware\pic32\variants\Fubarino_SD/{build.variant_system_lib}" /core.a" -Wl,--end-group

Visual studio reports this:
pic32-g++* : : syscalls_PIC32.c.o: No such file or directory
pic32-g++* : : c:\arduino\hardware\pic32\variants\Fubarino_SD\{build.variant_system_lib}: No such file or directory
Error creating .elf

I still don't think it's that far off, especially seen as I get the error with or without the external touchscreen library. I tried both to be sure this wasn't an issue either by commenting out the library include and all references to it. This left 4 basic pin defines and a serial.begin(9600). Maybe it's something that's expected to be in the variants folder or maybe the syscalls file is generated internally, I just don't know.

I can zip everything up and either email it or send you a dropbox link, or I can test anything else you need?!

I'll probably do a little dance and power punch the air when I see it all working, I have faith in it working at some point and sorry about the formatting above Smiley

Have a cracking Christmas Tim!!
  
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #15 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 8:44pm
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Hi, thanks yes I got the same results everything compiled okay but it fell over during the link phase so we should be able to get that fixed. The hopefully the upload is easy.

One question is about the folder you had to move. That does indicate a different version of mpide. I installed my version on a new pc yesterday using the recommended download. We can support more than one version but for the first one it might be best to make it the most recent. Which version are you using?
  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #16 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 8:54pm
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Hi, I downloaded the latest version as shown in the sticky on the chipkit forum, I've copied the link here so you can grab the exact version I was using: https://github.com/downloads/chipKIT32/chipKIT32-MAX/mpide-0023-windows-20120903...

I also tried reverting to the previous version which then wouldn't run, all I got was the loading splash screen which then disappeared a few moments later with no exception messages, nothing. After copying back the newer release everything that worked before suddenly worked again and mpide loaded correctly. I then closed that and tried the previous tests in visual studio which gave the same results. I just though I'd let you know that it seems there's no way to revert the mpide version without possibly hacking the registry which is always a bad thing!

Have fun, Dan
  
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #17 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 9:27pm
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Thanks for testing

I don't understand what this? What problem did you have with the revert. Are you referring to what would be needed to get the older mpide.exe running? Sorry just having a sanity check Smiley

Quote:
I just though I'd let you know that it seems there's no way to revert the mpide version without possibly hacking the registry which is always a bad thing!

  
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #18 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 9:31pm
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Update (2)

I installed the mpide from here. It looks like a July 2013 build, I think your build is Sept 2012 but sounds like they both work the same because we get the same compiler results.
  
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Daniel Riches
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Re: PIC Chip Support
Reply #19 - Dec 18th, 2013 at 9:58pm
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No problem, anything I can do to help will hopefully ultimately help me and others as well. All of which is good! I originally downloaded the September 2012 version and unzipped it to c:\arduino. The other day I downloaded the 15th June 2013 version and I made a backup copy of the files in c:\arduino. Then wiped the folder contents and unzipped the newer 2013 version.

When I say revert, I basically did the same as above, just copied the files out and copied the other version from the backup location. I should really have expanded on what I meant, sometimes the details really count. 

I should know this from being a professional c# dev, or should that be duh!?
  
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