PICKit2 clone programmer alternatives

Something has happened to our faithful old PIC programmer - it was (was being the key word) a PICKit2 clone, iCP01 from piccircuit.com and had worked tirelessly for about three years.
But for some reason, it has suddenly stopped working.
No puff of smoke or funny smell - it just stopped working.

At first it had problems recognising a 16F877A DIP, so - as we always do before wiggling wires - it was removed from the USB port (removing any power from the breadboard) and then when it was plugged in there was no "bing-bong" or any indication that the PC had recognised the USB device.

That's it. Despite stripping off the yellow shrink wrap and inspecting the components on the board (nothing seems to have blown and there's continuity across the connections where you'd expect there to be) the device simply refuses to work.

The PICKit2 software doesn't even recognise that the device is plugged in, and Device Manager fails to identify it too. So it's officially dead. The question is, do we get another one (they're great little programmers and really fast too) or try something else?

Working SMT USB HID device

The ICSP/SOIC chip clip arrived from Farnell today.
They really are excellent for next-day delivery. By UPS courier no less, not just Royal Mail (which can take three or more days to arrive!). If you're prototyping and can't wait for the delivery times from eBay suppliers (or just want to buy from someone with proven customer service) we can't recommend Farnell enough!


Anyway, the clip arrived - it is like a sprung loaded bulldog clip, with each of the fine-pitch pins being taken up to a 0.1" pitch header on the tops of the handles.
Before we could use it we had to make a simple pass-through board for my PICKit2 Clone iCP01 programmer (from piccircuit.com). The idea is to have a board with five pins that we can push the connector from the programmer onto. The other side of the board will be connected to a length of 5-way IDE cable, which in turn is connected to some 0.1" pitch pin header sockets. The sockets slip over the ends of the "chip clip", connecting the PIC programmer to the appropriate pins on the device.




Following the programmer pinout, we had to identify which wires needed connecting to which pins on the headers on the top of the clip handles.



Here's the whole thing assembled



And here it is, in place and ready to program the chip.



By either good luck or good judgement, the chip was immediately recognised by the PICKit2 programming software, and we were able to download some test firmware onto the device.

All went well and after the programming clip was removed, the device was plugged into the laptop via it's miniature USB socket. The usual bing-bong sound told us that the device had connected properly, and further inspection in Device Manager confirmed that our SMT soldered USB/HID device was indeed working.

The last bit of the puzzle now is to update the firmware so that it matches the new pin layout we used (the pin assignments were changed from the earlier version, to make SMT layout easier)

SOIC Test clip

Our homebrew ICSP programming header didn't quite work out as planned.
We're not sure why, but we just couldn't get PICKit2 to recognise the device held under the programming header - maybe the pins aren't quite making contact, or perhaps they're routing to the wrong programming pins (we checked and double-checked the connections before making the PCB though!)

It all seems a bit convoluted anyway and if we're going to have to program a few SMT/SOIC PIC chips in place, we'll need something a bit more robust than a wonky home-made board, so we found this:

http://uk.farnell.com/3m/923660-24/test-clip-soic-24way/dp/178283

It'll take a day or two to arrive (Farnell are usually pretty good with delivery times, but recently we've had a few orders split into two or more parts, and they don't always all arrive on the same day!) but we've other stuff to be getting on with in the meantime....

PIC programmer with ZIF socket

Just a quick shared post - I work a lot with the 18F2455, 18F4550 and 16F628A series of PIC microcontrollers (if you really want to know why, I'll post reasons later!). I usually have a dedicated breadboard made up with the programming pins mapped to a 5-pin header, that works with my PICKit2 Clone iCP01 programmer (from piccircuit.com).



I recently ran out of breadboards and had to dismantle my programming board and immediately regretted it! I can never remember which wires go where, so I made up a ZIF-based PIC programmer. This board has been tested with and works with the chip mentioned above, but will probably work with a whole load more as lots of PICs share the same pinouts for programming data, voltage and clock lines:

Zif Pic Programmer
Print at 100% no scaling in landscape orientation to create your own press-n-peel transfer to make this PIC programmer


Note the yellow bars at the bottom - these are wires connecting two pads/vias.



Below the ZIF socket is a 5-pin header to connect the PIC programmer to.
At the top of the socket is a three-pin header, onto which you should place a jumper, to connect either of the outer-most pins to the central pin. This is how to change between 18F and 16F microchips. (the 18F position is marked on the board).



To program a PIC microcontroller, place it into the ZIF socket ensuring that pin1 is always in the top-left hand corner.